birthday party

Since it's Theo's birthday in a few week we have been thinking a little about how we are going to celebrate, luckily Theo is still young enough for us to get away not really having to fork out loads of money to hire out somewhere and fill it full of screaming, sugared up kids. I dislike the fact he's a winter baby and our options are limited when it comes to locations for parties, how lovely it would be to have a summer baby with parties in the woods or picnics at the park etc (actually scrap that, it would probably rain on his summer birthday anyway), anyway anyway I just have a feeling that in the next few years our options are going to be slightly limited.

I remember as a child having shared birthdays with my sister, in church halls, the leisure centre, home and even one year a place with lots of big trampolines. I remember having themed cakes and dressing up as pirates and it was always lots of fun. I don't remember them being extravagant, usually just some party food, balloons and a few simple games such as pin the tale on the donkey, musical chairs and pass the parcel. I don't know about you, but I haven't hung out at that many children's birthday parties since so I'm not really sure if kids still do these sorts of things...I hope they do!

But seeing as Theo's only going to be three, and only has about 3 or 4 friends he see's regularly I think we're safe this year from the big party. But I still want to make it fun. I asked him what cake he would like this year and he said the enormous crocodile, and that got me thinking about having perhaps a little book character themed party. I have seen some great book week fancy dress costumes for children that would do the job as well as some teachers fancy dress costumes for book week too if I felt so inclined to dress up myself! I'd love to get creative with a costume too, perhaps making him a gruffalo costume, but more than likely he'd want to dress up as spiderman or something like that much to Rob's comic book geek delight! (Actually he does have a pretty awesome Iron man onesie!)