Super Hero Party

Jack's birthday was on a Saturday this year, so his party was that day.  We initially were going to do a Spiderman theme due to his obsession but suddenly a couple months ago his obsession shifted to Batman.  To avoid any other last minute switcheroos, I went with a generic Super Hero theme.  Since he is so into Batman, I had to at least get it in there some, so here's the invitation we sent:

We had perfect weather - I think the high was 80ish degrees, which is almost cool for August in St. Louis!  We invited our immediate families, our neighbors and a few of our friends, which resulted in about 16 kids (and their families of course)!  Phew!  I didn't do a whole lot of decorating.  I just had this one wall decorated behind the framed pictures of Jack's 4th birthday questionnaire and photo collage:

I went a little nutty and ordered both boys a special shirt to wear from Etsy seller Lilshabebe.  They turned out cute!

I had the idea (from my pinterest searches) to make capes for the kids but my mom recognized my lack of free time and instead found some for me to buy on zulily.com.  Much easier!  I ended up needing to buy a few extra, which I did directly from the seller's site: Sew Plain Jane (I also got felt masks for each of the kids there).  The capes were plain so I decided to add a felt shield and initial for each of them to make them a little more personal.  I'm glad I did, they turned out pretty cute:

When I initially handed the capes out, I'd say about 1/2 of the kids were interested and the other 1/2 didn't want to wear it.  Not surprisingly, Jack was all over it, and so was my 7 year-old niece Mia.  Since she was the oldest kid there, I think it helped bring the other kids around as she ran around chasing Jack with their capes and masks on!

Birthday boy!  He of course had to wear the fancy Batman mask that he received from one of his balloons earlier in the week.

Mia, the good influence!

First attempt at a kid picture, with only 1/2 wearing capes: Addison, Hayden, Lily, Charlie, Mia, Jack, Jack Scally, Maggie and Logan with Ethan walking in front

Cousins! Jack, Mia and Lily

Charlie wore his for about 30 seconds a couple times

Lil and Jack

Super Ethan

Cousins again!

Jason made the whole meal.  Yes, I do realize how lucky I am to not have to think at all about the food (aside from appetizers and desserts) when we're hosting parties.  His spread did not disappoint.

After dinner I gave each of the kids silly string wrapped with a "spider web" label, which I downloaded for free here (actually the download was supposed to be free but the site wanted me to pay, so I emailed the gal and she emailed me the file - so great!!).

 I told the kids they had to spray the bad guys (Jason, Uncle Todd and Steve) with their spider webs.  I encouraged them all to put on their capes and masks so I could get a good group picture so they would really be super heroes.  It worked like a charm!  They all quickly obliged and I captured these group pictures:

Ethan (flashing his belly), Zoey, Charlie, Maggie, Hayden, Reghan, Addison, Lily, Jack, Mia and Jack

Check out my Charlie Man.  Too funny.  He stood there like that for a good 1-2 minutes

 Let the wild rumpus begin!

This is my favorite.  Uncle Todd was definitely the best bad guy!

OK, so it was more like low-key chaos, but fun nonetheless:

After the silly string ran out (which didn't take long with dollar store spray; I recommend two cans/kid, at least for the bigger kids), it was present time.  Jack got lots of cool gifts, mostly of the super hero genre.  He LOVED every present.  In fact, I asked him later what his favorite was and he couldn't pick...he said "all of them that I got."

Love everything about this picture: Mia read all of Jack's cards to him; love that she is showing it to him (and he is paying attention) and love that she has her mask pulled up on her forehead.  Too cute, that niece of ours.

Then it was time for cake!!  I tried to get creative and in theory my design worked (thanks to Cyndi for her suggestion to use a sugar cookie instead of fondant), but my cake basically split in two by the time we sang Happy Birthday.  We didn't even bother cutting it and just served the cupcakes instead.  Oh well...

How cute are these two sitting together?  Charlie wasn't sure what to think about the singing.

And sweet Jack leaned in for a kiss

Another successful party in the books!  Late that night when Jack was going to sleep, we still had several of the adults hanging out around our fire pit.  I told Jack it was time to close his eyes and go to sleep and he responded "I can't close my eyes.  I have to think of what I want for my five birthday."  Oh boy...