Steven's Birthday Party

This year, Steven's birthday fell on a Wednesday, so I could have had his birthday party either the weekend before or after. We decided to do it the weekend before because his cousin's birthday was the following weekend and they wanted to do her party the weekend after Steven's birthday.
This year, because Steven was turning 5, I decided to have Steven's first "friend" party. Because most of his friends are his cousins (love it!), and also because I do not really have the room to have both sides of the family over for parties, I just combined everything into one party. I also thought it would be easiest to just have the party at a park to accommodate all of the people who were going to be there. When I started to research renting a pavilion at a park, I found out that if you rent a Salt Lake County park, it's $75 for the whole day. Whaaattt? Too expensive for my taste. However, you can rent a Sandy City Park for only $25 for a half-day. Much better. Because my mother-in-law is a resident of Sandy, and because she's awesome, I was able to rent a Sandy City pavilion and we had the park there. It worked out pretty well in the end, because a lot of the guests live in Sandy.
I decided not to do a theme because with everything else that was going during the summer (having a baby in July, my brother's wedding in August), I didn't plan ahead very well and kind of threw things together fairly last-minute. I did, however, do 5 activities in honor of Steven turning 5, and we had goodie bags with some of Steven's favorite things in them.
I didn't get pictures of everything because I was pretty busy with the actual party stuff and trying to be a nice host. Oh, and then, my camera ran out of memory so I couldn't get any pictures at the end. *Note to self: have someone else be in charge of pictures, and make sure there's enough memory for pictures!*
*Side note: I took some inspiration for the party from my friend, Arika, and the party she threw for her daughter when she turned 5. It was a great party, and really well thought-out and put together.*
First I had the kids decorate goodie bags with their names and stickers and stuff. At Sofia's 3rd birthday party, we had a pinata, but we forgot to put names on them, so it got a little confusing. Then I had them start with the games.
The first game was "Duck, Duck, Zombie". My kids came home from the gym daycare and said that they had played it at the gym that day and they loved it. It's basically just "Duck, Duck, Goose", but I guess you're supposed to act like a zombie while you're chasing people. Everyone thought it was funny to call it that, but they had a good time.

My niece, Anna, being chased by Sofia. Pretty good action shot :)

Darren

Sofia is "it"

I think Arianna just caught Sofia

Anna running

Steven's "it"

Zamara just got picked by Lothair. Love this picture

Mandy

Mandy catching Darren

Steven running

After "Duck, duck, Zombie", we played "Pin the tail on the Red Bird". Angry Birds is also a favorite of Steven's. Notice the shirt he was wearing that day ;)

Anna

Lothair

Sofia

After that, I sent them on a little treasure hunt. (Sorry, no pictures.) At the end of the treasure hunt, they found a pinata. 

Adam

 Aiden

 Arianna

 Darren

 Janie

Sofia

 I love how intense Sofia gets while hitting a pinata...

All-in-all, I think the party was a success. I think the kids had fun, Steven did for sure, and he was excited by all the great gifts he got. The timing worked out great, too, because It started to rain (and not just drizzle, but rain hard) right as we were wrapping up. 

Steven as we're getting ready to leave. He got that birthday crown at pre-school, and wore it a lot during that week.

Playing with the awesome Iron Patriot (from Iron Man 3) toy that Grandma got him

Playing with the Mario figurines also from grandma