Last night we celebrated our youngest daughter’s 4th birthday! I just can’t believe that our baby is no longer a baby anymore. She decided that she wanted to have a Hatchimals birthday. In fact, all three kids want to have a Hatchimals party this year, so I’m definitely going to reuse as much as I can.
My fail proof birthday party plan that I’ve used the past couple of years wasn’t going to work this year. In the past, we’ve just gone to Chuck E Cheese’s. I don’t have to worry about decorations, food, clean up, entertainment. Nothing. It’s the perfect place to go and not have to worry about a single thing.
But…the morning of the party, my oldest woke up with pink eye. What?! Chuck E Cheese’s is like the absolute worst place to take a kid with pink eye, so I did the next best thing and decided to bring Chuck E Cheese’s to the birthday party. I planned some simple games (i.e. whatever games I already had on hand), created a prize wall (i.e. took out books from a bookshelf and stuffed prizes from Walmart in it) and heated up a couple of frozen pizza. The best part…the kids loved it, and dare I say possibly even better than Chuck E Cheese’s!!!
The night before, we had “the professionals” (what my daughter calls our friends who made the Jurassic World birthday cake) make a Hatchimals birthday cake. I can’t say enough about what a great job they always do. What I appreciate even more, is how they involve the kids and let them help. So grateful to have friends who invest in my kids!!!
I ended up going to Walmart to get the decorations and prizes. The thing I love about January birthdays is that they are right after Christmas, so I usually head over to the clearance section and find things that have been discounted from Christmas. I really lucked out because they had a whole bunch of Hatchimals that were on clearance. Then I headed to the seasonal section and found a bunch of the Valentine’s goodies to use as prizes.
When I got home, I set up the games and prize wall. I just picked games that would be easy for them to win tickets for. What I really would have loved to do is recreate Chuck E Cheese’s games, but considering my time constraints, I think that might have been overly ambitious. For the prize wall, I emptied out one of our bookshelves and organized it by the amount of tickets needed to win each prize. I also randomly already had raffle tickets and just gave them those each time they won at a game.
The decorations were mainly store bought, but I also had big sister, our budding artist, draw some Hatchimals on our dry erase board with a special birthday message for her sister. She was so proud of her work! I think it’s good to encourage the gifts and talents of your kids and also try to involve them in what you are doing.
It was such a fun night! So much fun, that we’ll do it in another five months for Hatchimals party #2!