Let's Race!

Hayden turned 6 and the celebration stretched through a couple days worth of fun. When he woke up, we had chocolate donuts for breakfast and he opened his first present of the day which was the much requested new video game, Mario Galaxy 2. We went out for lunch at IN-N-OUT. For dinner, we had calzones and he blew out his candle on top a chocolate cupcake which he later didn't want to eat at the time. After Addison went to sleep, we let him open the rest of his presents.

The next day, we had the birthday party and it was a success. As mentioned before, we had a Hot Wheels Party. Due to the end of school, camps and vacation schedules, we had only 3 show up out of the 15 invited. I kind of felt bad for capping him on his invites, but oh well. It was good that the house wasn't totally swarmed with kids. Just a quaint little party. I had planned for about 10 just in case the maybes and unknowns were to show.

Hayden was adamant that every friend that came was able to get an actual Hot Wheels car of their very own. I worked it into the theme and as friends arrived, I had them register for racing. They would draw a number which was associated by a car from the basket. I wrote their names on the cardboard packaging and the name of car and number next to their name on the race registry. While we waited for arrivals, they played with the many different tracks set up throughout our house. We had a city scape set up to drive on our coffee table, a V-Drop set up on a door and some collision courses for some added fun.

For games, we started with the clothespin drop. I had car pictures on clothespins. Each kid chose a set to drop and they took turns dropping them into old salsa jars. We played a couple rounds and the most points won. Hayden ended up winning that one. Then we had a jumping competition with the V-Drop. Shaina ended up winning by going the greatest distance. I used car pictures with names to label where each landed.

After that, we did the prize ball game. They sat in a circle and then passed the parcel and unwrapped a layer each time you get it. Some had prizes and some didn't. SInce I planned for more kids, when everyone got a prize each, I asked them if they wanted to keep going or make it fair for everyone by stopping. The good kids that they were, they decided to be fair and stop. Lastly, we had a mini derby tournament racing down a raceway we had. We rotated lanes and the results came in with Owen's in first, Hayden's in second, Shaina's in third and Natalya's in fourth.

From there, we went to eat lunch at the pit stop area. I made the tablecloth like a raceway with finishline. We had hot dogs, watermelon, grapes, jello jigglers, doritos, cheetos, and carrot sticks for the healthy conscious kid. Juice was also there. We ran out of time so we didn't end up decorating Twinkie race cars which was sad. We did the cake and singing as parents were arriving and presents real quick afterwards. I think Hayden had a lot of fun. Definitely a cute party and I was so happy when we were done. I survived my first small scale birthday party. Yay for Mommy!

It's been six years and he was a lot of work before we met for the first time, but he is a blessing to have in my life. He's always had a mellow demeanor and the sparkle in his rootbeer eyes have made it hard for me to not smile even during discipline. He's kind and helpful and a considerate older brother to his sisters most of the time. He is so big now and I just want to remind him how much I love him.

Hayden Bayden