Lincoln’s Train Party

Last Saturday we celebrated Lincoln’s 4th birthday with a train extravaganza at our home. I’ve been experimenting with Photoshop a lot lately, so I designed a lot of the elements of our party myself. It was fun, but could be time consuming.

First up is the invitation. I found the train images online.

We were preparing right up until the party began, so I didn’t get a lot of pictures of the decorations. In addition to the table and giant four below, we had a lot of pennant flags made from scrapbook paper hanging up around.

A close up of the water bottle labels I designed. There is a train on one side and it says “Lincoln is turning 4".”

Jonathan and I made the cake together. It’s not as pretty as I would have liked (why didn’t I frost the bottom of the smokestack?) but Lincoln loved it, and that’s all that matters.

The birthday boy, in his freezer paper stenciled shirt, showing off his new smile. He’s dentally advanced.

We played a couple of games during the course of the party. The first one was “Pin the Smokestack on the Steam Engine.” I used the same train image from the invitations and Photo shopped the smokestack off. I had it printed as a engineering print (you can get a much bigger print for a lot less money) at FedEx Office, along with different colored smokestacks on cardstock so we could tell who was closest. I’ve used FedEx Office a ton over the last month, first for his Valentines and then for his party.

The second game was played was called “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” It was hard to get a good picture of this one, but basically we had a ton of “coal” (aluminum foil balls) that the kids “shoveled” (moved with plastic spoons) into buckets. They were very serious about this task and the room was very quiet while they worked.

We also made individual, train shaped pizzas. This is easy with 4 year olds because they don’t require a lot of extra ingredients. To some of them, pepperoni was a bridge too far.

Lincoln had a lot of fun opening his presents. When the time came, all the other children rushed to grab the present they had brought and crowded around the birthday boy.

I wish we would have remembered to film all of Lincoln’s friends singing him “Happy Birthday” but we are the world’s worst parental filmmakers. I’m hoping he’ll just remember since he’s four now. I bought a sparkler “4” at the party store, so there was nothing to blow out, but it was sure pretty. He got to blow out regular candles on his actual birthday, so all was well.

It was a really fun party, but a lot of work. As a result, I think Lincoln and Conan will have to share parties in the future. Two parties in two weeks would be a little rough, sorry boys.