THE HAYS FAMILY: Bishop is FIVE

Goodness gracious, this can NOT be possible. My baby boy is five. He is such a joy. I can't imagine life without him. He is so smart and creative and he loves his brother (even though he can pester him to death), loves animals, loves to make people laugh, and has the most precious heart I know. He is growing up on me and it breaks my heart but somehow makes it grow even bigger at the same time. And, although I can't lie and say it's always been easy, it has always been and always will be 100% worth it. Although it is a little sad that all the little milestones are all over and soon he will begin "real" school, I look forward to every minute with this little strong-willed, curly headed boy who stole my heart and made me a momma 5 years ago.

So, Bishop can never decide on a party. For about the past 10 months, he wanted a shark party. So, I planned a shark party in my head. Cute and easy. Then he decided, no, he wanted a Lego party. I still had plenty of time, so, Lego party it was. I searched Pinterest and found some seriously cute stuff. Also, lots of simple ideas. I had it all planned out…again. So THEN he decided, no, he wanted a Wild Kratt's party. Um, who has a Wild Kratt's party? Do other kids even know what that is? In case you don't, it is a PBS show about 2 guys who learn about animals and use "creature powers" to figure things out. He loves it and watches it almost daily…unless he gets in trouble :) I don't mind the show because he learns a lot about animals. He tells me lots of things that I didn't know. So, I started looking around and there were a few ideas here and there but not a whole lot. BUT, it's what he wanted, so we went for it. Bishop even came up with one or two games on his own. We made it work and to be honest, it was one of his more fun parties. The number one thing I saw on the parties I found was creature suits and creature disks. So, that was the big project. I made all of the suits and Leon made the disks. It did take a little time, but it wasn't bad at all. I think cutting all those circles was the worst part! The rest was fairly simple. This party may have been less work than his others. Or maybe I just care less about minor things. Either way, I wasn't stressed and I think he had a blast.

First up when the kids arrived was games. They all got creature suits and collected 6 creature power discs throughout the party. Bishop and I came up with the games (with the help of Pinterest of course) and Leon was in charge of carrying things out. I love that about him. I really don't do well with that and he is so good at it. And, he's really good at the party set up. I was inside doing cake stuff that morning and when I went outside it looked like we were prepared for the summer Olympics :) Surprisingly, they all listened to him and answered his questions. Before each game, he had a fact sheet (laminated of course…because he is funny like that) about each animal and then a game to go along with it. They were all simple and inexpensive games and the kids really had fun. I know Bishop did anyway.

The first game was Polar Bear power. The kids had to run across the "ice" to get to the seal at the end without falling. Kids really love simple games and it was so fun to watch them.

Next was Kangaroo Power and then Basilisk Lizard Power (which I have no pictures of). Leon measured how far a kangaroo can jump in one hop (30ft) and the kids had to see how many hops it took them. To ensure they were hopping like a kangaroo, they held a balloon between their legs. Kangaroos can jump a REALLY long way! Next was the Basilisk lizard "race". This was Bishop's idea. The lizard can run a short distance ON TOP of the water. So, Leon measured that out and they crawled like a lizard until they got to the "water", then they ran on the water and then had to crawl again. It is a pretty cool creature that I didn't know existed until Bishop told me about it one night. I had to Google it, and sure enough, he was right!

Then we had a Bat Power game where the kids had a "bug hunt". They learned about echolocation and that bats eat bugs so we had some dollar store bugs hidden and they all found as many as they could. They were part of their favors too.

Then they all got cheetah tails and raced around collecting as many tails as they could, pretending to be as fast as cheetahs. Bishop stopped in the middle of it and I thought something was wrong, but no, he just saw a frog and had to catch it. He carried that frog around in his favor bag for the rest of the party!

The final game was Large Mouth Bass Power. We had some volunteer fisherman fish for these large mouth bass, who eat smaller fish (or Swedish fish, whatever) This was hilarious! They all had a fun time catching their small fish and by this time they were all tired and hungry!