Star Wars The Next Generation

May 25, 1977. I was in second grade. Our family was living in Odessa, TX. Mom took me and my sister to the movies. We saw Star Wars. It was amazing. This is one of the very few movies that my mother would see multiple times. My sister and I (and our friends for that matter) were obsessed. We had t-shirts. We played Star Wars. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I didn't want to be a boy. I just wanted to be a Jedi.

Fast forward a few years. I have kids that really like Star Wars, but none quite as enthusiastically as our second grade boy. He is Star Wars obsessed. We had to have a Star Wars birthday party. I found many wonderful ideas online and we had "Jedi Training Camp". It was wild and loud and those kids had a good time. They had almost as much fun as Elizabeth and I had getting things ready.

First there were invitations to invite them to Jedi Training.

Next we made a pinata. A Death Star pinata. Thank you Google for pointing us to some good tutorials. It took us nearly a week to finish it.

One of the suggestions I found was to make light sabers out of pool noodles. Pool noodles are not available in North Texas in January. My pool guy husband thought he could get some for us. He could get them, but shipping was cost prohibitive. They aren't in season. We used insulation used for winterizing outside pipes. Worked great. The best part is the kids could whack away with their "light sabers" and no one really got hurt.

I was informed that Jedi robes were definitely required.  Everybody wanted robes. I only had time for the birthday boy.

 

The robes were really not that difficult to make. I may end up making more for the rest of the family. Maybe.

We had several games planned for them. Most of this was supposed to happen outside. It was a cold and drizzly day. We tried to have them run a bit, but most of it had to happened inside even the pinata. That was stressful. Kermit was very concerned about the TV. At all times either Hannah or Joseph had to act as a shield between 8-year-olds swinging a bat and the tv.

The kids had a good time. Lots of sugar. Lots of hitting each other and Joseph with light sabers. More than a little bit of wrestling. Yes. They had fun. Almost as much fun as we had putting this party together.