The 7-year-old Crusade

Near the beginning of the year Teancum was introduced to the Indiana Jones trilogy. And he has LOVED Indiana Jones ever since. Here is a picture he drew of him. It didn't scan as well as I would have liked. We even went as a family to see the new movie. Which, of course, Teancum loved.


So when deciding what to do for a party the theme of Indiana Jones was brought up. And Tank instantly had an idea for a party favor. Since we had taken swim noodles and cut them up to make light sabers, he thought that we should take jump ropes, cut them in half and make them into whips!! What a great idea! So here is what one looked like. I spray painted them brown and wrapped the handle in electrical tape.

Front of the invitation

inside of invite(sorry, hard to read--I blacked out dates, addresses, etc..)

Luckily we were blessed with 70 degree weather!! So we had the party outside. This was "Base Camp".

I found Indiana Jones Party hats online. They were really cute but looked like they were made for infants when I pulled them out of the package. See how small they are on my kids' heads.

Tank demonstrating how to use the whip

Tank and Zeke fighting with the whips. (Don't worry--I tested them out and there was NO way they could hurt eachother with them. It was like trying to hit someone with a piece of yarn!)

The expedition crew

We started out at base camp with a letter that Indy had left for Teancum. (hope you can read it)

The snake pit (If you look hard you will see snakes everywhere--especially on the ground)

When they got to the bottom of the slide they found the next clue

They had to run down our hill away from the "boulder". The boulder was my exercise ball wrapped in brown paper bags!

Jonas running from the boulder.

I LOVE this pic of Tank reading the clue!! (the clue was taped onto the boulder)

To find the next clue the kids had to use a roll of toilet paper to make one of them into a mummy. I had previously put the next clue around a toilet paper roll and then re-rolled toiletpaper on to it.

The pinata--Blue star was the best I could find that wasn't spiderman or something like it. No pictures of them hitting it because it didn't last long and it was a little chaotic!!

This clue was inside the pinata.

This "cave" actually had a blanket over the front so that it was semi-dark inside. They had to go in and grab as many bugs as they could in 10 seconds. (It was filled with bugs and mice and snakes)

Then they had to decode the message written on some of the bugs to find the next clue. (It just said "side of box"--figured I would make that part easy since the previous part wasn't)

The last clue to find the "treasure"

This is our version of "The Ark"--a gold spray painted styrofoam cooler!

It had Teancum's present from us inside of it.

Then we had cake!

After cake we opened presents. This is a card one friend made. It is a little hard to see but it is so cute. It is Indy with a sunset in the background.

So that was our 7-year-old birthday crusade. Thank goodness for the internet because I got a lot of the ideas from there. It only took about an hour to go through the treasure hunt, so I am glad that I scheduled the party for only an hour and a half. The last half hour the kids played Indiana Jones on the playground and in the "cave". Their goody bags had a magnifying glass and compass and squirt gun(along with all kinds of bugs) in them so they used those as props as they played. Over all it was a great party!

Happy Birthday Tanky Boy!!