Truman's fifth birthday party

I want to post about it even though it seems like I will probably be the only one who cares about this. Five years of parties for my oldest. Sigh.



Last weekend we had Truman's birthday party here at the house. Since he's in school now it was a little more challenging to figure out the guest list, because he does actually have friends of his own that aren't solely the friends of OUR friends. But also, he has 27 kids in his class so there was no way we were going to invite all of them to our house.

We decided that inviting all of our neighborhood friends who also have kids in Truman's class plus a few of his non-school friends would be enough. And instead of having both parents and all of the siblings come along, we decided to be brave and invite 'kids only.' I mean, seven five year olds can't be that destructive, right? Seems like a lesser evil than trying to jam 40+ people into our house during the winter (all about summer BBQ birthday parties with alllllll of the adults and siblings, but not so much during winter).

I specified on the invitation that the party would be from 1-3, parents could stop by to chat before or after, but otherwise we would plan to let the kids have their party without us parents interfering too much. Cupcakes, cookies, presents, games....then time to pick them up, parents! (read: your kids are sufficiently hopped up on sugar now, have fun with them tonight!)





Seven kids besides my own did come to the party and it was a blast, for all involved. We had Nate and myself, plus Memaw and my in-laws to help chaperone slightly but all of the kids really did awesome. I had them play 'Pin the Tail on Redbid', we did Simon Says in the basement, and I tried to teach the kids to run a relay race outside because it was randomly HOT at 45 degrees that day. My favorite part of these activities was when the children turned on Nate and I and wanted us to be their subjects for Simon Says. And one of their commands was, 'Simon Says....pretend to change your own diaper.' Which of course brought on rounds of laughter from the little boys of the bunch.





Classic Simon Says stuff.


Let's run relays! Oh wait, let's just race instead.


Building giant towers of blocks with some of Truman's new gift from Memaw.


Cecelia napped for half of the party and Porter did, too. But after that CC was bossing around the big kids and Porter soaked in all of the activity, totally enthralled with the chaos.

Checking on the baby through the monitor (iPad) with lots of helpers. Because an iPad can be sniffed out by five year olds like dogs can smell food.


When I asked Truman what kind of birthday party he wanted months prior, he said, 'Angry Birds. And I want you to make Angry Bird cookies.' So I gathered ideas on Pinterest and found the courage to attempt Angry Bird royal icing cookies. They turned out well and I was happy with the end result, but I have decided that I much prefer to decorate cookies in some abstract/fun way (i.e. polka dots, stripes, randomness). Trying to actually make a cookie look like a character was hard! But fun and I am a sucker for the whole process, really. Truman's face lit up when I finally showed him my handiwork---made the three day ordeal worth it, for sure.













Pear Tree Greetings represented during Truman's party with this fun 'table confetti'.


He was also a big fan of the cupcakes, candles, and friends singing to him. Duh. He wanted yellow cake, chocolate frosting and sprinkles. I upped the ante with jelly beans on top because kids are disgusting and love gross combos like this. I was right in that they all picked off the jelly beans first, then ate the frosting, and then barely touched the cupcake itself. Figures.



My boy, in heaven.






And I didn't go nuts with decorations or goodie bags, but I did both with an acceptable level of effort (I think). I got red bags and made a few Red Bird faces to put on the outside. Filled them with cookies to take home, some Smarties, an Angry Birds rubiks cube, an AB paddle ball cheapie toy, and some stickers. Good enough! Mostly I wanted my dear cookies to have a way to make it home in one piece, instead of being demolished within 2 seconds at our house.





I used some of our table confetti as garland, too. Love this stuff so much, reminds me of what I did for Cecelia's first birthday party, too.








I told the parents that if they felt a present was necessary, to keep it super simple and inexpensive. Truman did get a lot of really nice gifts and it's always entertaining to watch little kids open presents at a party. Love how it's a team effort. And how many of the kids wanted Truman to open everything right away. One child even found our fire starting logs and asked if we could open those next. Um, no.



Lots of thank you notes to write, but super cute cards help make the process less painful.


No injuries, no major brawls, no real tears, lots of laughter and noise and happy children when their parents arrived at the end. So, success! Will definitely do another 'drop and go, kids only' party sometime. Especially as the kids get older and older.


Perfectly imperfect family photo. Porter is eyeing a cupcake.