Maddox's Dinosaur Birthday Bash

In early March the kids and I headed down to South Louisiana for my nephew's Jurassic Park themed birthday party. In a previous post you'll find all the printables that I created for the party and here are some of them on display! I always try to get down to LA a few days early to help with the final touches and construction because my sister is definitely of my blood when it comes to throwing a party. She always goes all out and I LOVE it!

So the photos aren't exactly in order but I'll do my best to cover it all.  While we were building the "electric fence" around the house to enclose the dinosaurs the kids played in the huge blow up slide Sarah rented.  My brother in law was watching the kids and when he realized he hadn't see Libby for a while he luckily thought to climb up the slide and this is what he saw:

Libby had fallen asleep at the very top of the slide.  I guess it was like sleeping on a cloud because I could hardly wake her up to come down.

Sarah really wanted the front of the house to look like walking into the Jurassic Park property so we used refrigerator boxes painted grey and she bought these long PVC pipes which I wrapped in white clothesline to create the electric fence.  She also made some "high voltage" and "caution" signs which I taped onto the poles periodically.  

She also had these fake "fire lanterns" that she bought on sale after Halloween which her hubby ran extension cords to through the top of the boxes to create a "fire" effect.

She bought lots of these cardboard dinosaurs and we tried to keep the carnivores away from the herbivores.

She had the idea to get some pallets and make it look like the raptor was breaking out of his crate.

We created dinosaur nests using hay and large plastic Easter eggs spray painted with a crackle type spray paint after first painting them with an acrylic paint.  We just used the 1/2's to put into the nests so we could stuff the hay around them to make it look built up.

Here are some of the printables I made for the straw flags and some 2" circle punch skeleton silouettes.

The goody bag tags came out adorable and can be saved and printed as is and used for any party as they don't need any customization.

We used these circle sticker labels for the plastic water canteens each child received as well as for the treat bags.  That obviously is an editable file so you will have to add your own customization.

The T-Rex guarding this nest is flanked by 2 baby pools filled with sand and little dino skeletons.  The smaller kids LOVED grabbing their buckets of paleontologist tools and digging for fossils.

This is before we were finished setting up but we were running out of time so I wanted to snap some quick pictures before it was party time.  We had 2 tables set up.  One with food for Herbivores and one with meats, etc. for Carnivores.

How perfect is this cake!  I thought it came out adorable!

She had an "animal encounter" group come out with all sorts of fun critters from mice to a Walobee (spelling?)  Libby was crazy about the rabbits and baby rats.

Ezra LOVED the mice!

Maddox got friendly with some snakes

Weston liked the African spur theigh tortoise

Once Libby found the baby rats that was ALL she wanted to play with.  These poor rats had met their match in Libby Rose.  She wanted to kiss them.

and hold them in her dress

and make them kiss each other.

While Libby was playing kissy face with the rats, the boys were getting some serious air time on the slide.

Steffan decided to brave the tarantula.

He was not a fan.

Ezra's rat friend tried to climb up his sleeve as a stow-away.  

After the party we headed to New Orleans and stopped by Sucre'.

This bakery/chocolate shop/gelato shop is owned and operated by a famous French chocolatier who I first learned about on Oprah.  Years ago my girlfriend mailed me some macarons from Sucre' and I swore I would visit there in person one day.

Libby was a huge fan of the Cinnabon gelato

Weston and I tried several of the chocolates.  My favorite was the peanut butter and jelly truffle - YUM!

I about died over these adorable parasols!

We then had dinner over at Oliver's right near the Insectarium off of Canal Street.  The food was delicious but the best part was that it was an early dinner so they gave us the ENTIRE upstairs by ourselves!  What a blessing with 3 sugar high kiddos who wanted to be loud and run around.

Napkin heads... I have no idea how this started but they just kept trying to one up each other which what design they could balance on the top of their heads.

Don't mess with the fro dude.  The fro is awesome at holding things, whether it's ink pens or Christmas ornaments (just some of the things we've found in Ezra's fro) it ranks supreme!