Carter's 6th Birthday Party

After the Runway Run way back in January Carter asked if he could have his birthday party at the Air and Space Museum. I told him if he still wanted his birthday there when October rolled around, I'd book the party space. In October he was still talking about having his birthday party there so we went for it. He's not obsessed with planes or anything, but since he was having his party at the Air and Space Museum, we decided on an airplane theme for his party. Our Air and Space Museum isn't all that big and there isn't a ton to do there but there was enough for a birthday party, especially with the planetarium show included. Dad was on a Southwest flight for a conference and they had awesome airplane shaped crackers. He asked where they got them because he thought they'd be perfect for Carter's birthday party. They weren't able to locate where they came from but instead sent dad a box full of Southwest airline pretzels and a sign for Carter's party. It was so wonderfully thoughtful and definitely made Carter feel special that not only had his Opa thought of him, but the employees at Southwest had gone through the trouble to send him food for his party. I figured we'd go simple with sandwiches at the party to go with the pretzels. Ty again got day old bread at Jimmy John's and then made all the sandwiches day of. My parents got honeydough cookies from the local bakery and we ordered Carter's cake from Sam's. They didn't have any airplane themed cakes so Carter picked orange and blue as his colors. We had the base iced in orange and then I decided to have the top iced in blue and have them add clouds so it would look like the sky. I grabbed all the toy airplanes we had so we could top the cake with one when we got there. Carter ended up arranging them all onto the cake for decoration.

When we arrived we found out that even though we only had the party room until 2:00, all of our guests could stay until the museum closed at 4:00. I was thrilled to find when they set the room up they had put cool model airplanes on the tables as centerpieces. I had gone really minimalist this year with just blue table cloths and white construction paper cut out to look like a cloud for the placemat. Ty ended up cutting out the clouds for me which was awesome because I'm such a perfectionist it would have taken me forever and I would have then hated how they turned out. It took Ty a few minutes and I thought they were perfect! We got little foam airplanes as party favors and put one at each placemats so the kids would have something to do as they arrived. They later had some competitions to see who could fly their place the farthest. My mom found some jet gummies which we put out on the cake table. I forgot to bring a scoop or something so the kids were just grabbing them with their germy hands. Working on our immune systems I guess! Carter drew some airplane pictures on the white board to go with his sign from Southwest Airlines.

The grandmas posing with the cake table.

One of Carter's first friends to arrive was Jake who we haven't seen in quite a while. I missed Carter's reaction but heard Elise just lose her mind with excitement. Leina later told me Carter was rubbing his eyes like he was going to cry and told Jake, "I haven't seen you in so long. You got so big!" I love the sweet friendship they have and how they can just pick up where they left off whenever they get together. Later Jake drew a picture on the white board and showed me it was a picture of me, him, Carter, and Elise together. I loved it! I felt a little bad for Carter's other friend who was there because he was so excited to see Jake, he just left him sitting by himself. Carter was so excited he didn't really eat lunch and all the kids finished eating before the adults were done so they started up their own game of Duck, Duck, Goose which I was pretty impressed by. It took me forever to finish eating because I was monitoring everyone while also attempting to eat. I think in the future I'll just either eat beforehand or wait until later because the kids started to get a little wild as I attempted to finish my lunch. We did cake right after lunch and Carter didn't want to eat any so he opened his presents while everyone else ate their cake. He was thrilled with all the Legos he got!

I took the kids out to the museum while the rest of the parents finished up their desserts. Carter led everyone straight to the kids' area and was really excited to show them all his favorite things. Last year was crazy since Carter wanted to invite his entire class and he ended up with so many kids at his party. It was nice to have a smaller group this year. There were a few last minute cancellations the day of his party so he ended up with 9 kids at the party. It was a nice number. Ty cleaned up the party room while I monitored the kids. I was able to get a group picture of the kids in front of one of the airplanes before we headed over to the planetarium for the 3:00 show. The kids got a little loud a few times during the show and I had Carter quiet down but he had one friend who was particularly loud and was a bit embarrassing. Other than that the party was a blast and Carter had so much fun! It was nice unloading the car when we got home and just having a few things to put away. I do love having parties outside the home. I learned from last year and made a list of everything we needed to pack so we wouldn't forget anything like last year when we forgot candles and a lighter!

Carter had so much fun and ended the day feeling special which is all you can ask of a birthday party! Read about Carter's previous birthday parties: 5th Birthday Party here, 4th here, 3rd here, 2nd here, and 1st here.