Grant's 5th Birthday Party

This year for Grant's 5th birthday party, we had a splash party (or water party or whatever you want to call it). I filled the backyard with water-related items and let the kids go to town. It was a bit chaotic (to be expected, yes?) but I think the kids had fun. My sister was in town for the week and was a HUGE help getting the party ready!

There were approximately one million children in my backyard but these pictures kind of look like no one showed up. I left out pictures that included other children just in case the other parents don't want their kid plastered all over my blog.

We did some beachy decorations inside and pretty much let the water toys outside be the decorations for the yard (except for some pool noodle garland I made that was so fun!).

The banner I made for Grant's first birthday!

Fun little buckets for Grant's friends to take home
(my sister did a LOT of cooking and cleaning for me
so I could sew stuff for the kiddos - thanks sister!)

I didn't have any games or anything planned for the kids, just play time. I had a slip-n-slide, a sprinkler, some beach balls to play with, water guns, and water balloons. The water balloons lasted about 5 minutes - I should have seen that coming. The slip-n-slide had to be repositioned about 10 times but we eventually got it working great (especially after putting some soap on it!).

I have no idea how I managed to get a picture of just
Grant going on the slip-n-slide

Sitting in one of the water gun re-fill buckets

Bubbles!

I love this beach ball sprinkler! And it's apparently quite sturdy.

The kids played for about an hour before we broke out the pinata. After going to a birthday party earlier this year that had a pinata, Grant really wanted to do one. He picked out a shark. 

So we filled it with his favorite candies...and those poor kids tried so hard to bust it open but in the end, we had to get Husband to knock it down. Which STILL didn't actually bust it. So he tore it open and dumped out the candy...ha!

We did presents and cake after the pinata.

He got a real pair of cowboy boots from Gramma
& Grandpa so he put on his hat to go with them

Telling an animated story of dragons blowing
fire after eating spicy tacos

Really not sure what this was about...maybe cake.

Cake. Grant wanted a shark cake (his favorite birthday activity is looking at cake pictures to figure out what he wants me to make) and he picked one that was supposed to have the shark standing up but that didn't happen. I think he loved it anyway.

3 layers of chocolate cake

Happy Birthday, Grant!

Would you believe he ate the cake this year?? We went from Grant wanting a cake, to Grant wanting ice cream sundaes, back to cake because he decided he loves cake  - which I didn't believe for a minute. I don't know how much he ate at the party, but we still have some leftovers and he's actually eating it. It only took 5 years :)

Grant put on a little show for us after his friends left:

(Currently, he's asking to be a country singer for Halloween)

And he kind of continued the party while we were cleaning up. We turned the slip-n-slide back on and Grant kept up the fun while we cleaned up the yard (and picked up what must have been thousands of pieces of balloon). 

Grant had such an awesome time! I'm so glad his friends could come play and celebrate with him!