LeitingLove: Will's 4th Birthday

Our world changed and brought us indescribable joy 4 years ago. We are so proud (and entertained daily) of the boy Will is becoming. It is funny what happens to you as you grow older - you don't care at all about your own birthday but put everything into your children's birthdays.
I was looking forward to Will’s 4th birthday as much as he was! He started his countdown to his bday sometime around July and was so excited for it. He has been asking to invite his friends from daycare over since his last birthday so they were invited this year to what has historically been just a family party. With just family, we usually end up with around 25-30 people, which can get a little chaotic and doesn’t provide good visiting time with great grandparents or the great aunts and uncles that we don't get to see as often. So this year, we asked Great Grandma Meier, Aunt Barb and Joe to come over for dinner/cake the night before. We really enjoyed the one on one time we got with them.

(you can see some cowboy decorations prepped for the next day's party in this picture!)

We also continued a tradition started last year of Will’s cousin EJ spending the night on his bday. This year EJ spent the night before Will’s bday. I think Will was just as excited about their sleepover as he was about his party! These two really love each other and had lots of fun together.

Since Will was so excited to have his daycare friends over, I felt the first pressure of my son expecting his mom to pull off something cool. So this was the first year I decided to do a theme party (well all the other years defaulted to a football theme because it was football Sunday). Will loves to play cowboy so our theme was pretty natural - and hey, Jeff and I could finally dust off our cowboy hats and put them to use! Will's invites were Wanted Photos with a pic of him, daddy's cowboy hat, and Will's toy pistol. We cut them out with jagged edges, rolled them up and tied with raffia. We hand delivered the invites to those we would see and emailed the rest.

We had several appetizers for everyone to munch on including “ranch” dip, beer cheese dip, giddy up guacamole, salsa, and an artichoke cheese dip (recipe credit to Jennifer Schnaubelt – so good!)

I made my first shape cake and although it was intimidating, it wasn’t that hard and tasted great! I used my Grandmother’s devil’s food cake recipe.

For each of the 15 kids, I made a “wanted” photo and taped them up throughout the house. This caused a lot of giggles for the adults and kids!

Instead of goodie bags, I had each child earn their cowboy outfit by completing 4 games:

Tin Can Shoot Out earned them cowboy silly bands

Pin the Badge on Sheriff Will (FedEx Print Shop blew this photo up for me for $7) earned them a sheriff’s badge

There’s a Snake in my Boot! earned them a hankerchief

10 gallon toss earned them their cowboy hat

Thanks to my brother Jeff, niece and nephew Amanda and Steven, and friend Kristina for manning each game post for me!

We also had a trail mix station where the kids could fill their bags with chex cereal, peanut m&ms, chocolate chips, pretzel goldfish, cinnamon teddy grahams, and mini marshmallows. I had intended for these to go home with the kids but instead they were inhaled soon after they made their mix!

Jeff made an old west town out of appliance boxes. The jail was the favorite hangout. Boxes really are a kid's favorite toy.

I made some cardboard stick horses for a pony race. I ran out of time so their hair is a little thin – but at least you can tell it’s a stick horse, right? My brother Ed found where my inspiration for the horse cake came from!