Blasting Off to LP's 4th Birthday!

Today our son, LP turns 4 years old!  My Farmer and I talked today about how we can't believe we have a 4 year old in our house, but at the same time it seems like he has been apart of our family for a long time.  LP is a curious and busy boy who loves to use his imagination.  He loves building things about of old containers and cartons, paper, really anything he can get his hands on, and he has been building a lot of robots and rocket ships lately.  So, at the beginning of the month when we asked him what he'd like his birthday cake to be this year we didn't really know what he'd say.  He excitingly said - a rocket ship!  We had a great time celebrating with family this past Sunday.

The first thing I always do is work on the invitation.  LP loves doing crafts, so making the birthday invitations with him was a great activity for the two of us.  We used a lot of materials we had in our craft supplies but did splurge and bought some black glitter paper to make the invitation out of this world.  For each card I cut a rocket ship and a porthole out of foam, that LP then assembled together.  We then put the black glitter paper on the front of each card and LP then stuck down the completed rocket ships on top of the card.  For the inside, I wrote the party's information on one side and LP drew a rocket ship on the other.  We put all of our invitations together in just an hour and had a great time doing them!

The next thing I got ready for the party was the decorations.  For all of our kids' birthday parties I like to do something simple to help show the "theme" and also to show photos of the child throughout the last year.  We've been working a lot at home on name recognition and letter recognition, so we made a name rocket.  I then showed LP around a dozen photos of him over the past year and he picked his favorite four to put on stars.

The final thing to take care of, and probably the most important was the food!  We actually had our baby daughter JP's baptism Sunday morning at church, so following church we had everyone to our house for crockpot chili and crockpot chicken and dumpling soup.  I also made an overnight salad and shrimp pasta salad to serve on the side, along with beer bread, corn muffins and crackers to go with the soup.  Following dinner, we opened presents and then had cake and homemade ice cream!  To make LP's rocket ship cake I made a 9x13 chocolate cake and simply cut the top at a curved angle to make the point of the rocket, and then I moved those two pieces to the bottom of the cake to make the fins on the bottom of the rocket.

We had a great time celebrating LP's special day on Sunday and all day today.  LP and I had fun doing a few simple DIY projects to make his party special for him and all of our family.  Check out these other great and fun DIY projects we have done for LP's previous birthday parties:

• Curious George 3rd Birthday
• Train 2nd Birthday
• Tractor 1st Birthday

What was your favorite birthday party theme as a child?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!

Thank you Birthday Express for recognizing LP's birthday party with their 

Best Birthday Award!