Otis really wanted to have a birthday at home in our new house this year. Reluctantly, we agreed. We invited a bunch of kids and our original plan was to just let them run amok while the parents had drinks or something in a different room. Then we thought the better of it and decided to go all in on homemade party games.

Sarah drew up the rules for the games:

We had several ball toss games:

Pin the tail on the donkey, of course:

Wesley, supposedly, was caught peeking, but we gave it to him anyway. June got a close second!

The original donkey image, by the way, had a pretty prominent butthole. Not knowing most of the other parents, we decided it would be prudent to edit out the potentially offending orifice. For posterior posterity:

And the pièce de résistance, a laser maze in the basement:

When the scores were tallied, Wesley won with June and then Otis coming in second and third, respectively:

Everyone got to pick a prize from the prize pile (choosing in order of rank) and everyone was happy. Especially when it was time for ice cream (and sprinkles and chocolate sauce and snowcaps and flipz and jello…):

All in all, a rousing success, even if our ears were ringing for a week!