Toy Story Birthday Party

Even though Liam's 4th birthday is not until Wednesday, we celebrated a few days early with his big Toy Story birthday party yesterday.  He had said back in the fall that he wanted to have his party at home.  I was a little worried since I knew we'd be inviting more kids this year than ever before, and the weather is always so unpredictable in February.  We had about 4" of snow on the ground the day of his 2nd birthday party, but last year the kids had on short sleeves.  So I had to come up with some sort of activity that could be done inside or out, depending on the weather.  So one day in the fall we went to see a movie at a local theater.  They happened to have a balloon artist there who was amazing.  He wasn't making the standard balloon dog & giraffe.  No, he was making really cool things.  He made Zachary a belt holster, sword, & viking hat.  And when Liam requested a monkey, he made a palm tree (that was bigger than Liam), with a monkey hanging around it, with a banana in his hand.  It. Was. Amazing.  Before we left, I got a card from him, and knew that was going to be our party activitiy.  I booked him the next week.

We had a good mix of kids at the party - friends from school, kids of our friends (from various points in life).  Liam had a great time.  The balloon guy was fabulous and the kids had fun getting "dressed" in different balloon styles.  *Warning - lots of pictures!*

(Benjamin is ready for battle)

(Cameron, the Transformer)

(Addison, the butterfly)

(Carys's funky flower hat)

(All kinds of funny hats!)

(Alayna, another butterfly)

(Callie the princess)

(Case, Carter, Liam, & Ethan having a swordfight)

(Zachary the Army guy)

(Liam with his special Buzz Lightyear jet pack)

The balloon guy's big finale was the "balloon-yata" - a giant balloon filled with candy & smaller (inflated) balloons.  He held it up, and popped it, and all the candy & balloons came showering down over the kids.  I have to say it was pretty cool.

After the balloon guy's hour was up, we had pizza, followed by cake.  After several years of buying cakes for the boys' parties, I went back to homemade for this one.  Mainly because I wasn't sure that I could find a Toy Story themed cake that wasn't super tacky.  I found a cute topper on etsy, and decided to stick that in the top of the giant cupcake.  I also found some super cute cupcake toppers that I couldn't resist, so I got those too.  I had already decided to make cupcakes anyway, since I wasn't sure if the cake would feed everyone.

I'm realizing as I go through the pictures tonight that there are a lot of things about the day that I didn't get pictures of: a good face shot of Liam, a picture of us with Liam, a picture of the goody bags, etc.  But I did get Liam blowing out his candles.

Liam had a great time at his party.  We did the party earlier in the day than we've ever done before, so it was nice that when the party ended, we still had most of the day left.  He was ready to start opening presents pretty much as soon as the last guests left, so we did that.  Then we headed out to the mall to exchange a couple of duplicate gifts, and spend a gift card he got for Build-A-Bear (PSA for anyone wanting to go to Build-A-Bear the Saturday before Valentine's Day - DON'T DO IT.  It is a complete zoo in there.  I think we were there for about an hour, waiting in line to have his animals stuffed.  He wanted to wait, so we did...).  By the time bedtime rolled around, he was one tired boy.  It was a good day all around!