We started the party by having painted monster tracks leading guests from our driveway around the side of the house to the backyard with a welcome sign to the "fair". Once inside the kiddies were lead to the "Monster Playground" to play in the sandbox, teeter-toter, or play structure until all of the guests arrived and we were ready to start the games. Then for the next 40 minutes or so we had 5 stations that the kids could visit that we tried to make feel as if they were at a fair. There was "Feed the Monster" (bean bag toss), "Pin the eye on the Mike" (pin the tail on the donkey), "Monster Coloring" (they could color a monster picture and/or decorate their goodie bag as a monster puppet), "Monster Photos" (they could stick their heads through one of four holes with a monster body and get their picture taken), and "Monster Food" (snack station). Some of the monster snacks included "Monster Fingers" (carrot sticks with almonds stuck on the ends with cream cheese for fingernails), "Monster Hands" (plastic gloves filled popcorn and a gumdrop in each finger), "Monster Teeth" (apple slices cut into triangles), "Monster Toes" (sugar cookies in the shape of toes with a peanut M&M for a toenail), and "Monster Munch" (a snack mix).
Then we had a pinata for the kids to hit. Lining up 20+ 4 year-olds to thrash a pinata was a new and exciting experience for me. We hung it from a tree in the back corner of our yard where we normally have a swing. It was fun to see the kids enjoy hitting the pinata, which Eve made to look like Mike from Monsters Inc. She did a great job making it with Haylee and Cameron. We ended the festivies with a Monster Face cake that Eve made, complete with green frosting, gummy worm hair and a fruit roll-up tongue.
Apart from a healthy dose of last minute stress as we scrambled to finish decorating as guest were arriving, the day couldn't have turned out any better. Eve and I have spent most of our free time for the past 3 weeks preparing for this as we made the cardboard cut-outs for the games and other decorations (including monster heads made from milk jugs), made the pinata, and did a bunch of yardwork to clean up, trim, and lay woodchips for our yard. It was our first time putting on a party of that magnitude and we had a lot of fun doing it. Of course, our house is now a complete mess and we are dead tired, but the guests had a really fun time and seemed impress with the effort we put into it. And we feel really blessed that we were able to even follow through with having the party, as we were worried about the weather at one point (but it turned out to be perfect weather) and Cameron had been sick all week up until just yesterday.
I'll have more photos to post once I get them from our photographer (I asked one of my best friends from work who does photography as a hobby to come and be in charge of the pictures).
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