A Thomas Birthday Party

We have gotten away with the family birthday party for ages 2, 3, and 4...
but AJ has been to enough friend birthday parties to start requesting his own this year.

He surprised us by wanting a Thomas the train party...
not a firefighter party...
not a Phineas and Ferb party...
Thomas.

I'm not going to lie, I was super nervous to host his first friend party...
so I researched Thomas parties on-line for weeks.

Peeps out there are crazy, over the top with their birthday parties...
renting carnival rides...creating spreads fit for a wedding...parents renting conductor costumes for $70...

what?!

How about some cake, ice cream, and good old fashion backyard fun?

A little bit of my teacher roots came out, and we did have a time-line...
more to help me stay on track than anything else.

Store bought decorations...

Some veggie dipper snacks...

I love this idea! My kids will eat anything they can dip. It's like magic.
I also saw an extension of this idea where a genius mom out there keeps her peanut butter jars and puts peanut butter in the bottom, tosses in some celery sticks, pops the lid back on, and throws it in the cooler for picnics and camping trips!
Why don't I think of these ideas?!

We had coloring pages as time fillers to fall back on...

Girlfriend loves to color...
if only she didn't color on my dining room tablecloth the morning after the party...
as she powered down "a few" extra pez she found from the party...
She lives by the philosophy do now, seek forgiveness later...

Something about having a preschool crush melts my heart...
He's been telling me for the last year they are going to get married...
and after VBS this summer he expanded his future plans to include having a baby to get baptised.

After snacks, we kicked off the party with a Train Walk...

where everyone walked around during the Thomas music
and stopped on a number when the music stopped...

just like a cake walk...except instead of getting a cake, you got a conductor hat.

Then the kids cooled off with a water relay...
trying to fill their team's bucket with water first...
except Andy had drilled holes in their cups, making it significantly more challenging to get the water there...good for a few laughs...

Girlfriend didn't get it and slowed her team down as she tried to drink the water out of her cup...

Next, we went inside to put together some foam train frames with double sided tape...

We brought the train table up from the basement as a time filler.
I don't know a kid that can resist the pull of a train table.

We had temp. tattoos...
Tattoo tip: When you need to get 13 tattoos on 13 kids fast...
pull the plastic sheet off, soak a tray of paper towels, lay the tattoos out on the wet paper towels tattoo facing up, then just pick them up and stick them on! No holding down and counting to 30. Just grab, stick, and go! The key is to remember to take off the plastic sheet...otherwise you adhere the tattoo to the plastic...not good.

And a backyard party is not complete with a pinata...

We opted for the pull the ribbon pinata for a less violent approach...
just make sure all kids understand to only pull ONE ribbon...
because it sucks if you were behind the one kid in line that didn't get the memo...

Check out Girlfriend showing her daddy her sucker loot...
she loves her sugar.

We served pizza and juice boxes...
a balanced diet according to AJ.

And enjoyed cake (thank you King Soopers)...

and Blue Bell ice cream (thank you Texas)!

Whew! That was fun,
but I have to say next year I think I'm paying the zoo $350 to host his party and clean up.