Extreme Sports Birthday Party This is a perfect party for active 9 yr. old boys!  My son loves outdoor  sports so we invited 9 of his friends to participate. We sent hand- painted invitations on torn red construction paper  and decorated them  by splattering paint and hand wrote the invitations using cool, jagged lettering. As the boys arrived we handed them either a red pinnie or  blue pinnie to wear. By the time everyone arrived  5 boys made up a red  team and 5 boys made up a blue team. They had to name their teams and came up the  Red Falcons against the Blue Dragons. We planned 4 extreme sports activities including a relay rope climbing  event that we timed with a stop watch, supervised archery shooting at a  hay bale equipped with a bullseye target, downhill snowboarding (which we did by throwing straw over our sloped front lawn and using  2 inexpensive snowboards from Wal-Mart --worked great and was one  of the boys favorite of the activities) and last but not least we had an outdoor trail obstacle course that ran through a patch of woods in our  backyard. It was a timed, relay game in which each player had to run  the course jumping logs etc. and also the last teammate had to bring  back a hidden, fake skull  to complete the relay. The teams racked up  points for each event and had a blast checking the scores from the "scoreboard" as the events unfolded. The winners received an extra prize. We took Gatorade breaks as needed. Their energies were then  expired and we ended the party with  cake and opening the gifts. As  party favors we gave finger skate boards, parachute men, power bars and Gatorade. It was a hit! The boys can't wait to do it again this year  and we received many, many compliments from the parents for not  only the extremely cool party but for wearing them out!