Hockey night in Canada: the 8-year-old edition

For the first time in Cook Family Birthday Party History, we repeated a birthday party theme for a second consecutive year. There was no choice in the matter. Simply put, Liam still loves hockey more than anything in the world.

And, his birthday fell on a Saturday. What he really wanted to do was invite his friends over to watch the Leafs-Habs game on Hockey Night in Canada, with a little mini-sticks tourney thrown in for good measure.

He and Chad spent some fun hours getting ready for the party. They used red and blue duct tape to mark out a rink on the floor in the basement. One of Liam's birthday gifts was a less-expensive version of something akin to the Budweiser Red Light. You can't sync it up to automatically fire when your team scores, but you can set it off with a remote, and there's a switch on the bottom so you can activate the correct horn for your hometown arena (did you know the horns are all different? I sure didn't.) One little party guest called it 'sick' which was high praise indeed.

On top of that, there was an NHL pinata. First the kids took shots at it. Then they whacked it with their mini-sticks. Finally they relented and pulled the strings in the bottom, the way the pinata was meant to be emptied.

Chaos ensued.

Then there was a round of hockey card bingo. Each kid got a pack of hockey cards and had to try to be the first one out by getting rid of all his cards - who has a goalie, who has a Bruin, etc.

Hard to believe, but not everyone is a rabid hockey fan! Liam ran to fetch the wrapper that his giant NHL Easter egg came in so he could point out the appropriate team logos to the kids who didn't know.

In between the activities, the kids did watch a bit of the game. Most of the kids were Leafs fans and we felt bad for the two Habs fans whose team went down in a bit of a blowout.

Naaah, not really. Leafs all the way!!!!

The party didn't end until after 10 p.m. when the last guest was picked up. Well, it didn't really end then; two of the guests slept over. The boys were all exhausted though so there were no shenanigans - they were out like lights. All three of them had to be up bright and early for hockey the next morning - Liam was on the ice in Blenheim at 9 a.m. And he wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

Happy 8th birthday, sweet Liam.