Logan's 8th Birthday Party - Gladiator Style!

Logan is known for his wild and crazy birthday parties. It's not a "Logan Party" unless there are 30 kids running crazy in the backyard through obstacles half naked in their swim suits. This year he chose an American Gladiators theme. Jeremy and I had fun coming up with games and an ultimate obstacle course. Here's how the fun-filled evening went down:

We began with a delicious dinner, Logan style, of bbq hot dogs, chips, SODA, and watermelon. Then we moved on to our first event - The Gauntlet.

THE GAUNTLET: We had the adults stand in a tunnel formation holding some super power squirt guns. The kids ran down the tunnel trying not to get wet! Yeah, they ALL got wet. One of the adults may have been holding the hose...

After the gauntlet was our POWER BALL game: This game was patterned after the game on the show. There are buckets of balls at each end of the arena (yard) in the center is an empty bucket. The object of the game is to get as many balls into the center bucket without being taken down by the gladiator. We only lost a couple of balls over the back fence and the kids had fun with this game because there was no water involved = no threat of getting wet.

The CANON BLAST was next. I filled about 100 water balloons for this event. Jeremy constructed 2 waterballoon launchers out of surgical tubing and your basic kitchen funnel. We were both surprised at how great they actually worked! The kids each took a turn launching a balloon across the pool at the opposing team. They earned points for hitting the other players. In the end no one was actually hit, but we did get close several times!

The JOUST followed the waterballoon launching. This event was the most anticipated of the evening. Jeremy stacked to two 2x6x16 boards and layed them across the deep end of the pool. The kids got to "fight" other players with a pool noodle with the object of pushing the other into the water. They thought it was great mostly because they had permission to hit, and push and shove the other kids. Amazingly, no one was hurt and everyone had fun that participated.

The last activity of the evening was THE ELIMINATOR. That's the name of the ultimate obstacle course at the end of every American Gladiators show. The kids had to make their way through the backyard and finish in the pool. We didn't time them or try to see who performed fastest - they were all in it for the fun. Here were their obstacles for this event:
1. squash a waterballoon with their buns
2. crawl through 2 collapsible tunnels
3. climb up the rock wall on the backyard swing set/play structure
4. slide down the slide
5. do a trick on the trampoline and watch out for the gladiator waiting there!
6. scooter around one loop of the backyard
7. swim across the pool and try to avoid the gladiator waiting there
8. climb out at the end of the pool and FINISH!

Check out a slideshow of all that fun! Logan is holding a Chicken Patty Birthday Cake at the end of the slideshow. If you know Logan, then you also know that he doesn't eat sweets. He LOVED the triple-stacked patties!

At the end of the festivities Jeremy had set up the projector to watch video footage of the evening's events. The kids thought it was great to watch themselves projected up on the big screen. All the kids had a great time - that's quite a feat considering their ages ranged from 3 to 15. Special thanks to our GLADIATORS. They did a great job and had fun participating as well. We really should have come up with names for those girls... oh wait! They already have names - Barracuda and Chainsaw - you know who you are!

The party guests got to take home several little party favors to remember this fun night. 1. Their team bandana, 2. a group picture of the RED team vs. BLUE team, and 3. a gold medal for being a winner!