Frank's brithday party

I think (despite all my fears) Frank's party turned out to be pretty fun.  There were moments when I thought the competitive nature of the boys almost turned into disaster, but it turned out all right.  Have I mentioned before that Frank does not know how to lose.  He gets beyond upset.  Probably has something to do with refusing to play all sports.  There are a lot of really valuable lessons he's missing out on.  I'm getting off track.  We had a party.  Here are a few pictures.
 
First, they built Lego race cars and raced them down cardboard tracks.  The boys had so much fun doing this.  It was especially fun when the cars would break apart when they got to the bottom. 

Next we had a couple of building contests.  The first was which group could build the highest tower.  Each team had an identical lego set to use. Here they are getting ready to start.

This was the game that lead to a lot of tension.  Both groups really wanted to have the tallest tower.  Frank started to flip out.  His team did end up with the tallest tower, but he didn't realize it and was starting to lose it.  It was a really beautiful moment.  While Aaron and I broke apart the towers to get ready for the next game, I let the boys eat Jello.  Lego jello.  Aparently, at least one boy thought this was an eating contest.  It must be that competitive boy nature cropping up again.  Anyway, my kids love Lego jello.  Here are a few of my minifig jigglers.  Aren't they so cute?  I did Lego block jigglers, too, but the minifigs win the cuteness contest.

After they bult towers, they collaborated on a creation.  For this, each boy got to pick four pieces from their bucket and add them to the creation, and they passed the bucket around, taking turns.  They could only add to the thing, they couldn't remove or move any pieces.  Here are the teams with their final products:

The two kiddos in the back wanted their rears in the picture.  I couldn't convince them otherwise.

After that, we played a game that I thought had the possibility to flop.  I took pictures of some of Frank's minifigures.  Well, like 80 pictures.  And I printed them so that three minifigures were on each 4x6 print.  THen we cut them apart, and Aaron hid them around the living room.  They were all hidden so that at least a small part of the picture was showing.  Then the boys had to each find eight.  So they all went and found 8, and had quite a bit of fun searching.  I was worried this would be too juvenile.  Then came the surprising part.  They all sat down and started trading them as if the pictures were trading cards or something.  I didn't take any pictures because I had found the ones the boys missed and was trading as well.  It was pretty fun.  My pictures weren't professional by a long shot, but the boys seemed to think they were cool.
After that we did cake and presents.

Then I showed a Lego movie while they waited for their parents.  The movie was the Lego Hero Factory movie.  It has been a huge hit at our house.  Both Frank and Elise now quote it regularly.  One of these days, we are going to have a summer Lego movie marathon.  We only have two Lego movies, so it will only take like three hours.  Frank and Elise are both very much looking forward to that.

Anyway, the party turned out to be fun, and I think it was a lot less work than the Mario party last year, so I'm heading in the right direction.