With Owen's love of all things that go, we decided that for his 2nd birthday we would have a Planes, Trains, and Automobile themed party. The invitations and some of the decorations were ordered from Nounces Design. The invitations were made to look like a boarding pass, complete with tear-off sides. For the envelopes, we made map envelops centered on Tallahassee.
At the Filling Station we had mostly plane, train, and car themed food including Choo Choo Chips, Southwest Airlines pretzels, Go Fast Pasta Salad with wheel pasta, and Cloud Parfaits. We also had turkey, ham, and roast beef sandwiches and chocolate cake.
We were very fortunate again this year to have a wonderful day outside so we kept the food inside to keep the bugs away and the kids outside to keep the house standing.
The Birthday Boy "helping" set-up
For the decorations outside we had a Happy Birthday banner, some road signs, and paper airplanes and cloud hanging from the pergola. We also had lots of balloons and a bubble machine. The tables were covered with brown paper with roads and railroad tracks drawn on them and matchbox cars on the roads.
For the activities for the kids to play with we had them play on Owen's new swingset and we had bubbles set out. We also had some planes, trains, and cars made out of cardboard boxes for them to play in. As an activity and party favor, we had foam planes set out with markers for them to color on. The markers were washable since we did have a bunch of two-year olds running around, but as it turns out, the birthday boy was the only one who managed to get most of the color on him instead of the airplane.
We had a great crowd, several of our friends here in town and in the neighborhood along with all but one of Owen's classmates (she woke up sick that morning). Jed's parents were also here for the party and were a great help.
After plenty of play we opened up the sandwiches, followed by the cake. We brought the whole cake out for Owen to blow out the candles and take it back inside to cut it. Owen was so excited to see the cake and couldn't figure out why we were taking it right back away.
At the Railway Station (the front door bench) we had goodie bags set up for the kids to take home with them. For the bags we made suitcases out of brown paper bags. In them were suckers in the shape of a plane, train or car, cotton candy "clouds," Happy Birthday Owen M&Ms and plane, train, and automobile crayons and coloring pages.
At the Baggage Check-In we had guests leave their gifts and we opened them later that afternoon. The party took a lot out of our little two-year old so we laid him down for a nap shortly after cake.
Owen had a great time opening presents and it didn't take him too long at all to get into the groove. He was very excited about his toys and wanted to play with everything right after we opened it. We took our time and let him enjoy it.
