Toy Story mania

Poor Rowan.  Not only is he the middle child, but his birthday is in the middle now too.  Ellie's is first, so I always have tons of time to dream and plan about her birthday parties.  Plus, since she is older, she has more circles of friends to invite, which makes it a bigger party.  Rowan's parties are usually just a shared cake with neighbors instead of an actual party.  This year was even more difficult - we had to have his party the day before his birthday because on his actual birthday we would be driving to Tennessee (which meant we were busy packing for that trip as well).  At least this time we actually made invitations and had dinner along with the cake. 

Ever since Toy Story 3 came out on dvd, the kids have had Toy Story on the brain.  After considering pirates, t-rex, cars, and superheros, Toy Story came out on top for the birthday cake theme.  Yes, we plan our birthday parties around the cake, for two reasons.  #1 - my kids equate birthday with cake and #2 - I equate birthday with making a cake!  It's one of my favorite things to do :)  So, I searched for cake ideas and found two great inspirations on the internet and decided to do them both.  The day before Rowan's party I started making cake balls which eventually turned into Mr and Mrs Potato Heads (Big thanks to Nina for decorating most of them - she just couldn't resist the artistic possibilites she saw when she stopped by that night).  And then the day of I made a regular cake of Andy's Bed with fondant decorations and added some plastic Toy Story figures that we bought for Rowan as a birthday present. 

We also had a make-your-own pizza on the BBQ for dinner, so I spent the afternoon prepping toppings and making pizza dough for that.  Making pizzas on the grill is always fun for our neighborhood kids, but this time it didn't work out quite as well.  For the first time we used hardwood briquettes instead of charcoal and it burned a lot hotter, so a lot of the pizza crusts burned on the bottom until we figured out how to at least semi-melt the cheese without destroying the crust.  It was still fun and pizza is always good, so the kids still loved it.

At least the birthday boy enjoyed himself

When the cake came out, the kids went crazy over the potato heads.  The time they took to make was completely worth it to see how excited they all were.  Plus they were really yummy, as was the Andy's Bed cake.  The kids started claiming each toy on top of the cake, but Rowan made sure to let them all know that the toys were his to take home :)

All the potato heads

Andy's bed

Happy 4th Birthday Rowan!