canon's "rocketship party"...

for months now, canon has been saying that he wanted to have a rocketship party. at first, i was kind of at a loss as to what to do for it, but then i came across this super cute party. i wanted to copy every last, precious detail, but, boy, do sweets add up fast! i ordered all the printables off etsy (from the lady in the above blog post) and got creative to come up with the rest of the stuff on a budget. i LOVE working on party details and had so much fun putting this together. we once again just had a family party, but this year moved it to our church youth building. our house feels small really fast! it was such a sweet time to celebrate our big 4 year old and hang out with our family. (and the lighting is really wonky in all of these. because we used the production lights, it made the lighting really inconsistent. i'm kicking myself for not just using the on-camera flash).

for dinner, we served charlie's chicken chunks, baked beans, potato salad, chips and watermelon. on the snack table, we had cupcakes, meteroids (pretzels with a candy melt and sixlet on top), asteroids (rock suckers), planet pops (marshmellows dipped in candy melts with sprinkles), starbursts, kisses (with the different icons on the bottoms) and orange peach rings (because they are so darn cute!). 

i LOVED watching canon experience his much anticipated party.

it was wonderful having so much space for the kids to just run around!

i didn't really have games planned. just several different activities that would keep them busy for awhile! i found some cheapo rocket launchers in the party section at walmart that looked fun. they turned out to be a little more difficult for the kids to do by themselves. canon was super serious in figuring out how to make it work!

after a few minutes with those, i pulled out a hula hoop and big ball. can you tell i was just going up and down aisles at walmart for inspiration?! i first fell in love with the ball then saw the hula hoop and thought that they looked like a planet...ha. they took turns throwing the ball through the hoop or just hula hooping. canon was still trying to get his rocket to work!

lane then led a game where he would have them do some kind of action that a rocketship would do while music played then when i paused it, they had to freeze. my kids LOVE playing freeze! it was so much fun to watch them finally get to blast off and run around. i think that was their favorite game! next, we searched for moon rocks in a dark room. i had gotten a bag of river rocks at hobby lobby and spray painted them with glow in the dark paint. they turned out awesome! it was a pretty cute activity.

by this point, canon was dying to open his presents, but everyone else was wanting a cupcake so we sang happy birthday and then he opened presents while everyone ate.

sweetest birthday boy!

it was SO fun watching him open his gifts this year. every emotion showed on his face. he would get so  overly excited when he first saw each of his gifts. he received a thunder jersey, a drum set, a batman magnadoodle, a swimsuit, beach toys, a v-tech writing tablet (that he calls his ipad), a super why game, some super hero stuff, a batman movie, a huge rocket launcher, some art supplies and money/giftcards!

his cousins that are some of his best friends!

finally getting to dig in to the cupcake!

my mamie, aunt kim, cousin karrie and her kids got to come down for the party. it was so good to see them! knox and lilly kate are only 10 days apart. this was their first time to meet. i'm so excited because we get to go spend some time with them in arkansas at the end of the month. 

sweet ben is 20 months and a busy body! the boys liked playing with him :)

and here's "guy patterson" putting on a show for us before bedtime. i sure hope he's a famous drummer someday so the world can see how awesome this picture is!