birthday party for our birthday boy

Jackson's 6th birthday is tomorrow so we had his friends birthday party on Saturday. He invited 24 of his closest friends and almost all were able to come. We were SO glad that the weather held up so that we could have his party outside. He wanted to have a "nerf party." After I put some thought into what that would entail for 6 year olds, I came up with this party! I made the birthday banner above which I thought turned out so cute. I love the bright colors and will use this for each child's birthday). I put a sign on the front door telling all of the kids to go through the gate...

First, the kids just ran around and played tag until everyone arrived. A few of the kids had known each other from years past at Challenger so they were all happy to see each other again. Then other kids were neighbor friends so they enjoyed being together as well.

We started with a round of Dodgeball. Brian was in charge of this game. All of the Challenger friends knew what Dodgeball was, but most of the neighbor kids had no idea. So it took a couple of tries for everyone to "get it" but the kids had so much fun, I think they played 6 games of it.

Then they had target practice. I'm so bummed that i didn't get a picture of the awesome targets that Brian made but there were 2 big ones on the inside of the sliding glass doors. Then the kids used these dart guns to try and get the bullseye. It was really fun and cute. Carli was inside with my parents and at one point had crawled over and started ripping the targets down! Bless her heart! ;)

Then the pinata. I gave each child their goody bag so that when the pinata broke, they had it in their hands, so they could collect all of the candy they could and put it in their bags. That was a good idea. (I learned a lot from Logan's party a couple of months before!)

Collecting all the candy...

Presents at Logan's party was total mayhem. So this time, I had all of the kids sit on the outside of the cement circle and Jackson in the middle. Then he opened each present 1 by 1. His reactions were GREAT. Last year, he told everyone, "this isn't what I wanted!" So, I was glad for a more grown up response to everything. He got invited to a friends house after the party but he didn't want to anywhere! He wanted to stay home and play with everything. His friends were so generous, he got some really great gifts!

After this, there were cupcakes that my parents picked up with sports rings on them. I forgot to get a picture of those as well! ;) There was so much going on, it was hard to keep track of everything! But he had a great time and 1 1/2 hours was the PERFECT amount of time for a birthday party. I think everyone had a great time!