Rue is for Remembrance

Today would have been my grandfather's 88th birthday, had he lived. It's also the 67th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On that day, my grandfather turned 21--not a good time to be 21, I might add--and shortly thereafter enlisted in the U.S. Marines.

But despite the somewhat somber remembrances with which we open this blog, our overall interest here is in preserving some happier memories: yesterday, we poached Jake's real birthday to celebrate Andrew's birthday (we're hoping this way to give him some separation between his birthday and Christmas).

Although the planning and execution of the party took a lot of time and effort, I'm rather pleased with how things turned out. Since one of Andrew's abiding loves has been animals, we decided to go with an animal safari theme. I picked up cheap plastic pith helmets at the local party store, and between the dollar store and Michael's dollar section, I managed to put together some safari bags with coloring books, fruit snacks, magnifying glasses, little books for field journals, and some animal stickers. Dan and I also put together a pretend safari--we scattered all of Andrew's stuffed animals (and some of my mom's) throughout the upstairs and added a tent and tunnels, along with a mini trampoline (snake pit), slide (mountains) and blanket (swamp). To help the kids follow the safari, I posted signs with arrows and I also put together a map. On the flip side of the map was a check-list of animals (with pictures) that they were likely to see on the safari.

It took us probably an hour to actually put the safari together--it took all of ten minutes for the kids to go through our mini obstacle course and identify the animals.

Here are our little explorers, outfitted and ready to depart base camp.

First, we had them push through the "jungle vines" to climb the "cliffs of insanity" (Dan's choice--I'm sure I don't have to tell you the reference).

A couple of our explorers emerging from the caves.


After getting out of the caves, we stopped in the "savana" portion of our safari to take stock and identify the animals (for me, that meant trying to keep Andrew from actually collecting the animals).
Although Brielle wasn't officially part of the safari, she still enjoyed going through some of the obstacle course. (Like our "alpine slide" here).


My friend Karin's youngest, Nolan, preparing to embark across the Okey-Dokey Swamp. (At one point, there were actually some large bugs in the swamp, but I think Andrew absconded with them.)
Winding down the safari.

Once we arrived back at base camp, the kids used their stickers to decorate their field journals and "record" the animals they'd seen.


I think the universal favorite item in the safari packs I put together was the $.30 magnifying glasses I found. Here, our exhibit of "Monkey see, Monkey do."


Evelyn slept through the first half of the party (thankfully!) but she woke up just in time for lunch. Dan (who was conspicuously absent from these pictures b/c he spent the time in the kitchen) was our chef, and he made Andrew's favorite: pasta and meatballs. I think most of the kids enjoyed their lunch (Jacob ate an impressive four meatballs--possibly to make up for Joshua not eating any), so score one for us.


After lunch, we had cupcakes. But the camera decided to malfunction at that point, so you'll have to use your imagination. The cupcakes were actually about as easy as they could be. I bought a bunch of miniature plastic animals, colored the cupcake frosting bright green (initially I was going to use my Wilton grass tip, but the frosting was too soft and I realized it would take way too long, so I just covered the cupcakes. I guess it worked, because Jacob's excited exclamation upon seeing the cupcakes was, "Look! The cupcakes are covered with grass!"), and put an animal on each cupcake. The kids all liked the animals, and if they all seemed to like the frosting more than the cupcake, at least the adults actually appreciated my cream-cheese filled chocolate cupcakes.

Andrew precipitated the present-opening by, well, opening a present before we'd actually gathered everyone together. He seems pretty thrilled by all his presents: he's already played with all of them: my mom gave him a set of games (Candyland, Hi-ho Cherry-o, Chutes and Ladders, and Memory), and this morning while I slept in, Andrew insisted on playing every single one of them with his dad. As penance, I had to play a long-ish game of Hi-ho Cherry-o with Andrew later.

Although I'm not in a hurry to put on a party like this again, I was glad that everyone (with the possible exception of my dad, who's peaceful domain was invaded by squealing children) seemed to enjoy themselves. And now, I'm being summoned by my daughter, so I'll close!