The Party He Won't Forget (I hope)

It's a Pokemon party!

My Andrew turned seven last month and for some odd reason, I felt that this was the year that he needed a way cool birthday party (I seem to recall feeling all nostalgic when Rachel turned seven too).

So, what's a Pokemon party, I hear you asking?

Pokemon are little Japanese creations - "pocket monsters" - and the show revolves around some kids who catch them all and train the little critters to battle.  Please don't ask me to explain much more than that because I honestly just don't get it (probably in the same way my parents didn't understand the Smurfs).  Anyhoo, the rage has been to collect and trade Pokemon cards (think baseball cards, only Japanese animation money makers), so I made the birthday invitations look like a Pokemon card (thank you Rachel for finding me the website to do this nonsense). 

Then I went and ordered 83 little creatures off of eBay, so that the kids could "catch them all" at the party.  Look at these tiny things and you really can't argue that they're kind of cute.  That yellow one in the center?  He's called a Pikachu and he is actually quite adorable.  Unfortunately, my order didn't make it from Hong Kong in time for the party, so the night before, Kevin and I went barging into a local seller's house to fill our immediate Poke-needs (the seller was overly gracious and probably thought we were somewhat crazy, but hey.).


And how do you catch these little creatures?  Well, with a Pokeball, of course.

I was forced to make my own Pokeballs by painting plastic balls and sadly, they didn't hold up in the clutches of 17 kiddos.  Live and learn...next time, I'll plan better...wait, next time?  Ha! 


So 17 kids invaded my home and about that time, I turned the festivities over to Rachel and Kathryn, who dressed up like the villans on the show, Team Rocket, who always try to steal other people's Pokemon instead of just catching their own like everybody else has to do - stinkin' cheaters.

And these two girls did a fabulous job of running the show.  First they ran over to the park near our house and hid all those itsy bitsy Pokemon and then came back to gather the kids.

They herded them over to the park, where the kids searched high and low for inanimate objects about an inch tall....it wasn't a small park either.  And if a kid found a Pokemon, he had to make sure that Team Rocket didn't catch them and steal their Pokemon.  I think Rachel and Kathryn enjoyed this part a little too much.

But they made sure that every kid has at least 2 to take home with them - by sitting those kids down and stealing from the ones with a lot and giving to the ones with none or one.  Very Robin Hood.

And although this had nothing to do with Pokemon, the trampoline was a huge hit, especially when we threw in balloons for them to jump on and pop.

More or less, the whole party was chaotic and a bit on the loony side.  But one of the kids has already asked me if we can do it again next year for Andy's birthday.  I'll take that as a compliment, but I don't think Andy's getting another extravagant party for quite some time.