Well, there go two more birthdays under my belt!  Now I’m in the lull before the holiday storm.  I can’t believe my little guys are 3 and 6!  Where has the time gone?!  People have suggested I throw parties out of my house to make it easier on myself, but throwing theme parties brings me such joy!  If Julius or Patricia ever wants to invite their entire class (more on that later) or requests a special location like Davis Farmland for their party I will be happy to oblige!  But I selfishly love planning parties.  And I suspect I don’t have too many more years of at home birthdays left to plan before they ask for big kid birthday parties.

To kick off the birthday marathon, I’ll tell you all about Julius’ party.  Julius is in Kindergarten and has made some new friends in school.  He gave me a list of kids he wanted to invite to his party which was a mix of friends he met in preschool and friends he met in kindergarten.  Total he invited 10 kids, which to me was a lot of children.  The school district this year decided for liability reasons (or something) they couldn’t give out parent/guardian emails to other parents.  I was really thrown for a loop on how to connect with the parents.  I ended up going on social media and found several parents that way!  Unfortunately, there were 3 kiddos Julius asked me to invite who I couldn’t find on social media.  As you know, I do evites, so I really needed just emails.  Since we couldn’t feasibly invite the whole class (he has 20 children in his class, that is the same number of people who came to the party, including parents) I addressed envelopes to “the parents/guardians of so&so”.  I filled them with my contact information and a vague note saying I’d love to exchange emails.  I stuck them in Julius’ backpack (actually Julius stuck them in the front pocket, a pocket he never uses because it was “his special letter pocket”) and told them to try to sneak them into his friends’ backpacks.  He assured me he was up to the task and would put them in his friends’ take home folders.  Will and I had a bet going if the envelopes would reach the parents, and how far after Julius’ birthday, but just after 3pm that day (before Julius was even home from school) I received emails from all 3 parents!  He did it!  I was so proud!

Quick tangent… I found out recently that Julius got a teensy bit of help from his teacher to be sneaky about getting the envelopes into the folders, for which we are grateful.  I feel bad that we cannot fit the entire class/boy scout troop/gymnastics class/former preschool friends in our house!  As a child I was always anxious of hurting someone’s feelings by not inviting them to my party.  Julius on the other hand was very adamant about who he wanted to invite.  There were names I’d heard him mention that he insisted he “didn’t have room to invite”.  I was hesitant to push the issue.  Apparently in the past the school has said if you send invites in school, you have to invite the whole class.  I didn’t even want to send in notes to parents for that exact concern, but at the same time I cannot even imagine inviting an entire classroom to a party!  20 kids sounds like absolute chaos!

Speaking of chaos…. on to Julius’s party.  Julius originally wanted a shark theme (of course) but as the date approached he changed the request to a train party!  I realllllllllllly wanted to build some sort of train attachment to a ride-on lawnmower, but figured some parents might not be cool with that… Plus I got rid of the ride-on a couple years ago when we switched to Moe+lawn service, so I would have had to borrow one.  Instead we decided to do a silly train adventure.

Julius’ Train Party

Theme

Clearly the theme was trains.  I made a bunch of black and white signs that we taped around the house above the doorways.  The signs read Southbound Trains, Northbound Trains, Luggage Room, Souvenir Shop, Dining Car etc… On the foyer floor Amy (who was visiting from out of town) and Will put down black masking tape “tracks”.  To complete the theme Will and I wore conductor outfits (consisting of some last minute hats I made and clothing from our closets), and Amy (unprompted!) wore an engineer costume!

Activities

The activities for this party were tricky!  Some kids spent 20 seconds on each activity, some kids spent 20 minutes!  Next time I will have to plan a bit better for that.  I tried to have some little silly activities in between the main activities so kids weren’t bored, but even so some kids weren’t terribly interested in the activities.  I’ve give you the order we did the activities and a summary below.

Luggage Claim!

Luggage Claim

As each child entered I pointed them to the Luggage Room.  I’d used those paper bags I’d been collecting from Hannaford’s order pick-up to make paper suitcases!  They were actually pretty easy to assemble after I got a bit of an assembly line going.  The suitcases contained a red scarf and engineer’s cap… classic train attire as well as more stickers to decorate their suitcase.  (Julius asked me just before the party “where his costume was” and I told him to just wait for a few minutes.)

He’s ready to get on (Or drive??) the train!

Train Depot

Towards Northbound Trains I had set up a paint table with wooden Brio-like trains I’d gotten at Hobby Lobby.  They were so cute and inexpensive (I got them for half price)!  This is the activity that some children spent a large period of time on and others spent almost no time.

