I wanted to create a memorable Army Birthday for my 7 yr old son as we have some relatives and friends in the armed forces.
Invitation Read: Christian wants to invite you to a TOP SECRET military mission. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to rendezvous with an elite force of friends to celebrate Christian's 7th birthday. I included the time as Arrival Time: 1500 hours and Departure Time: 1800 hours and provided a map for the secret military base. We also requested for everyone to wear either camouflage or green & tan. I used a blank 5x8 index card to imprint the invitation and used an olive green background. I also used 6x9 brown kraft clasp envelopes. I imprinted on the front TOP SECRET" Birthday Party Recruit and bought a confidential stamp. Total cost for 50 invitations - $10-$15 including additional supplies left over. These items are available at your local office supply store. For the goodie bags I bought an lettering stencil set brown paper lunch bags and also used the confidential stamp that was used for the invitations. I stenciled the word "ARMY" in front of the bag and stamped it confidential. This is a great alternative when you have large parties. The party favors I used were with the American Flag theme as they could be used for boy or girl. As kids arrived to the party - I had a helper that registered all the kids with personalized dog tags. I created a registration sign-in sheet to ensure all of the kids had a dog tag. This was helpful for thank you cards as well. For the actual birthday - I planned to have an obstacle course where the kids could complete boot camp training. I purchased potato sacks went to a local tire store and asked them to donate 6 used tires and bought 2 cement blocks and wood to create a beam balance. The obstacle course started with a potato sack race then they stopped to get a plastic spoon and a plastic egg - continued the race to the tires balance beam and ended with tug-o-war. We had to separate the kids into 2 groups so everyone could start and finish the race in time. After tug-o-war the kids requested a re-match and completed the obstacle course once again. After the older kids were done we created a smaller course for the younger kids. After the obstacle course they continued to get their faces camouflaged painted. Shortly after - we had over 100 water balloons for a water balloon battle. We used different sizes of balloons to cater to all kids of different ages. We handed a water balloon to each kid and asked them to spread out. They had to wait until the drill sergeant gave them the green light to proceed with the water balloon fight. That was the most exciting part of the day. I ordered a cake with the American Flag as that was easier to find than an Army theme cake. After cake and presents we presented all of the kids with purple heart medals and a certificate of boot camp completion. I had small prizes from the dollar store to give out as well. We had the drill sergeant call out their name to give out their certificate from the United States Armed Forces gold medal and a helper passing out their prizes. "
