Thomas is turning 4 this year, so we decided to throw him an official party and invited *all* of his classmates over to celebrate. We figured he was old enough to appreciate having a party with friends and only needed to settle on a theme. He has been asking for "big boy" Legos for quite some time now and I promised him he could start using them when he was 4, so we went with a Lego theme!
Why 4? Because the Lego Junior sets are labeled as 4-7 and he can read well enough to get that he should be allowed to use them when he is 4. Turns out they are the same size as the rest of the big boy Legos, they just have slightly easier projects to build. So we were all in for tiny Legos! (My feet may never forgive me...)
And a Lego party definitely needs a Lego cake! The little Lego figurines are toys, but the bricks are made out of candy. I bought a candy mold thinking it would be easy-peasy to make Lego decorations. It required a little bit more time and effort than I expected to make them look perfect, but the end result was well worth it. Thomas loved his Lego cake!
Since it was a Lego theme, I figured we had to have a bunch of the smaller Legos to play with. I went to Target to buy a big set and was a little bit shocked at the price. So I turned to Amazon - which was the same price... Torn on buying him a ton of Legos and not spending a ton of money, I may have been lured to the dark side and bought him a giant bag of knock-off Legos. The reviews from all of the other (cheap) parents said they worked perfectly with the actual Legos and the only difference was the missing "LEGO" stamped on the top. Considering it was less than half the price, I decided it was worth the gamble to have a bunch for party time.
And for the record, they are awesome, they fit together perfectly and they even work with a different brand of Flego (my new name for Fake Legos!) base plates. One of my coworkers was trying to give me a hard time about buying Flegos. It did not work, I feel absolutely no shame. ;)
Also this photo is pre-party, I gave him the Flegos at breakfast. I am usually totally cool with wearing pj's all day on the weekend, but maybe not when we have lots of guests coming over.
Finally it was party time! I lost track of time and barely got Thomas up from his nap before his first friend arrived, so he was a little out of sorts at first. But once two friends arrived, he was ready to party! Of course, the boys all ignored my bucket of big boy legos to play with Duplos. Figures...
Then the kids found the costume rack and the party got really wild! There were all kinds of costumed kids running around! Of course Thomas chose the train engineer costume. :)
But we had all kinds of rocket ships, dinosaurs and Superheroes running around. Lottie was chilling with Brittney & Nonni in the middle of the living room and suddenly she was being circled by all kinds of excitement. Surprisingly, she didn't seem to mind - she's apparently ready to hang with the big kids!
Henry joined in the fun with his penguin costume. Can I just say that he is the most adorable penguin ever? Or maybe the penguin costume is just my favorite - Thomas is pretty darn adorable in it as well!
Then we had two dinosaurs and they were roaring full blast! I think the look on Aunt Heather's face says it all - these boys were loud dinosaurs! Abby was roaring as well - though she didn't have a tail. She's got the dino walk down though!
Abby was also the only one to take advantage of all the cool Lego coloring pages I printed out. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the sit down coloring wasn't as exciting as the trains, cars, grocery store, Legos and costumes...
Then we moved the party outside to make sure we wore the kids out before giving them cake and sending them home - ha! I aired the bounce house up and told Thomas to go tell his friends to come outside. I'm not sure he told any of them before taking off to bounce...
In his defense, this was the first time it's been warm enough to take the bounce house outside and it looks much more exciting in the yard!
But his friends figured it out and soon everyone was outside! Matt finished up the super awesome sand box just in time for the party and it was actually more popular than the bounce house - if you can imagine such a thing. Of course, he did do a pretty amazing job on the sandbox! And it has benches to sit on while the kids play. I told him if he can add a cup holder on the side, it will be momma's hang-out all summer!
Not one to miss out on making the party as exciting as possible, I busted out the Bubble Tornado! These poor kids didn't know where to focus their excitement! There were bubbles blowing everywhere!
So much going on at once! Little Lottie is getting in on the bubble action! Thomas is trying to figure out the big bubble wand and there's a dinosaur headed toward the jump house!
The big bubbles were a little tricky, so I ended up having to take over the bubble wand. But they were amazing when I got them to work. Look at those giant things!!!
I think it was at this point Matt noticed one of our new neighbors standing at the fence. He's five and looked so incredibly sad he wasn't part of the action. So we invited him over! (If you look closely in the big bubble, you can see him crouched by the fence at the back)
Finally it was food time - we even managed to get all the kids inside without any tears! I had moved the little tables to one side of the dining room so they could all sit together. And it was strategically as far from the carpet as possible. You're welcome, Matt!
Cake time!!! Aunt Heather had to do a last minute run to the store because I totally forgot to buy a "4" candle for the top of the cake. Whoops! And you can see the most important part of the cake - the "THOMAS" on the side. When I was showing him Lego cakes, one happened to have his name and he was only interested in the cake that said Thomas. Which is the only reason I found Lego font to make a print-out and cut that thing out by hand. That is love!
Thomas was a little overwhelmed by the lit cake and everyone singing Happy Birthday to him. It was actually pretty impressive how boisterous it was - and sounded so in tune since we had so many different people contributing!
You can also see that Matt is wearing a name tag - I am horrible at names and had the genius idea of having name tags for the parents. It worked great and no one seemed to think it was too weird!
He may have been overwhelmed by the singing, but he was certainly ready to blow his candles out! He almost got all of them in one shot, but it's pretty hard to blow out 13 lit candles. The 4 was not lit because the wick was buried in the wax. What do you expect for a last minute run to the grocery store...?
The kids chowed down on the Lego cake! Some of them liked the Legos better, some of them preferred the cake. Either way, there was pretty much no sound coming from the table for the next few minutes. Which is how you can tell they approve of the cake! :)
Present time! I am usually a "You don't have to bring presents" kind of person, but he seemed so excited about the presents at the parties he has attended that I figured he deserved a chance to open presents with his friends as well. You can see the spectators were equally as interested in what was underneath all the colorful paper!
Overall, it was a great party! I was a little stressed in the days leading up to it, but thankfully not all 16 of his classmates showed up and everyone who came had a blast. There were amazingly no tears and no melt-downs. They just played and played and played until it was cake time and then most of them even said good-bye without too much of a fuss. Win-win-win situation! Happy Almost Birthday Thomas, I can't believe you'll be 4 tomorrow! Love you whole bunches!
And don't think I have forgotten about Henry. Dear Henry was creeping on the sidelines trying to see what presents he could make off with. Lucky for him, Brittney gave Thomas several dinosaur themed presents and one of them was a pack of dinosaur masks. Henry loved the masks! He was roaring and trying to tackle me once I put one on him. Henry did such a good job the whole party hanging with the big boys* and not worrying about all the attention being on his brother. Best little brother, ever! :)
*Ok, in all honesty, he was as big as some of the "big" boys. That might be why he wasn't at all worried about running around with them. Love you, my big-little man!