The belated birthday party post

Max's birthday was a month ago and I finally got the pictures in the computer. (thanks CJ)

We invited 5 three and four year old kids to the party. Remembering the fiasco that was Brielle's first "friends" party when she turned three (yes, I know.........A BIRTHDAY PARTY WITH A BUNCH OF THREE YEAR OLDS...... WHAT WAS I THINKING???) We scheduled the party for ONE hour.
I wanted to have a "Pirate" party. Seriously, how much fun that could have been? We could have got pirate eye patches for all the kids, had a treasure hunt, a treasure chest cake and pinata, played "walk the plank"...........

Max did not want a pirate party. He wanted a garbage truck party.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find garbage truck party stuff?

I went to the dollar store to buy invitations for the party, and the only boy type of birthday invitations that they had were some with a pirate theme.
I took that to be a sign.
I bought the invitations and some party favors and came home to show them to Max.

Me: "Hey Max, look at the invitations I got for your party, aren't they cool?"
Max: "Yes!"
Me: "See, now we can have a pirate party!"
Max: "I not did want a pirate party, I want a GARBAGE TRUCK party!"

I still sent out the pirate invitations, because I HAD spent a whole dollar on them and was still holding out hope that he would change his mind.
Naturally, Max did not change his mind, so we went ahead and planned the garbage truck party. We decorated the house with green and yellow balloons and streamers.

On the day of the party, at the appointed time, 5 cute little kids arrived at our house. (after Brielle's party the night before, this one would be a piece of cake)

When they first came, we had some crafts for them to do. I bought some plain party hats and some animal stickers, and let them decorate their own hats. This was great fun for the kids, and Max covered his hat with bird stickers.
Next, we had some pages for them to color. Brielle went to PBS.org and printed some Oscar the Grouch coloring pages. The only one available had a big number "4" on it, which was perfect, because it was Max's fourth birthday!

The first game we played was "Pin the garbage can on the garbage truck"


The next game we played was a version of duck, duck, goose which we changed to be "garbage, garbage, recycle"

The next activity we had planned was a pinata.

Just try to find a garbage truck pinata. I dare you.

At first, I planned to make a ghetto pinata, but instead we decided on a different way to get the big bag of candy to the kids.

I had bought the big Costco bag of candy (planning on having some left over) We dumped some of the candy on the living room floor, covered it in a big pile of torn up newspaper and told the kids to dig through the garbage to find the candy.

We called this game "dumpster diving"




The kids had a blast digging through the paper to find the candy. I went into the kitchen to get the cake ready, and it seemed like it was taking a long time for the kids to get the candy. I later found out that Aaron had continued to dump candy in the pile of newspaper until we had gone through the entire 10 pound bag of candy.

That's right folks, a 10 lb bag of candy divided between 6 kids. I'm pretty sure there were a few moms that weren't too happy with me that day.

When they had stuffed their goodie bags full of candy, Max opened his presents, then the kids came into the kitchen for cake.

A garbage truck cake.



I will say that it was quite delicious!

At that point, the hour was up, and the moms started arriving to pick up their children.
And Max said that it was a "reeeaolly fun birthday party" then he spent the remainder of the day playing with his new toys.

I sliced myself another chunk of garbage truck cake and sat on the couch with my feet up, happy to have the parties over.

Except they weren't over. We were having one more party (I know you are wondering "how much more can this poor woman take??")
The next day we were having a family birthday party for both Max and Brielle.

And Grandma was bringing the cake :0)




A pink elephant, you don't get any cuter than that.


As we were growing up, my mom would make these fabulous cut up cakes every year for our birthdays and also for all of our cousins and now she makes them for her grandchildren.