Ryan turned five on February 1, and we celebrated his birthday the following weekend with an indoor party at Pump-it-Up. This was my first time hosting a birthday party for either boy not at our house, and I'd say it went quite well. I've always worried about his early February party, because if the weather is rotten, we're all indoors. We've gotten lucky with his previous birthdays, and we could have ended up having his party outdoors on this Saturday, but I would have been massively freaking out all during our Snow Day the day before if we were at home. So I'm especially glad we went the Pump it Up route. We picked Pump it Up - out of all the dozens of various bouncy places around - because they actually keep you separated from anybody else. One of my chief objections to parties at other places is that its hard to know who is there for you, and to keep track of everyone. Pump it Up moves you through two different bouncy rooms, and then finally to the party room, and you rarely see anybody else there.
As I've blogged about before, Ryan wanted a LEGO theme for his "five year old birthday" (he never calls it his '5th birthday' -- only 'my five year old birthday.'). When the LEGO store first opened up, they offered birthday parties. But they closed their party room down for a bit - its supposed to open back again in the summer - and it was hard trying to find a way to make LEGOs and Pump it Up go together. But I think we managed just fine.
First up we needed a brand new LEGO shirt for the birthday boy.
Then we designed some LEGO invitations.
We ordered a LEGO cake from our local bakery, Ann's Kitchen Cakes.
We set about making our own LEGO goody bags. The goody bags contained a mini-LEGO kit of either an airplane or a truck, along with the LEGO coloring book we designed, gummies, candy, and a little rubber alien Ryan insisted upon fresh after our stop in Roswell, New Mexico.
I chose a yellow-red-green-blue color scheme, with yellow being the primary emphasis. For added decorations we had Ryan's LEGO head bucket sorter, Ryan's stuffed LEGO guy, and a nameplate made for him, along with a giant "5" out of LEGOs. Finally, Carl made these fantastic LEGO marshmallow pops, and we drew what are supposed to be LEGO faces on the yellow cups.
And since you can't have a LEGO party without LEGOs... we bought a big giant box of LEGOS and filled up little plastic cups for each child. Ryan then added one minifigure to each cup - out of his own collection, I might add - because he didn't think you could have fun with LEGOs without the minifigure. I did put my foot down on any of the ones that came from a set being given out, but I thought it was pretty sweet he and Alex were willing to share their prized LEGO guys with friends. We added a few mini LEGO stickers to the cups out of the giant LEGO ultimate sticker collection books. The kids got to play with their LEGOs while they ate the snacks and cake and Ryan opened his gifts. Several cute little ships were made.
The birthday boy had a great time at his LEGO party and loved being the center of attention.
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