Hey Amie E : Rory Turned 5!!! What?!?

I can't believe Rory is now 5 years old! What?!?

So a little side note on this year's stats: he probably weighs 40+ pounds normally, but his weight and height were taken the week before his birthday at urgent care when he had that awful stomach virus. And I'm not surprised at all that he wants to be like Emmet from the Lego Movie!

Planning a birthday celebration for Rory is always a little tricky. His birthday is so close to Thanksgiving, and figuring out what we want to do becomes a big discussion. With his actual birthday being on Thanksgiving and his obsession with legos, this year would have been perfect to celebrate our little boy with a trip to Legoland in So Cal. However, Rory has been begging me for a party with his friends since we were planning Rian's party this past June. So skipping a party was clearly out of the question. Randy and I talked about how to pull a party off so close to the holiday, I mean most people go out of town or are hosting family during this time. We decided we would have it on Black Friday which allowed our family to be there. The only problem was hosting Thanksgiving and planning a birthday party was a lot for me. I admitted that that was probably more than I would like to take on. So our solution was to have a very small party and to have Rory make the guest list, after all it was his party. (And I suck at cutting guests- I still have regrets from cutting people from our wedding). So after sending out some texts to make sure people would be in town that weekend, we got to work creating a Lego party for our birthday boy!!!

The invitations were inspired by the ending credits of the Lego Movie. In fact his entire party was inspired by the movie. If you haven't seen it, basically it's about all the Lego people that follow the instructions from President Business and the few master builders that don't.

I created his invites by using two green Lego bases (one for the bottom, one for the background) from Rory's Lego collection. And then I had Rory build one of his small construction vehicles. Because Emmet is a construction worker, of course. After arranging the vehicle and Emmet on the base, I snapped a photo.

I then uploaded the photo to A Beautiful Mess photo app on my phone. Yes, on my phone. I added the green banners and letters to resemble the labels from the movie credits. The pile of dirt is also from the app. Once I was happy with the spacing and letters, I sent the finished photo to my local Walgreens for printing. Easy peazy!

Rory, Rian and Grammie watching the bouncer inflate

Trying in out first, before anyone got there!

Along with pizza, we served chips, popcorn, pretzels, and veggies with dip in small cups perfect for our small guests. All placed on the table with lego juice and milk boxes (thanks mama for making those) and a lego-style cutlery holder made from Rian's mega blocks!

Dessert was simple: a mini birthday cake for Rory, chocolate cupcakes and jello for his guests. The Lego candies atop the cupcakes were purchased at a shop in Balbo, California that my mom found!

Sticking with the Lego Movie theme of following instructions, I created a hot beverage bar for the adults- coffee, hot cocoa and hot apple cider- using a roll of packaging paper I got from the Dollar Tree store.

Instructions were left for the kids at the coloring table

Figuring out the goodie bags seemed so easy for the older kids, but the ones for our smaller guests stumped me. Legos are great, but for toddlers they can obviously be dangerous. So all the older kids received a goodie bag with a small lego set inside with a "thanks for coming" note written on lego-shaped colorful card stock. The girls got a Friends-themed set, while the boys got a Star Wars one. The younger kiddos got a goodie bag with the same note and a tub of yellow play-doh made to look like them with hair cut from construction paper and a sharpie-drawn face.