Today we celebrated Caden's 4th birthday. His actual birthday is not for a few more weeks but this was the only weekend my parents could come to his party in June. We decided to have it at our house this year. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone here. I love having people over but the list grew and grew and before we knew it over 50 people had RSVPed! 25 kids came and 26 adults. I was honestly not sure if everyone would fit comfortably in my backyard. The party turned out great. God took care of the rain and we had a beautiful day. Everyone seemed to have a great time.
We didn't get to invite everyone we wanted so we invited Caden's Sunday school class and church and the kids in our small group that are his age, some really good friends we used to go to church with across town, and my best friend and her family from middle school. In addition we invited my parents, aunt, and siblings. Caden really wanted to invite his whole class from preschool. However, I thought it might already be overwhelming. There were also some kids from my Moms club I wanted to invite but like I said it was already going to be a full house.
I really love backyard birthday parties. As a kid my parents would throw me huge parties but they were never at our house except when I was really young. I usually had parties at Chuck E Cheese, roller skating parties (this was the 80s) and swim parties at our country club as I got older. I really admire one of my friends who always throws incredible parties at her house for her daughter. She's had ponies, bounce houses, zip lines, etc. They also have a pool. We didn't have a ton of money to spend so with our budget I came up with the following centers. On one side of the yard I kept it pretty dry, with the log cabin and non-wet games - the horse shoes and bean bag toss. There was also a smaller non wet slide. The other side had the big water slide and trampoline. Our small swing set was in the middle. Here's what we had for different centers and food and drinks.
Water slide, which is also our birthday gift to Caden.
Big Trampoline - already own
Swing Set - already own
Log Cabin - already own
Bean bag toss game
Ring/horse shoe game
Small pool
Food - I bought sandwiches, a fruit tray, and a veggie tray from Target's Deli. I also bought lots of bags of chips and lots of juice and water.
Cake - a friend of mine was going to bake one for me but she got sick so I got one from Costco.
Water balloons, we did a water balloon toss and some kids would try and catch the water balloon as they went down the slide.
Big Balloons
Plates, napkins, etc.
Party Favors, big loopy straw, chalk, and bubbles (which I forgot to hand out!)
I think that was about it. I was amazed how the kids naturally spaced themselves out among the different activities. I think I counted 6 kids on the trampoline at one time but usually there were only around 4 or 5. The big water slide is only supposed to have one person at a time go down it at once. Since these kids don't weigh a bunch a few went with two and it seemed okay. I love how the slide has a "pool" walk way so the kids don't have to walk in the grass to go back up the slide. I think I counted around 10 or 11 kids in the slide area at once. The dry area usually had between 2 and 6 kids. The biggest hit was the big water slide. Here are a ton of pictures from his party! Thanks everyone for coming!
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