Star Wars Party: Jedi Training

As I said, the Jedi training was the main focus of the party. We did this for the second hour and the kids had an absolute blast. Just look at their faces in these pictures!

We had a wonderful friend from our church come and be our Jedi master. Bill is pretty funny in real life, so I knew he would be perfect for this. He did not disappoint!!

The kids started out doing stretches to get them ready for the strenuous training. They all took this so seriously!!

He then had my nephew, who was his "Young Paduan," to demonstrate push-ups for strengthening exercises. For some reason, the Jedi master didn't want to demonstrate them himself...

I have to say, it's pretty funny watching these kids, who are mostly 6 and under, trying to do push-ups!

Next came the team-building activities, which went over the kids' heads a little. Bill realized this and simplified things a bit, but the kids were hysterical to watch!

Now came time for the Light Saber Ceremony. Each child was given a light saber, which each color symbolizing a character trait. I can't remember what Bill said for each one, but it was something like red is bravery, blue is honor, and green is strength. The kids ate it up and no one complained about getting a certain color! :)

Next, the Jedi master taught the kids sword positioning, and even had names for the different positions.

They took turns throwing their light saber at a poster of Darth Vader, darts-style. My four year old nephew won the prize for the most direct hits! He's got a future as a Jedi...or a darts player!

After a bit of one-on-one sparring to practice their moves, we had a dueling tournament. We had two groups of two going at once, and I timed each battle for one minute. We had "touch counters" who counted how many times each person was touched with the light saber. The person in the pair with the lesser amount of touches was the winner, and we continued with the tournament.

We tested out the light sabers ahead of time and whacked each other pretty hard (getting out some marital aggression!) to make sure the kids wouldn't get hurt. So we knew they were safe!!

Just look at the smiles of these kids during their battles!

Cousin-on-cousin here! These boys are just 3 months apart!

Completely coincidentally, the finalists were brothers! Just look at the snarl on Andrew's (who is 2 years older than Jacob) face! These boys are also experienced with light sabers, having had many battles of their own at home!

Despite his size and age, 5 year old Jacob beat Andrew and won the championship! His signature move was the spin-and-swing, which he did often while yelling out a battle cry.

Paduan Owen didn't get to be part of the championship, but the Jedi Master and Matt took him on. I think they may have won... :)

The fun turned sour when Darth Vader crashed the party though...Stay tuned!! :)

Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome

If you happen to pick up the latest Reader's Digest, there is an article in there about Piper Breinholt , a four year old with CCMS. If you've been around here a while, you'll remember wayyyyyy back when we first received Abby's diagnosis that I was able to speak to Piper's mom, Reagan. The article is more about their story and not as much about the ins and outs of CCMS, but I think it's probably enough to get some people googling it and I'm hoping a few will end up here. Every once in a while, I give a blog post the title of Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome so that it would show up in Google. My ever-present hope is that people will stumble across my blog and 1) be encouraged by the hope we have in Christ, 2) feel a connection with someone in a similar situation as them, or 3) get excited over the miracles that have been performed in Abby's life!! (a combination of all 3 is great too!) :) Notice that it's not to get famous and it never wi

The Potty Man

Caleb LOVES to go potty! I have never heard a potty training story like this one....Caleb tells us when he needs to go, we take his diaper off, and he goes! Now, is it perfect? No, not at all! We aren't trying to potty train at at all, but we figure every time he goes is one less diaper we have to change! The only time we consistantly put him on the potty is when we give him a bath (he always pees in the tub, so we know he needs to go!) He almost always goes on the potty now instead of the tub though. When he's not "really" going potty, he's pretending to go potty! He's such a funny kid!

Lego Party: Favors

I'm a little slow in posting the Lego Party pictures, but I think I have a few excuses I could use. At any rate, I wanted to share what I did for the party! It will take a few posts, so stay with me. I'll start with how I did the favors. These are the goody bags I made. I just bought solid colored gift bags and matched scrapbook paper to each bag. Then I punched circles and attached them with the 3D foam tape so that the circles were raised. I used the keychain (explained below) as a name tag on the outside. These are Duplo blocks. I put a round magnet on the back and...voila! A magnet! (note: hot glue doesn't work so well...I ended up reglueing them with my apoxy because the magnets fell off.) I made crayons using Lego man crayons. Yes, I know this guy has lost half of his leg. The others were already packaged and I didn't want to open one up just to get a picture. I used a Lego mold to make the crayons. Caleb put small pieces of crayon in each m

Life as a Leach

Search This Blog