Hyrum's 5th Birthday

Since Hyrum's birthday is during such a busy week for us, I decided to give him a party with friends a little later.  On Hyrum's birthday, we had a small celebration with family and Adam took him sledding.  Adam found a free computer "game" which was absolutely perfect for Hyrum.  He likes flight simulators, but this is a very high quality space shuttle simulator.  It has missions for space shuttles and the Apollo missions and others.  Not the usual game for a preschooler but very exciting for Hyrum (this isn't what the simulator usually looks like.  I guess he had it on some different view setting).

When family came over we made little foam gliders that launch with rubber band power.  Not everyone's turned out too well, but the ones that did flew really well.

Then we did presents and cupcakes.

 

Several days later, after the holidays were over and I had some time to prepare, we had a birthday party with some of Hyrum's friends.  It was an airplane themed party and I put a lot of work into getting it ready.  I wish we had more pictures but we were busy making the party happen.  

I hung airplane shape paper cut outs from the ceiling and white balloons as clouds.  It didn't look as neat as I had envisioned, but at least the kids thought it was cool.  We had clouds falling from the sky throughout the party.  These pictures were from a few days later so most of the clouds were gone.

When the kids got there we had a bunch of toys set up downstairs-- an "airport" with some of Hyrum's plane toys, and miniature towns and a mountain for the airplanes to fly over and kids that didn't especially love airplanes to play with.  They loved that and some of the kids wanted to go back to playing with the toys the whole time.  

 The kids decorated their own airplane cut-out and then attached it to a balloon which was attached to a straw with a string through it.  When they released the air from the balloon their airplane shot across the room.  They loved that, too, but it required some patience while they waited for their turn.  We also folded paper airplanes and had paper airplane throwing "contests" and played don't fall off the cloud, which was a variation of musical chairs.

Then we did presents and had to rush the cake (didn't have time for ice cream).  My mom made the cake for me and did a great job.  The time went fast and I actually enjoyed it and I know the kids did, too.  We made them a couple of candy airplane favors to take home along with the paper airplanes they had made.

 

I definitely over planned, but I guess that might be better than under-planning.  I just need to work on not stressing myself out beforehand, trying to make sure everything is perfect.  Actually, a big part of the stress was that I was trying to figure out my new Cricuit machine and software and find airplane shape files it could use to cut out my airplane shapes for me.  But it didn't turn out perfect anyway and yet it did turn out fun.