camp #5

A rehash of Sawyer's birthday party, long overdue.
Once again, blaming it on the computer sitch here at home... I took pics with my big camera, missing card reader for that, our desktop has yet to be set up, and screen time for me on Ryan's work laptop is hard to come by. So here we are, Wednesday already.

But on to the party!

















Sawyer ordered up a Camping Party, oh about eight months ago. Seriously, he's been planning this this long. Remembering SJ's "not-really-sleepover" party from the previous year, he wanted the same thing; he wanted it at night, he wanted sleeping bags and he wanted a tent. I was all for it, and in fact found the owl and critter decorations that set off our animal and color scheme in the clearanced Easter candy last year!! I grabbed a few packages of these chocolates as well as some animal gummy candies for less than fifty cents each! Lucky for me wrapped chocolate lasts like forever, right?!!
So for the cake, I know there are some fabulous ideas out there for camping/tent/outdoorsy cakes, but I went the easy route (read: no fondant) and just frosted with chocolate frosting and plugged the cute outdoorsy animals right around the sides...




And I think it turned out pretty darn cute!





























Other treats/foodstuffs:




Our makeshift S'mores. We opted out of a real campfire (more on that later) and S'mores, so this was my token S'more on a stick idea... just a chocolate covered marshmallow on a pretzel stick. It was yummy!















And I made these Owl S'mores (idea from here) which also got packaged up to go in the goodie bags.














Here's the whole spread of our camping "dinner"...
(okay, for some reason can't' find this picture right now??)

So originally plans for this party included our giant tent in the backyard and a campfire and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows and playing games and telling stories outside... you know, like a mini camping trip (minus the sleeping over!). I figured, early November, shouldn't be too awfully cold to be outside... heck, we camp for real in October, surely it'll be fine for five year olds out in the backyard for a couple of hours, no worries.
The week leading up to the party... 70 degree days.
This week... 70 degree days (I think it's supposed to actually be 78 today!).
The weekend in between? When we have a camping party?? Planned for mostly after dark???
High of 45, low in the 20's.
Hahahahahahah. Ha.
It wasn't very funny.
I hemmed and hawed about still doing all our outdoors stuff... I mean, kids don't care, right? But I cared, and it was cold.
So we skipped the tent and the firepit and instead we played a few games running around outside before the sun disappeared
[games: we played Mosquito Tag and had a bug/snake/frog hunt around the yard and went on an imaginary hike... jumping over creeks, ducking branches, tiptoeing past sleeping bears, etc.]
and then moved the party inside, turned on the gas fireplace and spread out or sleeping bags on the family room floor.
(sorry, dark pics, we were operating by fire and flashlight!)











































I read aloud some camping books from the library and we did some shadow stories on the wall with our flashlights...


























And of course we sang and had birthday cake...





















































Even though things didn't go exactly as planned (in more ways than one!), I think everyone had fun... I know Sawyer did!

Here's some of what our campers were sent home with:














I found little $1 canvas knapsacks and stamped names on them and filled them with fruit leather, carabiners, camping stickers, glow in the dark silly bands, glowsticks, trailmix and everyone took home their flashlights and any bugs/frogs/snake critters they collected in the games we played outside.

Our new favorite trailmix, in case you're hitting the trail (or just a regular old snacktime) any time soon... the mix was a hit with the kids; Quaker Oatmeal Squares, Multigrain Cheerios, pretzel sticks, Goldfish, banana chips, chocolate covered raisins, and mini M&M's.