SPECIAL OPS - MISSION: Agent August's 8th Birthday

For his 8th birthday, our son wanted a Nerf gun battle, swimming, and to go toilet papering. Trying to tie these together, chat.gpt suggested Mission Impossible, Spies, or Indiana Jones. He wasn't keen on the idea of any of these themes, so my husband threw out the "Special Ops" idea, and he loved it. I did the decorating, and my husband created a military training ground out back. We had been so busy, that I didn't even know everything that he was planning, and it was even better than I imagined. He's a bit hard on himself so he would say that there was a lot of room for improvement, but the kids had a blast, which was the important thing. He used cooked spaghetti with red sauce as the 'guts' and when the bells from amazon didn't arrive in time, he improvised by using windchimes so we would know when they tripped the wire. In spite of the fact that we had at least 20 boys all together with their nerf guns, everything was going off without a hitch ...until the ambulance arrived. The birthday boy himself was playing in the pool. As he lifted his leg to go from the hot tub to the pool, he was suddenly in extreme pain. This is a boy who doesn't cry when he's pegged with a baseball, so it was clear something was wrong. He could not even move his leg, let alone put weight on it. So sadly, the night ended with an ambulance ride to the emergency room instead of the toilet papering that was planned. But a future date will be set because all of the kids handled the disappointment with grace, more concerned about their friend than the special ops mission they had trained for.

• What People Ate

  Pizza - kept it simple!

• Desserts

  Cupcakes

• Party Favors

  Balsa wood plane and flying spinner plane

• Activities / Games

  Special ops training and toilet papering