Linus Turns Three

For Linus' 3rd birthday we had a Thomas the Train birthday party. I started planning quite awhile in advance but of course I didn't actually get around to making any of the decorations until the day before...always a bad idea. Luckily, Grandma Cece saved the day by finishing everything including a five car train cake. The cool thing is that now days it is ridiculously easy to steal other peoples birthday ideas off line. I just googled: Train Party, and found that there are actually whole sites where people describe everything they did for a particular party. So the day of the party I was able to sit back kick up my heals and smile serenely while taking credit for other peoples ideas and my sweet mother in laws labor.

On the day of the party we moved the dining room table out and pushed the couches to the side of the room, then we set up a bunch of stations. We had two train tables. A reading corner with lots of train books, a coloring table with train coloring pages and craft supplies for making train tunnels out of shoe boxes (which no one did) and we also had a Thomas pop up tent. We had adult food on the counter (with an electric train circling it), and then we set up a low table with kid snacks ( fruit, pb&j, juice, raisins, goldfish, and sippy cups). We didn't plan any games since most of the kids were too young. There were enough things to do that the kids just wandered from one station (no pun intended) to the next and for the most part the adults were able just to sit back and visit.
Disclaimer: This may or may not be my party description...I may have just cut and pasted from a party site :)