Wren's 6th Birthday

 This month Wren turned 6.  On his actual birthday he had a special birthday circle at school and walked around the months of the year set up on a low circular table.  He also had a special candle ceremony with the lights off.

Wren "Grows up" as he circles the sun once for each year
of his life

Wren as Birthday Boy in the morning circle.

That evening he was allowed to choose his own birthday dinner.  He chose hot dogs with relish and root beer.  He didn't even finish his hot dog because he was too busy building the Lego urukai-army Granny gave him.  Afterwards, we sang and ate his "bouche de noel" cake with meringue mushrooms.

Yesterday we celebrated Wren's 6th birthday with a party.  Ever since our visit to Australia in August we have been reading Tolkien.  First we read The Hobbit and now we are almost finished with book two of The Lord of the Rings.  Lego has recently released sets along the Lord of the ring so we decided to have a birthday part on the Tolkien theme.  The main activity for the party was a Quest to Destry the ring, along the lines of a treasure hunt.  We started with a clue to find an Elf to receive an elf pouch.  Frost was the elf.

The clue was to go and seek the Elf where the Reindeer gazes.  Apparently the word "gazes" was too complicated (perhaps they thought it was grazes?) and they spent a long time milling around on the lawn before spotting Frost in the tree.

At last!  The Elf is found and gives out Elven pouches.

The Elf instructed them to head to the soapy lake and fish for
The One Ring (only there were 8, one per child).
The bamboo has a magnet on.  The rings were key-rings.

Later, they had to defeat The Dragon.  A pinata of a golden
dragon I made from a discarded box.  It was rather
strong and needed Alex to give it a good Bash and defeat it.

jafkdsl;jk;j

Near the end they had to use a golden coin to get near the volcano
which was our version of Mount Doom.  Frost jumped up and made a big
EXPLOSION noise when each child dropped their ring in the abyss.  They took it seriously.
Later, when they found an extra ring, they rushed down to throw it in
Mount Doom as well.

Donovan throws in his ring while Frost (hand) waits to
ERUPT!

Afterwards, we had cake and lunch at the table in the living room.  I took inspiration from another parent's LOTR cake and painted an Eye of Sauron on royal icing on the top.

The lettering on the front is an (incomplete) copy of
the inscription on the One Ring.  The letters on the
front of the cake spell WREN in Dwarven Runes.
This was Frost's idea!

Wren had a lovely day and was quite happy to run around with his friends after cake.  This was a relaxing party after the organizing of the quest.  Josh was a great DM of the quest so I didn't have to rush around with them.  Frost and Alex were also a great help.

Here is a short movie of Wren's birthday celebrations at school and home.  Its not polished because my laptop has barely enough memory to create a movie and, due to lack of skill, editing is very time consuming.