I am coming to the conclusion that I will never be timely ever again in my life. I don’t know if I should try with all my might to counteract it or if it is a losing battle and I should come to terms with it.
Anyway, over a month ago, we had a little birthday party for Mark. I thought it turned out pretty neat, so I wanted to share a few of my favorite parts…
First, I whipped up some invitations with the help of Photoshop, my printer, some construction paper and string, and little hands…
Using Photoshop, I snipped Mark out of our family picture and created the text for the front and back of the invitation, then printed and cut and glued and made some little tiny flags (I love flags) and added a string of them across the top. Then he wrote his friends’ names on their invitation on the line I provided.
That string of flags was inspired by my SIL Carrie making a cool happy birthday banner. She cut the letters out of sheets of construction paper and glued each one onto a whole sheet, and strung them all up on a string – totally cute! Mine had to be flags, though!
Mom brought me the letters fresh off her Cricut cutter, so I didn’t have to cut each one out. I strung it from beam to beam in our great room (it is not very great, as in large, but it is our kitchen, dining and living room all in one).
I planned this as a kids-centered party, and didn’t want to be feeling awkward in my tiny house with adults standing all around with nothing to do but watch me try to entertain the kiddos. I told the adults to drop off the kids and I had activities planned and ready to go…
Those are goody bags that had a spot to color in Lightning McQueen and Mater, and my dining table covered in newspaper to protect it from stray crayon and maker scribbles.
The goody bags were prefilled with trophies from the dollar store (4/$1) and candy, stickers and noisemakers.
It was a very racy party, everyone had Pit Crew badges…
And the games were all centered around racing. I didn’t take pics but we had the hot wheels race where each kid chose a Cars movie hot wheels type car from Mark’s extensive collection and lined up at one end of the hallway and shoved their car off, trying to get it to land in (or close to) a designated tile “box” outlined in painter’s tape, at the other end of the hall.
Then we had the bean bag toss where they stood behind a line and tried to land their beanbags inside a dirt bike tire on the floor across the room. We had four of the neighbor’s 17 (that is not a typo) children show up and the older two were super helpful in helping the little ones with the games – it was such a blessing!
After coloring and games it was time for presents…
He was so psyched to open every present!
Then time for cake…
Mark got his own personal piece of cake to blow out the candles on. Have you ever seen a toddler “blow” out their candles? It is not just air that comes out, people! And he was sick, so I didn’t want to spread the germs!
After cake we had an extra half-hour so we bundled up and went outside to be wild. The whole party went really well! I had plenty of help – my teacher friend Kristel stayed to help me wrangle the kids and also ended up taking some pictures, which was good because I was a little busy! Grandma Debbie was also there to help with the littlest ones. Grandma Sue who lives out of town, paid for the cake – Spiderman was very cool and was tasty! And Ty was the game judge and also supervised the wild time out in the pasture. It would have been severely chaotic without all the help, thanks guys!
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