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!

LOL Your son is very popular. I wouldn't rely on preteens to do any RSVPing. Just put out plenty of food and see who shows.

That still cracks me up, though. I don't think my mother would have called any of my birthdays "stressfests." But of course, I'm an introvert and I hate parties. :p She always begs me to tell her what I want "special" on my birthday. Yesterday she said, "What do you want special for dinner on your birthday?"
I said, "To not have to sit down to a dinner."
Mom: "Well, it's your day. What would make it special for you?"
Me: "Give me lots of money. And a job."
Mom: "Well, a job is not within my power. Money is. But it's not within my ethics."
Me: "Is purple hair dye within your ethics?"
Mom: "No."
Me: "How about a digital camera, laptop, and webcam?"
Mom: *rueful smirk*

*sigh* :rolleyes:

would board games work at all? or no? like yatzee, (sp?) babble, etc. just the short ones.
wasn't sure, so didn't want to mention, but like i play online babble, there are lots of players.

just reread "like i play" - that reeks of california. :D

btw, it's a little addicting, but here's the address if anyone's interested:
http://www.playbabble.com/index.php?pid=437

i dont think i could get everyone to agree on a game, let alone focus on it for more than a second....maybe truth or dare? or spin the bottle? NOT!
i now have fifteen confirmed tweens...ten of which are girls...im going to have to recruit adult males to dance with some of these little girls. thank goodness the kids are taller than they used to be!

then i like the food/movie idea.

popcorn? only because it's my favorite snack, and you mentioned movies. :)

i think i would prefer it that way, but i think that i would have a hard time fitting all the kids in my itty bitty living space, especially cause it is overwhelmed with boxes and piles of stuff ready to pack. if there arent many kids coming, i was going to do the movie thing, but if there are enough that its not just two kids dancing with each other while one sits and watches, then it should work out. i have great lighting, and some of that stuff you put on the fire to make it different colors (i dont want to hear about the chemical make up of it, either...i know). add snacks and adult supervision and i should be good to go. thanks for all help...mucho!
Wish me luck~!

best of! wow, his last b-day before the teen years. enjoy, both of you! :) the three of you, i mean.

:bday_2: Patrick!!!

VB,

How'd it go?

is tonight at eight....am frantically preparing...
guess what? its pouring rain :rage:

figures,

Ah well, that's good craps shootin' weather.

okay, so this is how it went down:
we set up the dance in the carport; we hung balloons and a black light and had tiki torches surrounding the driveway. i outlined the "dance floor" with a string of rope lights and we had a table set up for food and a scaled down tee pee for the presents. all the children arrived and set about popping all the balloons and eating all the snacks, while studiously avoiding one another. then i brought out trays of watermelon and they then engaged in the most rabid war of "spit seeds on your friends" imaginable, in the pouring rain. when they were all dried off and it got dark, we lit the torches and the chimmnea (which had some of those packages of stuff that makes the flames different colors) and then spent the next hour trying to prevent the children from setting themselves on fire. we solved that by stationing my boyfriend, with his huge arms folded across his chest forbiddingly, in front of the fire. (dont forget he is a fairly large man, and has the forbidding look down pat, as he is not only a soldier, but he does teach in boot camp!)
so we got down to the music part. the kids picked out all the music, so most of the adults were tortured by the sounds. it rather seemed a waste as when the music started the kids lined up all around the perimeter of the carport, avoiding the inside of the rope light dance floor as if it were a mine field. we left them standing there for a while, though, as it was easier to keep tabs on them when they were all frozen into immobility, but eventually we encouraged a breakdancing competition, laid down cardboard and quilts and laughed our butts off at these kids trying to be cool!
as the competition started to wind down, we brought out cake and ice cream, followed by presents. that kept the kids occupied as they all tried on his new clothes and such, and fought over the toys. i think really they are no different now than they were when they were younger, except there were more facial piercings and they are more fascinated with fire (mostly the boys, i think that might be a puberty thing, though....hmmm....fire.....must create fire...?)
all in all, it was a success. the kids all had fun, no one got hurt or inflamed, and nothing got severely broken. i am still cleaning up watermelon seeds and dead balloon skins from my yard, and i was required to sleep till one in the afternoon the following day. i think however, we have recovered and will be ready for the next one, in a year or so. i think next time, i'll send them paintballing (with his dad?). whew. glad its over for now. thanks for your help!

I'm glad you survived the party. I didn't have any ideas for a boys party. This year we had a slumber party for my daughter's 10th birthday (NEVER EVER EVER EVER AGAIN). There were 16 little ten year old girls.
I had a friend of mine, who teaches belly dancing, come to my house and show the girls how to belly dance. That was hysterical. Ten year olds have no coordination. I was laughing so hard.
She also had a few games to play with the kids.
Then there was cake, fruit and veggie trays, and she wanted me to cook a brisket and mac and cheese.
By midnight three had called to go home.
By 3 in the morning I was counting the minutes till they would go home.

I am definitely not looking forward to her teenage years.

I don't know about fire being just a guy thing, I love fire, and creating it is well within my capabilities. Glad that it turned out okay even though it was raining.

VBM, Bravo! Bravo! Encore! Encore!

Excellente, este es muy bueno senora.

With that description, I am sure that I’ve been there before. I have a vivid picture of the stoic soldier pulling a gratuitous guard-duty tour for his sweetie.

Sorry but my mind is weak and I can’t get the dark-green Canadian fatigue color in my head. Although I do see: big fore arms folded, desert-tan cammy’s, brown polypropylene T-shirt, tan suede combat boots, high and tight hair cut, and an “if you eff with me, I will rip your heart out and stomp that sucker flat” - look.

Aiy, ayi, ayi. That was fun.

Thank you.

wauuuu.... this ended very well, indeed.... congratulations that you survived...
I wouldn't dare to do it. had once two children plus several friends in the house, two of mine friends were badly attacked by the three year old one... :mad: my sister was crying because of that little cutie... :mad: and I was mad... ended well for me :brow: after all...

so it is great that your party was that well...