Our household has caught Rio fever! No, that’s not a terrible Zica joke, we have been watching The Summer Olympics! So far we’ve watched a lot of swimming and volleyball and my kids surprised me with their incredible interest in water polo. With Olympics on the brain, I though the time was appropriate to share my daughter’s Olympics themed birthday party that we hosted back in May.

For decorations I made torches out of paper and tissue, the kids made paper chains with the five Olympic colors, and we hung balloons in the Olympic colors. I created a photo booth with sports equipment and foreign flags for props, and my good friend and neighbor made an awesome white Olympic flag with the rings and the words “Happy Birthday Lucy.” We had everybody sign the flag with fabric markers upon arrival in preparation to carry it during our Opening Ceremony.

Once everybody had arrived and gathered, we had a little parade for our Opening Ceremony. I gave the kids a ton of small flags from around the world that I got at Oriental Trading and they waved those while a few kids in the front carried the flag. My son carried the “torch,” which was a large lighter. They paraded over to our fire pit and using the lighter, lit the fire pit to kick off the games!

For games we had a relay race, a sack race, pool noodle javelin, and capture the flag. The kids had a great time playing the games! I had planned a few other events but time grew short and the kids really enjoyed the ones we did and asked to repeat some of those instead.

After games we had a BBQ and enjoyed potluck snacks that everybody had brought. The cake was five layers, one in each of the Olympic colors. I frosted it with white buttercream and made Olympic rings out of M&Ms. For goodie bags I put gold-wrapped candies (Reese’s, Rolos, Werther’s, and Twix) in plastic bags and tied them with gold medals I bought from Oriental Trading.

The kids all had a great time and the theme worked out better than I had expected. It was tricky for me because there were so many ways to go with the theme and so many ways I could have complicated it (teams! representing countries! medals! medal ceremonies!) After thinking it over and over in my head during the weeks leading up to the party I decided it would be best to keep it simple and I am so glad I did!