Mason's 6th Birthday

Birthday party planning is an art. After seven parties between the two kids, I thought I'd figured it all out. 

Step 1: Pick a theme.  This should be relatively easy.  Mason loves Super Mario and Mario Kart these days so a Mario party seemed like a really good idea.  And he happily approved it.  One trip to the party supply store and I quickly realized a Mario party wasn't going to be so easy after all.  For some reason none of the stores had Mario party stuff.  No favors, no plates, just some expensive candy.  So I made the invites myself, which actually turned out pretty cute.  And just had to make do with favors in the primary colors of Mario.

Step 2: Pick a date and time.   Again, this should be easy, but as soon as the invites went out we found out we had a problem.  We decided to invite Mason's closest friends from school this year, and wouldn't you know it one of those friends had scheduled her birthday for the exact same date and time.  We'll have to coordinate next year, but for this year we ended up being able to change the time.  Crisis averted, and all the kids were still able to come.

Step 3: Pick a place.  September is hit or miss with the weather.  For his first four birthdays, the weather was beautiful and we had indoor parties.  Since we'd gone four for four, last year we had an outdoor party and while it didn't rain, it was cold and gloomy.  So we reverted back to an indoor party and held it at the bowling alley.  (Wouldn't you know the weather was beautiful, but the party was super fun none the less.)

Step 4: Invite friends.  Because Mason's party was so early in the year, he didn't have time to make friends with the new kids in his class so we just invited his closest friends from Kindergarten and daycare.  This ended up being probably the easiest of choices, and he was so excited when each one arrived. 

So we had Mary, Bradley, Lyle and Raina from school.  Zoe, Blake and Emma came too and of course Mya and Julia and the whole Rowe family.  It was a full group of kiddos - somehow we managed to wrangle a few of them for a picture. 

I will say, adding a bunch of kids to the mix definitely made it more of an adventure.  But I think they all had fun, and I know Mason loved having everyone there to celebrate with him.

Step 5: Eat cake!  We've done some pretty exciting cakes in the past.  But after we ordered cupcakes from the Meijer bakery for Mya's party and found out how easy and cheap that was, I'm not sure we'll ever do anything different again.  No matter intricacy of the cake, the excitement of singing and blowing out the candle is still there. 

In the end, we had another successful party in the books.  Yes there were bumps along the way, but as long as the birthday boy is happy, I feel like I've done my job.

Here's hoping for many more wonderful birthdays for our sweet little guy.