A Polar Express 8th Birthday
When we first found out we were expecting our second child near Christmas, the thoughts certainly entered our head as to how we could make his day extra special. Thankfully my Oma had her birthday in December and she thought it was the best gift in the world as we were always together and everything was festive that time of year! We embraced that attitude and thankfully so has Max! He tells people all the time how lucky he is to share a birthday with Christmas!
His first birthday started the theme of The Polar Express and we have kept that theme ever since! To keep in theme with the movie we invite the children to have hot chocolate and we of course serve hot cocoa and have a trackless train! This years train was actually electric, so it was nice and quiet and didn’t have any of the stinky exhaust that many of our past trains have had. Max was quite worried that children would outgrow the train this year and not want to ride, but quite the contrary…it was a hit as usual!
One of the other traditions we incorporate is decorating Gingerbread Houses. This year we had almost 60 children with siblings so we decided to do family houses. I purchased the premade Gingerbread Houses from Target, but wanted a way to assign them. I recently started following Courtney Whitmore of Pizzazzerie and used her frosting recipe and bow ideas to label all of the houses. I will admit that to do that for 40 houses took 7 batches of frosting and about 2.5 hours! But the end result was worth it and the children easily knew which house to decorate. We also had a candy bar with all of the containers and cute signs from Michael’s. This was a huge hit, and sugar rush!!
I would say the biggest hit though was the snow globe from Party on a Cloud AZ! The snow globe is a newer item and to say the children were entranced with what it feels like to be in a life size snow globe is an understatement! Balloon Babe of Arizona created the cute Christmas themed balloons that adorned the outside as well as all of the balloons on the inside which made for great fun!
Last, but certainly not least was our incredible spread thanks to Benedict’s Catering. We had our annual Hot Cocoa station complete with all of the toppings you could imagine. As the party was after school we featured gluten free grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers and chicken salad for the parents. The show stealer though is always the spectacular cake by Jewel’s Bakery that is Gluten and Dairy free, but certainly not fun free! It was spectacular as always! Max is quite clever and requested a snowman to top his Polar Express themed cake this year as we are all golfers, and in golf we call an “8” on a scorecard a “Snowman.” This cake was as delicious as it was cute!
The biggest lesson I have learned about having a December birthday in our family is that it is all what you make it! We make it the most special and exciting thing, and Max fully feels that way! We are truly grateful for our Christmas baby and celebrating him in a fun and festive way! Happy Holidays!
