Birthday Preview!

James is turning four in less than a week now which is unbelievable but true. When I began thinking about how I wanted to celebrate his birthday about 6 months ago now if I'm honest (I love love to plan my kids' parties around a theme that they love!), Stephen was working 60 hours a week and the thing that we all wanted more than anything was just more time together. We had talked for a while about saving for a family vacation, and we thought it might be a good option to take our first family vacation the week of James' birthday. When we learned that James' birthday week happens to be one of the cheapest of the year to go to Disney, the decision was pretty much made!

We will be headed out in a few days, and our excitement level is through the roof. The anticipation ranks up there with our wedding day and the birth of our children (slight exaggeration but still!). And even though we won't be inviting family and friends to a party this year, I still have been working on making some decorations for our hotel room and extra touches to take with us to make his day extra special while we are gone. James is completely into race cars right now, so the "theme" of our celebrating will be Disney Pixar Cars. I'm sure I will have a ton of pictures to post when we return, but here are a few pictures of the decorations that I made for around the house or that we will be taking with us.

The "Rust-eze Bumper Ointment" is clear, fruit punch I found at Walmart and we switched the label to fit the theme.
I made mickey ear shaped cupcake toppers with Cars stickers (I'm going to let him stick them in his food throughout the week and especially on his actual birthday.) The Cars game and travel Cars Bingo (perfect for our long car trip!) were free printables that I found on the internet. 

I updated his birthday banner that I have used every year with the Lightning McQueen wooden shapes and checkered flag Mickey ears.  I used a generic trophy James received from the library summer reading program and printed out a Piston Cup logo to glue onto it. I made a new door hanger for his room, and I will put a picture inside from our trip when we get back. 

 We had a countdown to Disney:

I had planned to make cupcakes to bring to James' church friends on Wednesday night, but it was cancelled due to all the snow. So, we enjoyed making snow cream and brownies last night instead. I might still try to make the cupcakes the following week when we get back...but we'll see! :)

I have a few more themed decorations and surprises up my sleeve. I'm sure I'll post many more pictures of our vacation/birthday celebration when we get home. :)