Super Luca's Hero Party

My youngest has just turned 4, in the blink of an eye my baby is growing up so fast.  He is a wonderful little boy, handsome, kind, full of fun and also charmingly cheeky.  Until he started nursery he was incredibly shy, a complete mammy's boy.  At parties he would hide on my knee away from all the other kids and noise, he had very low confidence.  Since September and starting nursery, we have watched him grow and change in front of us, he has gained new found friends and in doing so, his confidence is growing.  I was so worried about leaving him in nursery, I knew he would miss me but I was terrified he would just invert into himself and not join in.  How wrong I was, it has been the making of him and he makes us so proud each and every day.  He is very popular and really funny, couldn't love him more if I tried.  Anyway, back to the point, he is now 4 and 4th birthdays are incredibly important and warrant a huge party with all of your friends and some extra special guests.  

Last summer I took the kids to a Super Hero Squad event organised by Hopscotch Entertainment.  He hadn't been too bothered by superheroes until that event but since that day forward he has become obsessed with Captain America, Spidey, Iron Man and the gang. In fact after that, he said there and then that he wanted them at his birthday party. So that was what he got.  I booked up just after Christmas to make sure I got all the heroes he wanted.  Hopscotch offer a complete party package including a party host which means you are literally just able to stand and watch the fun.

I spent a small fortune on party supplies, I wanted a red, white and blue theme so bought a ginormous American flag, various American flag buntings and some fantastic scene setters featuring all the characters.  I love doing party bags and I always like to do something a bit different and with this in mind, I got some wonderful bespoke party favours from Doodle Town Crayons and Paper Chic Stationary.  What fabulous ladies to work with, they are already commissioned for my next project :0) I carried the theme through with red, white and blue bags to put the goodies in.

 

Lolly Card by PaperChic

Party Bag Contents

Crayon and Colouring card by Doodle Town Crayons

We are pretty lucky in the area we live in to have a good choice of great party venues.  The one I booked this time is literally on our doorstep and is a perfect size and cost.  We spent an hour and a half dressing the room, preparing the food boxes and sorting out cakes.  My friend Mark always makes my cakes and this time he did as brilliant a job as ever.

 

About 20 minutes before the party started the superheroes arrived.  They did what I thought was a wonderful thing, they hid round the corner and Lyndsey, the party host, came in to check what I wanted to do about their arrival, at this point we ushered our kids into the toilets and the heroes snuck into a room at the back of the hall.  I was really grateful for this as it totally added to the surprise.

Once the guests had arrived Lyndsey announced the heroes and honestly, Luca's jaw literally dropped, it was a wonderful moment, he was completely gobsmacked, especially when he saw Iron Man, his hero.  There were a few children who were unsure of the hero's, but a massive effort was made by each and every one of them to put the kids at ease and to reach out to those who were a bit frightened. Luca was very shy still but the characters made an extra effort with him.  

The party was fantastic, Lyndsey took charge and led the kids through a craft activity in which they had to make their own superhero shield and then they had a superhero parade to show off their work.  A really good ice breaker to get them all warmed up.

Loads of party games followed with prizes all provided by Hopscotch.  We did a Superhero assault course and Superhero statues was great fun and was taken quite seriously by the tiny heroes.  We had pass the parcel complete with a dancing Spiderman in the middle of the circle, Spiderman got a big thumbs up from the mothers in particular ;0) and lots of funky dancing by everyone.

The heroes led a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday to Luca whilst we presented the cake and he blew out his candles and then they all posed extremely patiently for an endless line of photographs.

It was time to say goodbye to Iron Man at this point and this is one of my favourite pictures from the day, my tiny Iron Man with his hero

The rest of the heroes stayed around to help us give out the party food boxes and sat and chatted with the kids until it was time for them to leave.

Luca said it was the very best party ever and that for me is a job well done.

Thank you again to all the guys from Hopscotch, you probably hear this all the time but the work you do truly makes children's dreams come true.  All the performers are a massive credit to your company and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for making our little boy so happy.