Rewind to Best Birthday Party Ever

Based on the success of this year's birthday party for the Dude, we're going to plan all future parties two days before it's go time.  We had this dreamy museum party planned for Dude and a slew of his friends and two days before the party realized that our museum membership, a generous gift from Tim's employer, was not quite at the gift level that it used to be.  The cost of said party was not in the cards, so we racked our brains for a brilliant Plan B.

Enter, STAR WARS WHO DUNNIT SCAVENGER HUNT.  We clumsily made this up as we went, but it worked like a charm.  The kids were assigned a character and I wrote a script for a mystery they needed to solve.  WHO FROZE Luke Skywalker (Dude) to stay 8 forever????  We took pictures of the clue location spots and cut them into puzzles.  As they assembled the puzzles, each one pointed to the next clue location. By the end, they knew who the culprit was - Princess Leah.  A shocker, I know.  She just didn't want her brother to get older.  The motives were really quite pure.  We ended with some air hockey and a ridiculous amount of light saber fighting and tackling.  Gotta love a basement you can care less about.

The culprits...

This cake has a sweet little story behind it.  We ordered this at King Soopers.  As Dude asked the nice woman to add "swirls" around the picture, she said, "Oh! I have just the thing" and hauled out a box of candy "squirrels." I cracked up at the irony that they actually carry candied squirrels, she cracked up at the misunderstanding and Rylan just showed genuine concern that she did NOT place squirrels on his robot cake. Made my day.

 The first puzzle piece was handed to each team of two.

 

 Our old neighborhood little library - location #1

 Peabody (our school) playground - location #3 (the McCabe house was #2)

 Starbucks - Location #4

 The baristas had custom made steamer cups ready for the party goers.  They were good sports with my fanaticism.  

 Final location was Crazy 8 - they were NOT troopers.

 Birthday morning pancakes from our very best breakfast chef.  

 Poor kid.  His mom loves a good (or even mediocre book), so he's gifted with my passion.  Luckily he adores the written word as much as I do.

    His big gift, combo from grandparents and us...VEX IQ.  The ultimate in robotics.  He's already mastered it.  So there's that.