Teancom Turned 7! or The Piñata Saga

Teancom has a birthday every year.  This year we invited over the Dean's for the celebration.  They were gracious and bought him a gift, which wasn't the intent of inviting them over.  Still, it's a fun gift:

You build the board yourself!  The little guys are adorable!  It has a Lego dice!

While Scott was playing the game with the kids, it became clear why he chose this particular game:  So he could play it!  ...  Isn't that what we all do with our children's toys?  (In unrelated news, I purchased Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3DS for the kids.)

Anyway, the point of inviting the Deans was to give them the scrapbook that the whole family put together about our St. Augustine vacation.  The Deans told us they would not accept any gifts as a thank you, but we thought that surely a homemade dinner (from the kids!) and scrapbook would be fair.  :)  The kids were thrilled to do both.  It was great.

Now for the birthday party part.  Tank really wanted a piñata.  While sitting on my lap at church one day a few weeks before his birthday, Tank said, "Dad said I can't have a piñata for my birthday until I'm 8."  "Okay."  "But I really want a piñata."  I thought about this.  I recalled several different friends who had made a basic piñata for their children's birthdays.  I mean, you can do crazy awesome piñatas (like this homemade unicorn), but let's be honest, that bar was set pretty high, and I'm a perpetual craft underachiever.  Still, we could do a basic oval (balloon) shape.  So I said, "We could make a piñata, if you want."  "I don't want to make one.  I want that one I saw at the store."  "Well, Dad already told you no."  After a few minutes of silence, Tank said, "Okay, I want to make one."  Good choice.

He really wanted a monkey.  A monkey!  I told him that could be Piñata version 2.0.

So we found online instructions.  We set everything up.  We brought the whole family together.  And ... the basic shape took about 3 seconds to complete.  I was left thinking, "Well, now what?"  We decided to just go for it.  So here is our finished product:

Notice, it looks more like a bear.  We tried to convince Tank that he really, in actuality, wanted a teddy bear piñata.  He was determined to have a monkey, though.  We told him that this didn't even really look like a monkey.  He said he didn't care.  So, monkey bear it is.

Rob did make that rope tail himself, though.  I was previously unaware that 1- rope was something you could make at home and 2- that Rob had said skills.

And, whether it looked like a monkey or a bear, or some freaky combination of both, it was way fun to hit down!

All in all, a birthday win!