For my son's 9th birthday, we had a luau in September. We do have a swimming pool, but September can be cool, so we weren't sure of the weather. I tried to plan things so that we could be indoors as well. We decorated the fence surrounding the pool with plastic fish, dolphins, and sea horses. We used pineapples to tie balloons for the tables. We lined the pathways with tiki torches that we borrowed. The party was partially a sleep over and the first night we had a bonfire where the boys (all eighteen of them!) toasted marshmallows and ate smores. The next day, the weather had warmed enough for them to go swimming. After breakfast, we erupted volcanoes. I had made each boy a volcano prior to the party. I found directions on the Arm & Hammer web site. They painted them, then we went outside to erupt them. I looked up each boys name on a Hawaiian site and printed out a set of labels with eveyones name it each one. Each boy had to guess what the others names were and stick their name label on each other. We played paste the coconut on the palm tree. I purchased a 6' palm tree decoration and used brown construction paper to cut out coconuts and wrote each boys name (in Hawaiian) on the coconuts with white chalk, to keep track of whose landed where. Then we rolled coconuts down the driveway, marking which went the farthest. Next, we opened the coconuts (also got the directions for this from the web.) Each boy tasted the "milk" and had a piece of coconut meat. I froze two kiwi fruits and we passed the kiwi, under the chin. I also made up a "mad lib" story about the party and all the fill in words were in Hawaiian. The boys really enjoyed finding out what their words meant. Our last activity was a coloring book of endangered Hawaiian animals (again printed from the web). I had plenty of markers and colored pencils and used this to quiet the boys after the bonfire. We watched the movie Cool Runnings before going to bed. As a reward system and to keep some control, I used leis. Each time one of the boys showed appropriate behavior, won a game, brushed their teeth, helped with drinks, etc... they got a lei. The menu was simple, hot dogs and burgers on the grill, but I added fruit salad, which the boys helped to cut and put together, this way they got to see the fruit ahead of time and learn the names. We purchased a parrot piñata and filled it with fruit chews and tropical flavored lollipops. Drinks were Hawaiian Punch, Non-Alcoholic Pina Colada and Strawberry Daiquiris with umbrellas. I went to the library and took out some cds with Hawaiian music. Instead of cake, we served Key Lime Pie and Pineapple upside down cake. Snacks of pretzel and cheese fish were served in sand buckets. I made blue Jell-O with sea creature pineapple shapes and served it in a fish bowl! Our party bags had fish pencils, beach safes, blow up beach balls and suntan lotion, that I got on sale at the end of the season. Finally, we printed out thank you notes on the computer that said "Mahalo nui loa" (thank you very much). I think my son and his friends had a great time,