{me, him & them}: October 2011

We celebrated the boys' birthdays this weekend. Micah's 6th birthday was at the end of September and Caleb's 8th birthday will be at the end of October; the day before our baby girl is due. We decided to do a joint birthday party for them, halfway between their birthdays.

Micah is obsessed with spies and secret agents, so we went with it. Google is my friend and so were some amazing blogs with some great ideas. Here are our secret agents a couple days before the party in their spy getup.

Secret C

Spy M

Andrew did so much work in preparation for this party. I decorated and took care of the food preparation and then took the kids out for lunch and a couple errands while Andrew and my mom put together a series of "missions." Our boys knew they were having a spy-themed party, but we kept most of the party planning a secret.

As the guests arrived, they were fingerprinted and filled our their spy badges with their chosen Secret Agent code name. They also chose a pair of spy sunglasses.

Our great team of Secret Agents

After eating some hot dogs, they were confronted with their mission -- SOMEONE HAD STOLEN THE BOYS' BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!

. . . and they had left a trap for our spies. Our master bedroom was full of bombs (black balloons) . . . about to blow up! The spies had to defuse them all, as fast as possible. One of the bombs contained a secret message with a map to the next mission, but many of them contained misleading messages of "POW" and "KABOOM!"

Now, you may be asking where all the delightful pictures are of all this balloon popping chaos . . . I realized after the first three missions and about 100 pictures taken that I had forgotten to put an SD card in my camera and actually had no pictures of all this awesomeness. AHHHHH! I was so upset, but the mission had to go on!

After finding the map, the secret agents were led outside to the laser field.

After successfully maneuvering the precarious lasers, they were led to the backyard. Those pesky thieves had left messages on the side of our garage and the fence that read "SPIES STINK" and "YOU'LL NEVER SEE YOUR PRESENTS AGAIN!" Luckily they were written with sidewalk chalk and our agents were given two large water guns and took turns spraying down the evil words.

Sam finishing up the job

Andrew was then sent a message via bluetooth from Spy HQ with the coordinates of the missing presents!!! The thieves had dropped them in their hurry to get away. The boys used a handheld GPS to track down the exact location of the presents. They were in an empty lot near our house. Whew!