Birthday Party!

Warning: This might be a long post :)

So I posted about my birthday a week or so now and now it’s time to post all the pictures from my birthday party, which was almost two weeks ago (I’ve been slow on blogging lately, sorry). We ended up waiting a few extra days to have the party so that Jamie and Nicole would be able to come (since they were off vacationing in Europe for three weeks). And we decided to do it in the middle of the week, instead of on the weekend, so that Lindsay could come (Preston still wasn’t able to, since he was working) and Justin and Holly could come. Turns out it was a perfect night because almost everyone was able to come. We had the Woods, Fillmores, Johnsons (Jessie and Jacob), Lindsay (also Johnson, that’s why I had to clarify), Lauren, Miranda, and Ben.

First thing we did was eat! Since it was my golden birthday, I made a special effort to decorate the table in all gold, and serve all yellow and gold foods.

After everyone got enough to eat (and we continued to keep snacking on everything all night), we practiced some Minute-To-Win-It games! Grant and I have been watching that game show lately, since there’s hardly anything on TV in the summer, and we decided to try out some of the games for the party. It worked out great because most of the games on the show just use every-day house-hold items, so we didn’t have to go out and get a bunch of stuff. We practiced the games for a bit (Grant had set up something like 15 games all around our apartment), and then started the competition! We had two people go head-to-head in every game, and then the winner would advance on to the next round. We continued with that pattern until at last, we had our champion.

First Round:
First Game: A Bit Dicey. Justin and I battled this one out. We each held knives in our mouths and one-by-one balanced 6 dice on top of the flat surface of the knife. The first one to balance all 6 for 3 seconds wins! I won this one and continued on to the next round. Justin’s name got placed into the loser bowl :)

Second Game: Bite Me.Miranda and Jamie competed in this challenge. There were five paper bags, all trimmed down to different lengths, on the floor. Miranda and Jamie raced to pick up each bag without anything touching the ground except their feet. Miranda was the clear winner :)

Third Game: Bobblehead. In this game, Lauren and Nicole each had a pedometer attached to their heads and had to shake their heads back and forth for one minute. Whoever had the highest number on the pedometer after one minute, wins! Nicole came out the winner, but it was so close!

Fourth Game: On The Hook. Grant and Holly were the players in this game, and they had to use chop sticks with string attached to paperclips to go “fishing” for keys. I’m sad to say Holly got off to a rough start in this game, so Grant was able to beat her (but I was rooting for an all-female victory!).

Fifth Game: Nose Dive. Jessie and Ben played against each other in this challenge. In this game, the players have to transport cotton balls from one spot to the next using just their nose, which have dabs of Vaseline on them. Even though Ben cheated (grabbing more cotton balls at once than he was allowed to), Jessie still won! And so she moved on.

Sixth Game: Back Flip. Jamie and Jacob raced to finish this one. Jamie was chosen to compete in this one, even though he had already been kicked out, because we had an odd number of people playing, so we chose him at random to come back in. They each had the same number of pencils and they had to bounce their pencils into a cup, one at a time. The first to three pencils in their cup, wins. Jamie came out the winner of this game, and moved on.

Then the Second Round began:
Seventh Game:  Junk in the Trunk. Jessie and I faced off in this challenge, where we both had a tissue box that was full of ping pong balls tied to our waste. We then had to shimmy, jump, shake, and anything else we could think to do in order to get all the ping pong balls out of the tissue box. First to empty their box, wins! Jessie creamed me with her bunny hop!

Eighth Game: Hanky Panky. Grant and Miranda faced off in this challenge, for which they each had a new box of tissues that they had to completely empty with just one hand pulling out one tissue at a time. Grant creamed Miranda and moved on to the next round :)

Ninth Game: Puddle Jumper. In this game, Jamie and Nicole each had three cups full of water in front of them. They then had to blow a ping pong ball from the surface of each cup to the next one, and so on. The first to get their ping pong ball across each cup of water, wins. For this game, Jamie scraped ahead of Nicole and was the winner.

In the Third Round, it was just Grant, Jessie, and Jamie. The games began:
Tenth Game: Hang Over. Jessie and Grant raced each other on this one to hang three hangers on a string, but not just hang them, but balance the very tips on the string. This game was close because both of them were doing so well, but then all of the hangers would fall off. In the end though, Grant scraped the win.

Eleventh Game: How’s It Hangin’. For this game, Jessie and Jamie battled it out to see who would be facing Grant in the championship round. Jamie and Jessie both had a string tied around their waste that was tied to a banana. They then had to knock the banana into an orange, and push the orange across the room and over the finish line, by just swinging their hips to swing the string attached to the banana. It was pretty awesome to watch! Jamie came out the winner, and then prepared himself to face Grant.

Twelfth Game: Get Forked. Jamie and Grant faced off for the championship with this challenge. They both had to roll nickels along the same surface and try to get one stuck in between the prongs of the fork. It took them both a while, but Jamie finally did it, which made him the champion!

We also had other games stationed around. Some of the best were:

Caddystack. For this game, the challengers had to stack three golf balls on top of each other. However, during our practice no one was successful at this, so we decided to just make it a game for fun, and not in the actual competition.

High Roller. This was another game we didn’t actually use in the competition because it was so difficult, but we had fun practicing it nonetheless. The person attempting the challenge had one cup and five dice and had to vertically stack the dice by just using the cup, and no hands. First he or she would need to stack three, then four, then five.

After the championship (or maybe before, I’m kind of forgetting the time line now) we ate cake! It’s been a long time since I’ve had people sing me Happy Birthday and then blow out a cake, and for this birthday I’ve had it happen twice! The first, on my actual birthday, was when Justin and Holly and us were eating the treasure chest cake. And the second, was before cutting the cake I made for the party. Let me tell you, this is one tradition I don’t think I can do without! You feel so special being sung to by a room full of people in a candle-lit room! :) Anyways, we cut and ate the cake (which was supposed to be gold, but it’s hard to make gold food coloring! So it turned out kind of peachy…oh well).

After eating some more, we just hung out and talked until it was late and everyone had to leave (because after all, it was a school night)! Before everyone left though, I was able to convince them to take one last picture. The only problem was Lindsay had already left when this and almost every other picture was taken. So just imagine she’s in this one too :)

It was such a great night and I’m so grateful for my awesome husband and all my fun friends! Oh and this definitely goes without saying, but Daniel and Natalie: we missed you guys so much!! Can’t wait to be planning our kids birthday parties together in a couple of years, though, when we live in the same area again! (Because that’s the plan, right?!?) I really do have the best friends!