Party Time!

Brenden turned 5 and it was time to party! To celebrate such a sweet, kind, thoughtful boy was especially sweet as his parents. How lucky for Brenden to have so many church boys and neighbors so close in age to come celebrate with him.

We started by painting some wooden trains.

Our table inside didn't accommodate all the little hands and fingers and paints, so we had it outside, but I felt terrible for these kids who had to suit up just to go outside to paint. It was cold!!

Birthday boy enjoying himself.

Sweet neighbor girls. They, too, did fantastic on their paint job.

Church friend who also lives so close that I could probably throw a baseball into their backyard from our front yard. Conveniently, he also has a sister about Kyleigh's age.

We also had some excellent supervisors over the tiny painters.

Then inside for some walking across the train track to throw coal into the train's coal car. (Hey, kids don't mind if the cardboard train is all decorated really pretty like. I didn't quite get it to look like the pictures online, but it worked for the kids. That's who it was really for anyway.) The coal was a couple of Brenden's black church socks filled with navy beans and tied in a knot.

Church and neighbor friend getting his game face on!

Score!

(go to scrap pile of home depot, grab a long piece, and 2 small ones to go underneath at both ends. paint it black, throw tape on where you want the black track pieces to stick out, then go over and paint the rest white. Don't need to wait too long, it's spray paint so dries quickly and it's not heavy so it's not going to run if you take the tape off before everything dries completely. Then when the party is over, turn it over to the raw wood side and measure Kyleigh, Brenden with the date to create a portable growth measure wall.)

Nice one.

Look at that form.

We were going to have the kids all get into the train and take their candy away they just earned from putting the coal into the train at gun point with nerf guns, but someone....ahem, Trent....kinda gave that surprise away when he told the kids, "Ok, now we're going to have a Train Robbery". Oops.

Buddy easily fuels the train with his piece of coal.

This chocolate didn't really work out. Was either too hot and burning or not hot enough to melt.

But that's ok. There was plenty of other chocolate to go around. Grabbed a butter pound cake from Costco, cut it into train looking pieces, made chocolate cream cheese frosting and a few candy pieces for the log car, animal car, two colorful coal cars and wheels.

 Pizza, fruit salad, green salad, strawberry lemonade and cake.

Time to suit up again to go outside for a couple whacks at the pinata. (The parents were so good to get the kids dressed up to go outside to paint, then undress for games and food, then dress back up for pinata. I had just as much fun as Brenden with all the friends that came over to visit with).

The dudes in charge of the pinata. With this many kids and bats swinging around, you need at least 2 referees. 

 At first we had the kids blindfolded and gave everyone 2 whacks.

But that wasn't going anywhere, so we took the blindfold off and just told them to swing as hard as they could.

(If they could reach it. We had a great Pinata operator at the controls. Made it fun.)  :)

This still wasn't even putting a dent into the pinata, so we gave the bat to the guy who we knew could get the job done (our friend Patrick in the dark orange striped shirt. He used one hand and one swing and busted it wide open......)

FINALLY! toys and candy! Thanks Patrick!!

And thanks to all the other parents for cleaning the paint off the table outside, sweeping the crumbs off the tables inside, throwing all the dirty plates away and generally making the party an easy one. How incredibly grateful Trent and I were to have such cool neighbors and friends. Brenden was one happy chap during the whole thing and the rest of that day playing with REALLY cool toys. He's never been so spoiled. We're still taking some of them out for a trial run. The kite works great, the bubbles are huge, the trucks and cars have been in heavy use, the nerf gun has found lots of fun targets, and can't wait for it to get warmer so the kids can run through the wiggly sprinkler. He has been very shy and hard to take to his Primary class at church the last few months, but the day following his birthday party, I didn't even get to the Primary door before he let go of my hand and ran into the Primary room to go see his friends. It meant a whole lot to him. He doesn't always express his thoughts verbally, but it was expressed pretty clearly how much it meant to him to have so many fun friends come over to his house and sing a song to him while he blew 5 candles out.
Couldn't feel more grateful for the friendships we have found here in Ohio. There are some really great people in Akron.