Setup for train painting

Kids decorating their trains

Souvenir Shop

For those who finished early I sent them inside to write out Souvenir postcards to their friends and family.  I put out real stamps and postcards and cut a recycled USPS mail box to use as a mail drop slot.  Many children wrote cards to their family which I mailed after the party.  Others wrote cards to Julius which he loved reading afterwards.  It was a win!  Some kids finished this activity quickly too and I suggested they decorate their luggage or just play with the toys in the room while we waited for others to finish.  In retrospect this might have been a good time to start kids on lunch, I’m not sure.

Post card setup

Kids writing out postcards

The Great Train Mystery

After all the kids were done painting and washing their hands I blew my conductor’s whistle and had them line up to head down to the Southbound Trains (in the basement).  I had built a large cardboard train out of huge boxes I’d collected, plus some I’d gotten from neighbors off the local Buy Nothing group.  Julius and Patricia had seen me building the train (it was impossible to hide from them) and they were so excited about it.  They played in it every day after they found it, and I had to caution them not to break it before the party.  During the party some of the kids were pretty rough with the train (read: jumping on top of the cardboard roof) which I think made Julius feel a bit bad.  Luckily the train was no worse for wear!  It survived and still looks great!

While playing in the train one of the kids found a note!  Julius (being a pro reader) read the note aloud which was a clue!  Will put sticky notes with a magnifying glass in various locations around the house, and the kids had fun going from room to room to find the missing package.  It turned out the package was left in the luggage room all along!  And it contained train whistles!  (I apologized profusely to the parents and said I wouldn’t judge if they got left behind.)  The train whistles are the coolest ones I’ve seen and sound just like real train horns!  The kids seemed pretty happy with the adventure.

Kids in the train!

Will leading the train adventure

Opening the missing luggage!

The prizes!

Brio Trains

After lunch we suggested the kids head to the “Northbound Trains” which was in the mancave (the room over the garage).  Up there Will had set up almost all the Brio train tracks in a crazy setup utilizing as many pieces as he could.  It was a masterpiece!  The point was to encourage kids to use their painted trains on the track, but mostly the kids used the trains we already had up there.  Some of the kids would have spent the rest of the time up there, but many others took one look and bolted!  Ha!  What an adventure.

The epic track Will set up!

Food

For food Julius wanted smoked gouda mac and cheese.  I was fretting about this.  Mac and cheese does not hold well.  It needs to be served immediately for the best texture!  I experimented with it on Halloween and cooked the pasta 2 min less than usual and simmered the sauce for just until thickened slightly,  then mixed it up and dumped it in a crock pot on the “warm” setting for an hour, stirring every 20 minutes.  It was acceptable after an hour.  Not great, but not completely separated either.  So I decided to go with it.

Since I didn’t feel like making another entrée I decided a mac and cheese bar could work for an adult lunch as well.  In addition to the mac and cheese I also had sautéed onions, sautéed peppers, brussel sprouts, broccoli and pulled pork as toppings.  The mac and cheese bar toppings I sautéed/roasted in advance (except for the pulled pork which I purchased) and then held in the oven on “warm” for serving.  Sides were bread with fancy butter and a garden salad.  Almost no adults ate anything!  I was horrified.  Maybe it was all the carbs, but we had 24 guests and only 3/4 of a crock pot of mac and cheese was eaten (I had 2 crock pots full) and not even an entire head of red leaf lettuce was finished (I had prepped 3 heads).  Most of the bread did go though!  So that was something…

The mac and cheese bar lunch setup!

Kiddos in “the dining car”

Dessert

For dessert I made chocolate cupcakes.  These I made the week before and then put in stasher bags in the freezer after they cooled.  I used this recipe for the cupcakes and it was phenomenal (I omitted the coffee because I didn’t have it).  I’ll make this recipe every time from now on.  To frost them I took them out of the freezer and out of the freezer bags (don’t believe what they say about this) the day before the party and put them in giant tupperware containers to thaw.  As the cupcakes thawed I made a bunch of tiny trains and train cars out of packaged cookies and candies from the store.  Then I made this American Buttercream frosting (I did ABC this time instead of my favorite Italian Meringue buttercream because it colors better – as another bonus it’s also ridiculously easy to make).  By some birthday miracle every single kid got the cupcake they wanted (either a locomotive or a train car).

Overall I would say the kids looked like they had a good time!  Julius had a great party with his friends and I can’t wait to plan the next one!