3rd Annual Water Balloon & Popsicle Party!

With over 2,000 water balloons & and close to 1,000 popsicles this was our largest Water Balloon & Popsicle party to date.

End of Summer - this is a bittersweet party.  The kids wait for it all year.  It is their favorite party, BUT they also know it means school is right around the corner so even though they CAN'T WAIT for it to happen, the CAN WAIT for it to happen.  

With us just moving here 2 months ago we weren't sure what to expect from our WB&P party. First we had invited just our friend that we had returned to (all 3 of them) and the few we had met over the past 2 months. I started it as a Facebook invite, then people started asking if they could invite friends, we said sure and the party grew, and then the more we thought about it we decided it would be rude NOT to invite our ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD since we were taking over one of the parks in the neighborhood.  So with that though our party went from about 20 kids to well over 100 kids. Yes, just call us insane.  

Same rules applied from last year:
Each family must bring 100 FILLED water balloons to the party.

                   And since so many people were coming this year we ask each family to bring a box of popsicles:

This wasn't even all of the popsicles. Notice all the popsicles on the bench? Those boxes are full too....(and there were more in my freezer)

How handsome is this boy?!

Kids were getting sick from eating so many popsicles. They were calling me the 'popsicle pusher'.

Before the water balloon fight the kids were busy filling up on popsicles, playing on slip and slides and just having fun in our ghetto Great Wolf Lodge water park.

Ground Rules:
I had all the kids sit in the grass to go over a few rules.
#1 - you must sit here until I tell you to go
#2 - watch out for little kids & don't throw balloons hard at them
#3 - no water balloons to the face
#4 - do NOT throw balloons at parents with cameras
#5 -  teens are a free for all
#6 - after the water balloon fight eveyone that participates MUST help clean up broken water balloons!
#7 - HAVE FUN!

It took an Army (pun TOTALLY intended) of Mom's & Dad's to take the water balloons from our back yard to the playground.

                                                                               The Paparazzi:

                                                                               Ready, set, GO!

Good view of the fun!

                                 This is my favorite picture of the day.  This is what makes this party worth it!  :-)

                         My friend Beth is AWESOME!  I am now the proud owner of Water Balloon party shoes!!

We added a new element to our party this year, FROZEN T-SHIRT CONTEST - my friend Beth was the brainchild of this event - she did 90% of the work that went into this even and she even designed the t-shirts!  If children wanted to participate in the frozen t-shirt contest they had to pay for their t-shirt.

Behind the scenes:  We dipped the t-shirts in water wrung them out just a little and them folded them as small as we could get them, stuck them in a ziplock bag and stuck them in the freezer.  We did this 3 days prior and by the day of the event they were FROZEN SOLID.  (We even let them thaw for about an hour and a half before the event.)

                                                             Kids with frozen t-shirts, ready to start:

Kids were trying EVERYTHING they could think of to get these shirts on;  (or out of the bag!)  they were sitting on them, dunking them in water, biting them, throwing them on the ground, jumping on them and giving them to their moms!  It was all VERY comical! 
 

The first one to get her shirt on!
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Double fisting it!

                             We had 60 kids participate in the frozen t-shirt contest!  Here are a few of them!

                                                       The perfect ending:  a popsicle stuck to her shirt.