My 2 older boys have birthdays within 3 days of each other, so this year we decided to hold a combined party for them with the Mario/ Nintendo theme (they love to play it with their dad on the Wii). When the kids came in from their half-day of school, they were dressed as a character from the Mario games (Ethan-Luigi, Mason-Mario, Riley-princess Peach, Carson- Yoshi, and Kiechel- Wario) which mostly consisted of the appropriately colored T-shirts plus hats, crowns, and mustaches. Then they stepped onto the giant gameboard I had set up in our front room. The took turns and rolled the dice to advance on the board. I covered one side of the dice with an M, if it was rolled, we played a mini-game (there were 6: smash the chain chomp- a pinata painted to look like a chain chomp; Save Princess Peach- a follow the clues which led them to a large Princess Peach cut out along with a treasure chest of coins; Get the goomba- stomping brown balloons with coins inside; Tic Tac Drop- trying to get 3 in a row by dropping rice-filled balloons onto a 3x3 grid; Yoshi's egg hunt- filled easter eggs with coins for a hunt outside; and Musical Mario "chairs"- we downloaded a couple of versions of the Mario songs from iTunes and the kids walked around on pictures of different Mario characters, when the music stopped, I drew a picture from a hat, whoever was standing on that character was out). The kids earned coins (purchased from HobbyLobby) for each of the mini-games. After they each reached the end of our giant board game, they had the chance to trade in their coins for a prize (small toys I had purchased and hidden). We then ate pizza and then had a Boo cake with ice cream. A memorable day for certain.
