Back to School Bash

Our cute kiddos!

We had a great back to school party with our homeschool friends and cousins. We made a pinata shaped like a pencil filled with candy and school supplies like pencils and erasers. There were a lot of kids there, so we divided into stations--an about me station and a puppet station. At the about me station, we made special "About Me" pages for each child with a picture we took that day, their handprint (or in Gabe's case his footprints), and age, height, and weight. They turned out so cute! We have ours taped on our kitchen wall for now!

At the puppet station, the kids made paper sack puppets for the Three Little Pigs story for the younger kids, and the older kids made up their own story which was: "The Father Troll and the Four Princesses" (this group consisted of one boy and four girls if you can't tell). The kids presented their puppet shows at the end of the party before we broke open the pinata. The puppet shows were great! Zach was the big bad wolf and he did a great job saying "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!" The princesses were great in their story with the story line coming to a point where the princesses had to climb over a wall, one of the girls yelled out "But I can't climb over that wall--I'm wearing high heels!"

"Big Bad Zach"

We had a great time, and look forward to our next party--Halloween!!

Some people thought the party was more fun than others . . .

The highlight was of course the pinata! Jim was the mastermind behind this project and it took us about a week to get it all done. The kids helped the first night with the paper mache, but the boys didn't really enjoy getting their hands dirty! Grandma Goostrey was here that week and helped us keep adding layers. Jim and I ended up finishing the pinata the night before and after it got to be really late, we gave up on the puffy pinata look where you take tissue paper squares and twist it around paper, dip in glue, and put on the pinata, and went for the lets just get this done, the kids don't care option. They were so excited to see it when they woke up the next morning! The pinata worked out just perfect because everyone got a chance to hit it once before it broke open for the oldest child! The kids now want a pinata at every party and Emily is already talking about one for her birthday! We're thinking they are probably easier to just buy!!

After the party, Amy, Drew, and kids stayed to frost the cookies that we didn't get to frost during the party since we ran out of time. As you can tell, they had a great time. I think Daniel had the most fun . . .