The Hintons: Birthday Play Date

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Birthday Play Date

Part of me wanted to do a party for Will this year and part of me just didn't want to go through the effort. But I was feeling ambitious and had pinned ideas for making my own train cake, making toy trains out of boxes for all of the kids and all sorts of other fun train themed party ideas.

Then a good friend of mine mentioned that they never did parties for their kids until they were 5. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that Will really doesn't care about all those little "extra" things. So much of it would be for pictures sake...and that much work simply wasn't enough motivation for a picture.

But I wanted him to have some friends over and at least do a little celebration.

Birthday Play Date.

The night before, we went to all of Will's friends houses and invited them over to play the following day. It was meant to be super informal, just come and play outside for a while and eat cake. Parents were told they could drop their kids off, or if they wanted to stay and chat that was welcome as well. They could come when they wanted and leave when they wanted.

It was perfect.

Will had about 5 friends show up to play.

They enjoyed jumping on the trampoline.

Playing with some of Will's trains.

Decorating cupcakes.

Riding bikes.

I think Will was in heaven. He had talked about it ALL week and how he was so excited for his friends to come play. But I think he was even more excited about his chocolate cake. Every time I asked what he wanted, he said chocolate cake.

While I was gathering kids over to decorate the cupcakes, Blake got her hands on one and was chowing down. Then she discovered frosting. She had a plastic butter knife that she would dip in the frosting and lick it off.

After a while, I had to close the lid so she wouldn't eat it all. She threw a fit and clawed at it trying to get it back open.

It was to let the kids run wild while all of the adults just sat back and chatted.