Aspen's Hawaiian Luau Party

Aspen's Birthday was so much fun to plan, execute and remember. Ahhh how I love when a party goes well. She wanted to have a Hawaiian Luau. Hmmm, I thought, a Hawaiian Luau in December. Sounds interesting. Well, we plastered the house with floral garland, hung flowers outside amidst the bitter cold wind, hung colorful streamers and decked out Aspen in a grass skirt and lei. Then, we gave each child a lei when they got there. We had live Hawaiian radio playing in the background. I actually felt warm in my bright pink capris and flip-flops.

Her cake was a flower and we served it with rainbow sherbet...perfect colors for a luau. The hawaiian pineapple mango juice was served with little umbrellas. It was so cute!



One of my favorite games was the limbo. It was hilarious watching some of the kids work so hard to keep their back arched while others just approached the bar and ducked under. What a riot.


Here's my favorite game of all. Keep in mind, we had 18 kids for the party. Thinking it was Christmastime and a lot of people probably wouldn't come, I let Aspen invite 16 people to her party. All but 1 came!! Add my three kids and you've got 18 kids! It was crazy. At one point, the kids were all bouncing off the walls (right after cake and ice cream, of course). Enoch announced the next game: The rock game. He talked it up to be such a fun game. Here's how you play. Everybody tries to act like a rock. Whoever looks and acts most like a rock wins! It's that simple. All the kids did a terrific job. It was so hard to pick a winner! Except, of course, for Enoch who saved the day and calmed the crowd. They played rock for a good 5 minutes before we felt guilty and decided we should go on with the party :)
On top of all that, Enoch painted hawaiian pictures on each of the kids' cheeks. And we made little sand art jars that each child got to take home. They were so cute and the kids had so much fun.

But, now for the funniest part of all. A woman from church gave me the idea to send each of the kids home with a goldfish. Perfect!! Well, after getting rejected by one pet shop who wouldn't sell goldfish for birthday parties due to animal cruelty acts, etc., Enoch finally found a store that would send him home 25 goldfish to 18 crazy kids. We had them swimming as the centerpiece during cake time. Which worked until one by one they went belly up! The kids were so worried about the fish. One by one we removed the dead ones until we had just enough to still send home with the kids. Luckily, they had already gone through the grieving stage with us so as they left with their fish, we heard some exclaim, "This fish will probably die soon so we have to have as much fun with it as we can right now!". One kid actually came back to the kitchen because his fish died by the time he got to the door. It was so sad, but so hilarious at the same time. Here we are throwing a big hawaiian luau and sending home 5 and 6 year olds with dead fish and a can of sand as their goody bag!! WOW!! We laughed 'til it hurt over that one. I guess I'm starting to see why Pet Shop #1 called it an "animal cruelty act" to send goldfish to birthday parties. Oops!