Back in January, we were brainstorming ideas for Henry's 9th birthday party. He rejected Star Wars and Harry Potter (parties we had done for Will that would be easy!) and we were running out of ideas until we watched The Night at the Museum. And voila, we had our party theme!
This isn't a typical party theme, so we had to design the party on our own, but fortunately, the movie takes place at the Museum of Natural History in New York, so there was plenty of material to work with! Dinosaurs and Egyptians and quests, oh my!
The first step was the invitation: we took a dinosaur party invitation that we found on etsy and had is customized for our party theme.
Gene dressed up, of course! Like Larry Daley in the movie, Gene played the role of the bumbling night watchman for the party.
Waiting for his friends to arrive!
As guests arrived, they wrote their names in hieroglyphs on cartouches.
And then it was time to learn all about the museum and become security guards! As Gene told the kids, the number one priority was guarding the tablet of Ahkmenrah. Gene had it on loan from the museum and didn't want to lose it!
After learning about the museum, the kids got their security badges
and went back to the living room for further instructions, only to discover that the tablet was missing and a note was in its place.
The note was written in hieroglyphs and the kids had to translate four different messages to find the missing tablet. It was finally located "in the home of this precious red gem" (aka Ruby's crate).
Next up, Gene told the kids that it was important to learn all about the museum collections. They started with fossils!
After studying fossils, Gene discovered that his keys were missing and found a note from Dexter the monkey (he always is stealing keys in the movie). The boys had a solve a series of riddles (like: What gets colder the more it runs? A freezer) to locate the keys. They were eventually found in the Easter Island head,
which the boys had no problem cracking open! The Easter Island head was filled with Dum Dums and gum gum (which you will understand if you know the movie!).
After all that hard work, it was time for snacks! The snack table had: Prehistoric popcorn, T-Rex Trail Mix, Lincoln Logs (pretzel rods), Teddy Roosevelt's Teddy Bears (Teddy Grahams), grapes and cupcakes!
We sang to the birthday boy.
And for the final activity, the boys made paper airplanes (in the spirit of Amelia Earhart, who makes an appearance in the second movie).
After an hour and a half on nonstop activity, we deemed the boys ready to become museum security guards and sent them on their way with flashlights (every night watchman needs a flashlight!) and dinosaur eggs to guard.
Happy birthday, Henry!
We had so much fun celebrating our new nine-year-old!
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