Treasure Hunt

On Sunday my mother flung a party for Hugo. He shall be 9 on the 6th, but for some reason the party was 8 days earlier. Sigh.


I always prepare another party for him once he's back in Barcelona for school, with his real friends. But my parents have only made 2 parties for him, despite the huge house, the garden and the swimmingpool they have, as opposed to my tiny basement flat.



The thing is, I have to pay for all the expenses for the Barcelona party -food, party loots, prizes, etc- yet for the ones at my parents', I prepare the games and pay for the party loots and prizes, while my mom gets the food ready. So I am paying for treats for double the kids now. Wow.



And getting party ideas for two sets of kids, in a short time...



Anyway... I went for the following games, in case anyone was interested:

• Treasure hunting: there were a series of clues hidden all over the garden and house, allways in rhyme, never too complicated as I know my son's friends and their attention span, but not too obvious either. Every clue had also a little parcel with either sweets or tiny toys, as a minor prize. At first the boys didn't want to play, but after encouraging them 'till they found the first clue hidden according to my initial directions... they went absolutely mad about it!!!!
• Crocodile hunting: I'd got a blister with 20 tiny crocodile stickers, and stuck them half-hidden in an area that was easy to control, but with quite a bit of rocks and plants & trees... a bit of a jungle for the smaller kids!!! I had originally intended this game for the smaller kids, and it worked out perfect that the elder boys wanted to swim a bit while the little girls and smaller boys were 'hunting crocodiles'.
• The Mummy: Originally it was going to be in two or three teams... but in the end it was 3 children and me playing, so Hugo & Angelo were against Marina and me... we had to wrap one of the members of the team in toilet roll as fast as possible, and trying to cover them up completely as an egyptian mummy!!! As Hugo & I had experience in this, we wrapped the other two. They couldn't stop giggling when they started to see themselves transformed...

The rest of the games we didn't do in the end, the sun came out and into the pool we went. Am glad I still have the hack with small children, after so many years in an office and adult world ;)