Fear Factor Birthday Party

Well my Connor turns 7 today. Can't believe it. Connor is such a special guy. He definitely has his own way of doing things. Seriously everybody needs a Connor in their life. He cracks me up every single day and makes me want to pull my hair out every single day. He is the sweetest kid on earth too. He loves to get hands on with things and he loves school. He is in the 1st grade. His favorite thing is math. He is very advanced in math and there have been times I have caught him doing his older brother's (who is in 4th grade) homework. His school work is too easy for him and he will beg me to make harder math sheets for him to do at night in his bed. (Now he cannot be my kid---I know what your thinking---me and math do not get along--he is all his father's child there). He is also an excellent reader. He is sooo far advanced at his age in reading too. He loves to play with his older brother (that is when they are not fighting). They really get along great and I love having two boys together like that to keep each other entertained and do boy stuff together. They really have such a love/hate relationship. Connor is really into karate right now. He has the most flexible body you can hardly believe it. His favorite thing is to show everybody in the world how he can jump down into the splits. We will be at the store and he will just show the lady at the counter how he can go into the splits. I have to tell him all the time that not everyone is interested in seeing him do the splits. He LOVES to be the center of attention but at the same time is a very shy kid. Kind of a weird situation there. He will do very good in karate with that flexibility. He wins a lot of their competitions in karate classes for his kicks and kung fu's because he can bend real good. He also loves ocean animals. He has been obsessed with sharks and whales for many years. We really want to take the kids to Alaska in a couple years because of this. He has always loved dinosaurs too but is phasing out of this. My oldest son Garrett is the kind of kid who never really cares about stuff or doesn't have an opinion really but Connor knows what he wants and has to really have things the way he wants them. He is pretty stubborn in that way. I'm kind of glad for this because he will know what he wants and will set out to do it. He will go far with an attitude like that. I'm so grateful for him in my life. He definitely keeps it interesting.

For his birthday this year he wanted to have a Fear Factor birthday party. It is his favorite show and he is obsessed with it. He didn't want to do anything too scary or gross. Everything I suggested got shot down (maybe they were too young because Garrett thought it would be cool).

I made up these cute invitations:



and Chelton made him a Fear Factor cake and he was very specific about what he wanted. He had to have the words written on it in a specific way and he designed it himself. I think it turned out awesome and Chelton got off easy because this was a lot easier than cakes requested in the past.



We played a few games...We played a game where we would see who could balance the longest on a can of food on one foot. This was really hard for little kids. Connor won at 30 seconds but after that the kids could only get like 5 seconds. We also played a game where we could see who could suck the most M&Ms from a straw and into a cup in a minute. (Thanks to my sister-in-law Meridee for the idea of this game). I was going to get the Scooby Doo dog bone graham cracker treats that look like real dog treats and do a game with that but couldn't find them so had to come up with a game last minute. We also did an eating challenge. This was hilarious. I had the kids roll the dice to see how many "worms" they would eat. For instance Connor rolled a 5 and had to eat 5 worms. I let them choose their choice of pudding cup and then put 5 sour gummy worms into a pudding cup and they had to eat the sour gummy worms out of the pudding cup. Now that isn't that bad right? Just gummy worms and pudding...but you would think I was making them eat real worms. Some kids shoveled it down like nothing but like Garrett was dry heaving. Kylie made me take the worms out. They got a prize if they finished the challenge but I thought it was hilarious the way some of them responded. Don't think they are ready for the real Fear Factor.

The last game we played was their favorite. I boiled a BIG batch of spaghetti and put green food coloring in it and bought like 140 plastic spiders and mixed them in. They took turns and each had a minute to see how many spiders then could pull out of the spaghetti in that minute. It was slimy and gross and they loved that.



For their goody bags they took home I made a bag and put the Fear Factor logo on it and inside they had eyeball suckers, gummy body parts (like intestines, hearts, brains and lungs) and blood bag juice, eye gum and gummy worms. It turned out cute.

Here is a picture of Connor blowing out his candles



And we gave Connor his sparring gear on the day of his party. He was so excited. Once he reaches his orange belt he is required to have his own sparring gear so he keeps asking us for his own so he was very excited to get this. I also let him open up two pair of pants I got him but he wasn't as excited about that. We are giving him the rest of his present tonight as today is his real birthday. We got him a DS game to go with the new DSI we got him for Christmas and a Wii game and Garrett and Kylie got him one of those blow up jumper balls you sit on and bounce on that is Star Wars. Since we already did the cake thing he wanted to have popsicles tonight which I am glad since we are leaving for our trip tomorrow (yeah!!!)



Also I wanted to post a better picture of Kylie's dance recital. The one I took before was from my phone and it was really blurry. Here is a pic that is not so blurry and one of her up on stage doing her dance.





Only three more days and I will be relaxing on the Mariner of the Seas!!!!