Birthday Ideas....Help

if anyone has any suggestions of games and stuff that i can put together i would be ever so grateful. it is my son's twelfth birthday on saturday, and we are having about 26 kids over to celebrate it. also, it is a going away party as we are moving a few days before school is finished for him and so he's going to miss the whole social thing that happens the last day.
the problem is that we are really short of space inside, and really really short of money.
so far i have decided to do it in the late evening, around eight oclock or so, outside (that way i dont have to feed them dinner, only snacks). i have tons of rope lights and im going to run them around the fence in my yard, and set up some music out there. i also have a chimminea for warmth :cold:. but im struggling for ideas for games and such to keep the kids focused and out of mischief :brow:. as they are a bunch of tweens, i can just see them standing around the fence with punch cups saying "this is Sooooo lame" and that would really suck. :confused:
i thought about doing a thing where you blindfold all the boys and have a girl pick one to dance and see if the boy can guess who he was dancing with. i also wanted to have some contests to give away little prizes...like the craziest dance, or something. :confused:
i am also having a guestbook by the door set up with a camera, so my son can have his pic taken with each of his friends, then i will send everyone a copy once we are moved. of course, there will also be a group pic.

anyhow, what im looking for are some more ideas on how to keep these little :alien:'s engaged and out of trouble. or some ideas for cool snacks or games or decorations or whatever. any help right now would be appreciated!
:idea:

just moving it back to the top!!!
please help me out here... :confused:
*wishes for a begging on knees emoticon*

well... i'm not into parties and tahnkfully not into kids, but at a lesson we did a funny game...don't laugh, it was a language lesson and the game was childish but was meant to let us develop our languages skills...
It's a game where the gamekeeper asks 'will you go to the party' and the others have to answer without saying YES, NO, BLACK, WHITE...cos the questions will go on like 'are you going to wear the white dress' and so on... Uh but maybe it's not great for that many kids...
*thinking* at some parties as a kid we played homemade versions of things like the wheel of fortune (hope i'm talking of the right thing), or maybe you can do the millionaire thingy now... (without money lol...just offer some extra cake ;))
Oh I thought of a game that can be done in groups, but I dont remember it properly...Oh it started like 1 team (we usually did boys vs girls) sings 'there's a hole in the bucket' and the other team has to answer (like 'then fix it') and they keep answering to each other till one team can't think of a mart reply... It's meant to seem like a couple quarrelling ;) But it's sung on a silly rhtym (the sentence is repeated twice so the other team has time to think) which i cant' obviously explain. Oh there's another version of it starting with 'the cow is on the roof' :P

Well not too helpful i guess but maybe if you change something you can make yout own games...getting inspiration from this ;)

:( can't think right this moment...moving it back to the top.

No time now, in very big hurry, I'll answer later.

By the time I was twelve I had stopped having big parties, so I don't know any games for kids that age. I just had my two best friends over for pizza, movies and a sleepover. But I've always liked making special cakes. For my 9th b-day I had a pool party and made a sheet cake with some cut out in the middle that I filled with blue jello, so it looked like a pool.

For my 11th b-day I put two sheet cakes together and left it just plain white frosting. Then when my friends got to the party we put out bowls of candy and sprinkles and stuff, and we all decorated the cake together. I made a kind of trendy-looking Twister game too, out of clear plastic with big blue/purple/green/pink/yellow symbols on it, like flowers and smiley-faces and yin-yangs.

But I guess those aren't really the sort of thing 26 kids can do. :( Hmm... I like what you've come up with already. Um...something that you can easily make a lot of, for snacks, is fruit pizza. You put cookie dough in the bottom of a pizza pan (or cookie sheet, for a square one), bake it, chill it, spread vanilla pudding on it, and cover it with sliced fruit. It's cheap and quick to do, so you can make a bunch of them. You could also just make big cookies and have them decorate them themselves, with frosting and sprinkles and things. You could make a game of it; have them decorate them for each other, and then have everyone take turns guessing which cookie is theirs -- when they guess right, they get to take it. Like, "oh, that one has a black and red BMX on it, it must be mine." Like a Secret Santa...just make sure everyone gets one, and they don't all get made for the Pretty Little Red-haired Girl. :D

I just thought of a big group game that'll keep 'em quiet. :p We did it all the time in elementary school when they wanted us to settle down .lol. Like 4 or 5 kids line up in front, and everyone else puts their heads down and sticks their thumb up in the air. Then the kids standing up tiptoe around and each taps one person's thumb. The person then puts their thumb down, and the kids go back to the front and line up as they were. Then the kids are told to open their eyes and the ones who got tapped have to guess which kid tapped their thumb. If they guess right, they get to switch places with the kid and be a tapper the next time around. Obviously it needs some updating for 12 year olds to make it cooler, but you get the idea.

I'll let you know if I think of anything else.

I say you teach 'em to shoot craps. It's educational (math skills) and it's fun. Also it's taboo, so they'll pay attention.

"hundred dollars on a hard six"

"come on"

Yeah gambling is good for the youngsters, also teach them how to deal with the cops, those breathalizer tests are tricky, oh and lock picking is fun too, and lets not forget how to hotwire cars.

Think waterballoons that look like granades, you can get them at any toy store.

Yeah, that'll at least prepare them for a government sanctioned form of crime.
*Oops! ruler on the hand*

ouch, that ruler hurts

simon, those are all useful skills

Not sure you have an eqiuvalent of a game called "the king sends someone to fight" or no other idea how to translate it better. Rules: 2 teams, you line them up holding hands and facing each other, you can chose the distance. Each team has to have a 'king'. The king says 'the king sends his best warrior ... to fight for him' (or you can make it queen and hers etc ;)). The named 'warrior' lets go of the other kids' hands and runs against the other line of kids, aming to break their hold of hands. If s/he succeds, the 'king' of the team who lost picks one of the kids whose hold was broken and they return to the winning team. If the warrior fails to break the hold, s/he's staying with the opponent's team. They take turns for as long as they're interested or until just the king of one team's left. The king is a part of the line of the hand-holding warriors ;) but can't be taken.
Might remember more later :).

We have a game like that, called "Red Rover." Instead of a king and a warrior, the team "captain" says, "Red Rover, Red Rover, send ___ right over." And that person runs and tries to break the line. I like your version much better. It makes more sense. I never understood what a Red Rover was, or why the captain wanted someone to come. :confused:

Thanks Em, I'm glad it was comprehend-able lol, brain dead after the exams. I guess this game's well known and it's just the rules that make it a bit different each time you play it, I bet if someone who lives next door to me would come and say 'you *** ;), you're saying it all wrong, it's supposed to be like this: blahblah'

**edit** braind being dead was kinda an excuse for me being too lazy to find out the proper word to use :blush:

okay: the party is tomorrow, and the biggest problem now seems to be getting the darn invitees to rsvp. we only have about ten kids confirmed. they all say "yeah, i'll be there" but i have yet to hear from parents. my son is currently on the phone trying to get confirmations from parents. i think if that doesnt happen, im going to rent movies and get mcdonalds. way less work that way. this is one of those things that people neglect to mention when they talk about the joys of parenting: the once a year stressfest called a birthday party!