a BEARy birthday party!

For the first time in their lives, Jonah and Micah had a friends party to celebrate their birthday! We chose a BEAR theme--because they collect teddy bears and I thought it would be easy and cheap and simply fun!

I made some Bear invitations out of some brown cardstock paper from my scrapbook supply. I cut an oval for each body, a large circle for the head, and smaller circles for the ears and arms and legs, and then I glued them all together. On the front, I wrote "you're invited to a BEARY Birthday Party!" and on the backside I wrote all the details of the party. The boys helped me by coloring faces on the bears, addressing the envelopes, and delivering them:
I told Jonah and Micah that they were allowed to invite 3 friends each. I didn't want children to have to bring two gifts for the boys, so I thought it would be easier for the guests that way--to bring just one gift for the twin that invited them. For Jonah, choosing what friends to invite was the hardest part of his whole birthday. He wanted to invite more like 10 kids rather than just 3. I kept the numbers low, because even when they each invited 3--that meant the total number of kids would be 8, and I didn't want to have a chaotic party. Finally, they both came up with their list of friends to invite:
The only real expense I had for the birthday party, other than cake and frosting and ice cream, was the goody sacks and the treats to fill them. I bought Teddy Grahams and Gummy Bears and bought some snack bags to divvy out the bulk treats for each child. And the boys chose dum-dum suckers, starburst gummy snack packs, hostess cupcakes, and bouncy balls as bag fillers. I also got Swirly Gummy Bears as prizes for the birthday party games.
We had the birthday party at our house, and the boys helped me decorate prior to the party with their collection of teddy bears. I started their collection of bears 7 years ago right after they were born. During their 3-week stay at Primary Childrens Hospital in SLC, they were given different kinds of teddy bears as gifts from several organizations. Over the years, their collection has grown and grown--they have lots of bears now! They put the smaller bears on all kinds of surfaces in the living room, the family room, and the kitchen, like this:
They were so happy all morning the day of their party! They could not contain their excitement, and were counting down the hours and minutes! They got dressed in some of their new outfits they'd received for their birthday, and since Kanyon had an outfit to match, he thought he was all ready for the party too!!!
For their birthday cake, I made bears out of round-cake pans and cupcakes and mini-cupcakes using rainbow chip birthday cake batter. Jonah wanted chocolate frosting, and Micah wanted cream cheese frosting. I'm no good at decorating birthday cakes, but I thought these turned out alright, and the boys were so happy with them (and that's all that matters, right?!):
Right before the party, Josh took Ammon to a friends' party in town and he took Kanyon golfing. We felt that it would be better for the twins to have a party just for them, without having the other brothers at home. While guests were arriving, I read to the kids some bear books that the boys had previously picked out. I read to the twins every night, and they love it! They like picking out books for me to read, so I wanted to incorporate that into their party.

Our first game was "Musical Bears". It's similar to Musical Chairs: The children walked around in a circle while I played some teddy bear music, and each time I paused the song, the children had to pick up a bear off the floor. Whoever didn't grab a bear was out for the round, until we finally had a winner. We played that game four times, and had four different winners.
Our second game was the "Teddy Bear Toss". I told each child to pick a small teddy bear from those that were decorating the house, and we took a bear blanket and all the bears outside. Each child grabbed part of the blanket, put their chosen bear in the center, and raised the blanket up and down and sent the bears flying through the air. Whoever's bear landed the furthest was the winner. We played that game four times, with four different winners. They had so much fun doing that!!

Our next activity was decorating the goody bags. I had just purchased some brown paper bags, and thought it would be fun if they made bear puppets with them. I had some cardstock on hand, and had previously drawn circles and an oval for them to color and cut out and glue onto the bags. It was so neat to see their individual craftiness! They all liked coloring and chatting while decorating their bear puppet bags!

They used markers and stickers and pom-poms to decorate their bear puppets, and I thought they all turned out so cute!
After their bear puppet/goody bags were done, we played "Goin' on a Bear Hunt". I'd hidden large bears all over the house and outside. Each bear had a clue attached that led them to the next location of a bear with a clue. This one was hidden in the entertainment center:
At the end of the bear hunt was a picnic basket full of the goody bag treats. They got their bear puppet bags and filled them up with the goodies that were inside the basket!

After the activities were done, we sang happy birthday to Jonah and Micah, they blew out their candles on their cakes, and the kids ate cake and ice cream and juice!

Then Jonah and Micah opened the gifts that their friends had brought, and I took all the children home. It was such a fun party! The boys loved celebrating with their friends and they were so happy that their birthday party turned out so great!!! And I felt relieved that it had, too!