We hosted Rory’s 4th birthday party last Saturday at Johnny Bright playground. He requested Wall-E as the theme, so that’s what we did. Kenny was going to make a 3-D Wall-E cake, but Rory decided against that three days before the party. I think Kenny was relieved since he knew making Wall-E out of cake would be really hard. Instead, he and Grandma carved the letters of Rory’s name out of 4 individual cakes and iced them in 4 different colors that Rory chose.
Kenny and I gave Rory his birthday presents from us the morning of his party. We got him a wind-up Wall-E toy, two Wall-E books, and a Wall-E tshirt. He seemed to like it all!
The party started at 9am, so we were out of the house pretty early. We picked up donut holes on the way and got everything set up at the playground just before the first people started arriving. Kenny hung up a poster board sign that I made, and we had two bunches of star balloons. I set out snacks that the birthday boy chose: veggie sticks, goldfish, pretzel chips, plain potato chips, BBQ potato chips, strawberries, grapes, donut holes, and M&Ms. For a simple but cute centerpiece, I borrowed a small red ice chest from Nopsi and taped the BNL logo to it. I also used one of Kenny’s work boots and put a plant inside of it. Lots of people inquired about the plant in the boot; they obviously have never seen the movie!
It was a beautiful day to be outside. Rory wore his new Wall-E shirt and brought a little digger to play with in the sand. I also brought a bin of Mardi Gras balls for the kids to throw around if they wanted.
I also had Uncle Jeff bring his bubble machine. The bubbles were a huge hit! The kids loved running through them all morning.
Seven kids from Rory’s class showed up, as well as Kate, Luke, Claire, Alcee, Hayden, Grant, and Emory. They all had a great time running around, climbing and sliding on the play structure, and swinging.
Everyone, that is, except Rory. All he asked to do was go home because he knew that was when he would get to open his presents. Kenny and I distracted him as best we could (the sand was the best deterrent) but he still asked quite often to leave. Crazy fries.
We sang “Happy Birthday” around 10:30am, but we weren’t able to light the candles because it was too windy. Rory kneeled on the bench through the song, pretended to blow out his candles, and then was off again. He wanted nothing to do with his cake, but the other kids were more than happy to dig in.
The kids played for a little while longer and then everyone started to trickle out. We finally packed up the party just after 11am, picked up Chick-Fil-A for lunch and went home so Rory could finally get what he wanted: PRESENTS!
It was a great day and a great party. Thanks to those who came out to help us celebrate.
Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!
