For my daughter's 4yr old birthday, we had a Dora party for her 3yr old triplet siblings and 3 friends. As the guests arrived, they came into the kitchen where they saw the Dora decorated cake on the table, and they left their presents next to it. They went into the playroom that had a cardboard pop-up Dora clubhouse that was made for the kids to color and paint on. (Only $6.99 at Target after Christmas - haven't been able to find since, but was great!). Some kids colored the outside of the clubhouse while others sat at a table and made Dora bracelets from a small bead kit from the Dollar store.  While all the kids were in the playroom, myhusband came running in and told them that the cake was missing from the kitchen and he had seen swiper running out the front door. The kids all came running into the kitchen to look and while they did, my husband ran outside, supposedly in the direction of Swiper. We have a front door which my husband than ran into the house through and up the stairs to the second floor. With the kids running to see what the commotion was, my husband came down and said he thought he saw Swiper come in the front door and up the stairs with the cake. We needed to find him! I gave each of the girls a dora backpack from Kmart that came with a plastic map and binoculars. To that I added a flashlight, safety scissors, and sunglasses and a custome-made map I did on the computer. The map was pretty simple with clipart cartoon images of Dora, Boots and Swiper and then trees to signify a jungle, a cartoon river and then a bridge. Finally there was a picture of a birthday cake. I printed out enough copies for all the kids and attached the pictures with a marker pathway and put the maps intheir backpacks before they arrived.  As they opened their backpacks, we pulled out the maps and recited where they would need to go - jungle - river- bridge - cake, over and over.  The first stop was the pathway into the jungle, which was through a large pop-up toddler tunnel in the doorway between the playroom and the living room. It was very dark so they needed to crawl through with their flashlights. The living room was the jungle with shades of green crepe paper hanging down from the ceiling and all of our stuffed animals and play animals placed around the room. They had to put their sunglasses on here because there were some very sunny patches by the animals.  As they turned the corner in the living room, they came upon the river - blue bath towels laid out with the Dora Hopscotch squares (Kmart again - about $10) laid out on the towels like stepping stones that they had to jump to.   The river brought them to the bottom of the stairway, which was to be the Troll Bridge. We tied a rope at the top of the railing and wound it down through the rails to the bottom. The kids would grab the rope and essentially pull themselves up the steep slope of the bridge.   My 2 boys were hiding at the top behind the child gate that is there with cotton-batting beards. They were the trolls. They sang the grumpy old troll song that says someone must solve the riddle before crossing the bridge. Then they held out a child's broom stick with strands of string hanging down. The kids got out their safety scissors and each cut a string to be let through.   By the way, through each area they were encouraged to yell "Sweiper No Swiping". This worked well when they had to do something in a line or wait thier turn.  In the upstairs hallway, my husband said that swiper was hiding down the hall in the smallest bedroom. We had a child size plastic bowling set, with the pins set up in front of the closed door. Each child got to roll a bowling ball down the hall and make a lot of noise to scare swiper. As we got closer to the door, we discovered that the kids now totally believed the whole thing - even our own kids, who had been practising the story and all of the parts of it all week! I had to open the door first and look and when I told them the cake was there and Swiper had just went outthe window they all ran to the room.  The closure to this little episode was a leg of panyhose, filled with stuffing, that was spray painted with stripes to look like Swiper's tale. My husband had stuck it under the closed window, as if the tail had gotten caught in the window as Swiper had jumped out. The cake was laeft, unharmed, sitting on the bed.   Well, the kids absolutely froze when they saw the tail. Our kids didin't know about this either and a couple ran from the room, mostly the 3 yr olds. It might have looked too real, so you decide what would work best for you. The 4 yr olds believed it was Swiper's tail, but also thought they had saved the day by getting the cake and they were pretty excited.   We carried the cake down the stairs and the kids were talking non-stop to their parents about the whole activity. We ate the cake and continued coloring the house and some printouts and a great time was had by all. The Dora music CD played in the background and I think really helped make the kids think they had been in a real Dora adventure.   Our thank you notes were individualized page printouts of pictures of a particular child going through the steps of the Dora game, whether in the tunnel, or the jungle or helping carry the cake. very easy to do.   The whole party - our first official birthday party- was such a success that my then turning 3 yr old triplets all assumed that they would each have their own party - as they don't understand that they all share the same birthday!  So since this last party, we have hosted a triplet party every two weeks until they have all now officially turned three - all with a different theme but none as great as this one was. Good Luck