29 going on 9--Let the Adventures Begin!

June 22nd was Adam's 29th birthday. With the help of my good friend Carrie, I decided to throw him a surprise party at the last minute. It was all under the guise of a group FHE lesson at Carrie and Miguel's house. Carrie, who has just started a professional event-planning business, was excited to choose a theme for the party and run with it. At first I just told her that Adam was a fan of the 80s, but she had me narrow it down and we decided to go with one of Adam's favorite movie trilogies from that decade: Indiana Jones!

The first idea that I had was to make the invitations to email to all of our friends and what better way than by morphing Adam's face onto Harrison Ford's body? I later had it blown up into a framed poster to be displayed at the party... I think it came out very cool!

We only had a week to plan, but of course if you know me, you know that I left most of it until the day of...luckily I had Carrie to help me. She got Adam the hat and whip and I found him a white shirt and fortunately he was already wearing his khaki cargo pants. Even the family dog, Reno, played dress-up with his very own Indie costume--it was hilarious!

Our friend David actually works for George Lucas and so he brought Adam a birthday gift that you can only get at Skywalker Ranch. It was an Indiana Jone t-shirt(above) and some IJ playing cards.

Tiki torches lined the backyard and we played the Indiana Jones theme music as well as some of Adam's favorite music from the 80s.

Carrie posted a menu and gave all the food names to fit the theme: Mud slide fountain, Peruvian veggie flatbread, archaeological dirt cups, and chilled monkey brains(strawberry smoothies in monkey goblets)!

We had the Elders join us and give us a brief Family Home Evening message that even coincided with the theme---overcoming obstacles and keeping your eyes on the prize.

Bill was gracious enough to let us use his house to host the party. All of the relics he has collected over his 88 years, really added to the party!

Carrie handmade an antique treasure map to hang on the wall and decorated the room with bats hanging from the ceiling, skulls, snakes, all sorts of treasures with dry ice for a cool effect.

Then the party really got started when everyone headed out to the backyard.

We all anxiously waited while Ryan set up the "mentos rocket" a device the drops mint flavored mentos into a bottle of soda and creates a geyser.

It was slightly anticlimactic, so the guys moved on to dry-ice bombs. However, they underestimated the strength of the plastic and it took them a good 3 or 4 attempts before we got a really loud explosion, but well worth the wait.

Adam was having the time of his life acting like a kid again. What is a birthday party without blowing things up?

Some people had already left when we decided we should take a group photo.

It was so much fun celebrating with all of our friends!

By the way--the blond is Carrie-- you can see her other great work at http://www.bealamaroevents.com/

Happy Birthday Adam!