[Little A turns five and hosts a...]

So sorry to be MIA lately. We've been doing a lot of party planning around here for a lot of different events and have therefore been very busy. Last week my Little A turned five. I seriously can't even believe it! I can vividly remember seeing him lying in the hospital basinet on the day he was born and looking over at his little squinty eyes and chubby cheeks and thinking how this day was like Christmas morning, only better - and I'd get to take home the best present ever. I had to keep pinching myself to make sure it was all real!

Fast forward to five years later and my little baby is having a birthday. It's true what they say about time going by too fast and kids growing up, etc. All I have to say is that the next five years better go a whole lot slower. Seriously.

My little A has the best personality. He has a multitude of imaginary friends whom he impersonates on several occasions. He loves learning and begs me to sit down with him to do his reading lesson everyday and he's getting very good at it. He's memorized the track numbers to all of his favorite Gabba songs in the car and requests them by number each time we go for a drive. He's still a puzzle fanatic, a little comedian, rather particular about almost everything and an all around wonderful big brother. Oh, and he recently told us his favorite food is cereal.

It was this such revelation that inspired the theme for his 5th birthday party. He had originally requested a Captain Underpants party. As he's getting older and coming into his own, I really wanted this to be about HIM, so I wanted to find a way to work in the Captain Underpants theme, but was struggling with how to really run with this. We had previously thought about taking him to a local cereal bar, Mix and Munch, for his birthday breakfast, as I knew he would love the idea of mixing cereals and adding toppings, etc. Then, after seeing Brooke's early morning PJ party, I thought, hey, we could do the cereal bar thing for his party, and hold it in the morning! And that is just what we did.

We started off with simple invitations with a yellow fruit loop adhered to the front of the card, inviting the guests to come in their PJ's and enjoy gobs of cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. We'd throw in a Captain Underpants reading for good measure and just all around have a good time.

I tried the whole, you're turning 5 so you can invite 5 guest of your choosing thing, and it went over pretty well. With siblings, etc. there were more than 5 guests, but the effort still helped things not get too hectic with party planning and favors. It also helped him feel like he had some say in all of this, which was really fun for him (I know, it's about time right? The curse of having an artistic, meddling mom I guess...).

Little A was ecstatic about his "Captain Underpants Cereal Party" and had a blast picking out the cereal flavors ahead of time. He choose several brightly colored and fun flavored cereals because of their exciting packaging but ended up loving the tried and true Cherrios the best (and I, and his Dentist, couldn't be happier).

We set up two tables: one for the cereal and toppings, and one for the milk, orange juice, spoons, napkins, etc.

Then we let the kids go at it. It was so fun to see how excited they were. Seriously the next best thing to a kid in a candy store (and slightly healthier?). A lot of them even opted for no milk on their first trip, which made spills that much easier to clean up.

For toppings we had marshmellows, mini chocolate chips, pop rocks, chocolate covered sunflowers seeds (my fav!), strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, almonds and chocolate, carmel and marshmellow flavored syrup.

I made sure it was adult friendly with non sugar cereals such as granola with fruit toppings (which I had two generous helpings of!) and a few muffins in case there were any non-cereal lovers attending.

The kids then sat around our coffee table, which was covered in butcher paper and adorned with Captain Underpants drawings (that I quickly drew the night before) that they could then color in whilst watching "Saturday morning cartoons". We actually don't have our TV hooked up to cable but we used our instant streaming from our netflix account and watched a few of Little A's favorite cartoons (which he loved showing off by giving narration to as well as dancing in front of all of his friends and singing the theme songs. Yeah, he was pretty happy and very comfortable with being the center of attention).

After a couple of cartoon episodes the kids then all sat around to listen to a Captain Underpants reading headed up by Jon (and assisted by Little A).

We kept things pretty chill and after some unscripted play, we gathered everyone around for some cake. A giant Rice Krispie treat cake in fact.

Songs, candles, wishes...

...and the cake was cut and distributed.

For party favors, I made little boxes for the kids to take home their very own custom cereal concoction (which, by using 12x12 inch scrapbook paper, just happened to be the perfect size for a bowl size serving of cereal).

I also made custom cereal spoons for all of the kids based on some I had seen on the web. Mine are not nearly as cool as I managed to get the wrong wire to wrap them all together and couldn't run out and get any more at midnight when were were putting them all together the night before.

I also managed to find a few magic milk straws for the kids to take home...

....or to enjoy at the party. Yeah, they were a hit.

When the party was over, Little A and Little O had fun picking at the rest of the cake and lounging around in their PJ's (which were custom made for the event).

In fact, Little A requested to wear his PJ's for the rest of the day and being as it was his big day, I happily obliged.

Now here's hoping the next birthday takes a very, very long time to roll around again.

Happy birthday my Little A.