This year, Katie has been obsessed with How to Train Your Dragon. I don't really mind because it's much more interesting than whichever Disney Princess is popular at the moment. The even more interesting part is that Ellie was into the dragons and vikings of Berk when she was roughly the same age. I have memories of watching the first movie with her and then flying her around (though Paul did it most of the time because I was big and pregnant) because she declared she was Toothless. It's neat to see the parallels and differences in the way they love and play dragons. Katie is more realistic, preferring to pretend she's a viking (usually Hiccup), while Ellie was always quick to play the role of the non-human (she also had a Thomas the Tank Engine phase, where, yes, she insisted she was a train and would only respond when called "Thomas"). We'll see what route Anthony takes... I'm guessing he'll be the right age when the third HTTYD movie is released. 
After the cake was almost ready, I began to decorate, using some of Katie's dragon and viking toys, streamers we already had, and some new decorations, like the torches and shields that hung on the wall.
The decorated lunch table (though people ate everywhere!) had a cool viking boat I made as a centerpiece, and a "room transformation kit" I bought helped decorate the walls and windows with shields, dragons, and vikings.
The party was at lunchtime, so we made "chicken on bone", as Katie says, along with other dragon-themed food, like lava balls (cheese balls), dragon eggs (grapes), a veggie tray with a dragon made out of cucumber in it (unfortunately I forgot to take a close-up picture before it got devoured), trail mix that I called "Ruffnut Mix", and...
Dragon food... Fish and eels!
We also had some fun with dry ice and made "Zippleback Punch". For the less adventurous, there were also bottles of Scauldron water.
The cake, the food, the balloons... Everything was ready for our guests to arrive!
First, our friends had to outfit themselves as vikings. They made their own shields, coloring and putting stickers on cake boards that had duct tape handles on the back.
Then they armed themselves with a sword or an axe (foam of course!), and a viking helmet completed the look.
Once outfitted for adventure, they ran around chasing dragons (and each other) as we waited for everyone to arrive.
I then invited them to my tattoo parlor (thank you, Target dollar section!), and gave the kids dragon tattoos. Katie kept hers on for about 2 minutes before freaking out and wanting it removed. Birthday girl was a little overwhelmed.
Next was the first organized game: capture the dragon. I asked the big kids to help me wrangle up the inflatable dragons they had been slaying and riding, and I lined them up on the floor. Each kid got a turn to toss a hula hoop onto the dragons to try to catch one. It was a good game for all ages (the range was 2-6 years old).
After all that playing, our vikings were hungry, and the food was ready, so we ate lunch, and birthday girl perked up. She loves any meat on a bone.
While everyone finished eating, I painted the kids' faces with racing stripes before going outside for dragon races!
We split the kids into two teams, and each kid was given a small toy sheep (they were squishy, like a stress ball). They had to run down, while riding stick-horse dragons (the sock dragons I made during Wizard Week attached to a large dowel), drop their sheep in a bucket, run back, hand off the dragon, and so on, until each kid had a turn. The first team to finish would win the relay race.
Some of the younger kids had trouble with the finer points of the game, so there was no clear winner, and birthday girl shut down again. It's hard being three.
So I took a dragon head off a stick, and we went straight to piñata time. Katie was still not in the mood, so I helped her on her turn.
Then the kids played inside and outside for a while, eating their ring pops, and having fun.
After cake, Katie opened her presents.
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