Out of this World 5th Birthday

Five years ago, on June 1st, we welcomed our first born Jake Sullivan Webber into our family. He was in a hurry to meet us and arrived 3 weeks before his scheduled due date. As a baby he was curious about his surroundings and now five years later he still has that same personality trait. He is a sponge for information. He enjoys learning about a variety of things such as: underwater sea creatures, dinosaurs, trains, race cars and airplanes and outerspace.

Currently he is in space mode and to celebrate turing five we gave him an Out of This World Space birthday party. He invited ten of his school friends and neighbors to come over to his house for Jake's Space Camp. We started off the party dressing up the cadets like astronauts. We outfitted them with helmets and gave them each their own space cadet name tag. Next we were greeted by Spaceman Spiff (a.k.a. Daddy) who led the cadets through a series of physical exercises preparing them for space exploration. It was now time for our first game: Shoot the Moon. Each space cadet received a squeeze rocket and we practiced shooting to the moon (a hoola hoop). If you took your eye off the activity you may have found yourself being struck by a nerf rocket — they were flying all over the place. This activity was fun to watch and eventually all the kids turned on Spaceman Spiff and started aiming them his way. He ran around the yard trying to avoid the hits while being chased by the cadets.

Next we traveled to the moon and the cadets paired up with a partner for our next game. Each team shared a robot grabber and their mission was to pick up moon rocks scattered on the ground and collect them into their buckets. At then end the cadets counted to see how many they retrieved. Again, this game was a success and we played three rounds of it. Now that they were all tuckered out Spaceman Spiff led the kids into the house for story time. They sat down and listened to: There's No Place Like Space — a book about The Cat In The Hat taking two little kids on a space adventure.

After story time the cadets waited patiently at the table for cake. With the song a 2001: A Space Odyssey playing in the background mommy brought in a space shuttle cake with five rocket boosters shooting out the end. And for the finale to the party, Spaceman Spiff took the kids outside, and as their reward for passing Space Camp, each cadet had a chance to sit inside mission control (our playset) to launch a water rocket into the air. Jake was a happy boy surrounded by friends who love him. It was a really great day.