Birthday Party!

 June 2nd Mason turned 2! The weeks leading up to his birthday I couldn't decide what to do. Should I take him to my small home town for the annual parade and festival? Should we rent a bouncy house and have a bbq party at home? Should we just go to the zoo and do things that Mason likes to do since it's his birthday?
  About 3 or 4 days before his birthday we finally decided to have to small party at our house. No bouncy house (the cheapest I found was $250!) and no BBQ because there was a good chance of rain. Planning for rain but hoping it wouldn't since our house isn't very big, we decided to get pizza from Figaro's. I could order gluten free for Mason and his aunt, and regular for everyone else. I also went to Ruby Cakes and ordered Mason a gluten free birthday cake, along with a few gluten free cupcakes for anyone else. When asked what I wanted on the cake, I decided to just have the cake frosted to look like grass because my plan was to have a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse party. I would have to buy some Mickey figurines to put on the cake because of licensing rules the bakery couldn't decorate it Mickey style for me. That's ok, in the end he would have a little Mickey memento from it.
 And so started my quest for Mickey Mouse Clubhouse party decorations. A trip to Walmart, Target and Fred Meyer all left me with nothing but a little discouragement. No Mickey. I then visited Michael's craft store where I found Mickey crayons (nontoxic), markers (also nontoxic) and color sheets all for only $1 each. I stocked up and was super proud of my amazing find! Next stop, Party Mart. This place had so much great stuff! It gave me a ton of ideas for future parties and had a great selection! The only problem, no Mickey! They had other Disney themes and a lot to choose from for children's parties. I couldn't believe they didn't have Mickey though! I knew there were 2 other party stores around town so I was about to leave and search those when I over heard some employees talking. Apparently they all worked at all 3 stores because they are somehow connected. I asked the employees if all the stores had the same selection, and told them I was looking for a Mickey theme party supplies. They informed me that non of the stores had Mickey and it was probably because of how expensive the licensing is. Here we go again with licensing. Seriously Mickey licensing?! As if whoever owns the rights to Mickey Mouse doesn't make enough money off Disneyland and World alone to be a little cheaper with the dang party supplies. Not to mention the cartoons, movies, clothing, accessories, and toys!
   O yes, the toys! I still needed to get some Mickey figurines for the cake. But now what am I going to do without party decorations? I decided I would go to the Dollar Tree and take a look around. I found bright blue plastic table covers, a couple cute decorations for the table that looked like it would belong in the clubhouse, and a big glittery green and gold 2012 sign in the graduation section. Since Mason was turning 2 I could take it apart and just hang up the 2s from it. Before heading to the checkout I thought I would check out the balloons and come back on Saturday to buy them, that was until I was informed there was some helium shortage and no one in my town had helium! WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!
   By now my little toddler was tired of shopping and we were dangerously close to nap time. I had just enough time to run back to Walmart and buy some Mickey figurines for the cake, as long as some crazy licensing law didn't get in my way. I finally found the Mickey section, very small, but they had some little boxed figurines that came in sets of 2. For example, Mickey and Donald, or Minnie and Daisy. That will work great, they were only about 4 inches tall and would be perfect for the small cake. Perfect until I saw that they were over $8 for one set! Really?! Maybe I'm totally cheap but I wasn't going to pay that. So I left, with nothing but a very crabby toddler who couldn't understand why we were in the toy section not buying toys!
   The next day I had to be at my brother's house by 1:00 to babysit their little boy. (I'm currently they're child care provider until they find a new one). I got Mason up early so we could go back to the party store and decide what we wanted to do. At this point I had my Dollar Tree purchases, and a cake with grass frosting to work with. Going down the aisles Mason kept getting excited about Thomas the Train. Now I know Thomas is a nice cartoon blah blah blah but I just can't stand him! However, the way Mason says "Thomas" and how excited he got made my heart melt and I decided to can the Mickey party and go with Thomas.
   We stocked up on over priced thin junky paper plates (with Thomas on them), napkins, noise makers, decorations, hats and tattoos. All this stuff matched my blue table covers from Dollar Tree perfect, which was good because just one table cover with Thomas on it was over $7. I also found 3 "Punching Balloons" with Thomas on them and a Thomas piñata. These would be a lot of fun inside or out. Happy with my cart full I headed to check out.
   Next stop before babysitting was back to Walmart. This time I was in search of something Thomas like I could put on his cake. It didn't take long to find a cute Thomas train with a cart pulling a cake. I decided to put that on the cake and use the train track that was in the box as decoration to put on the grass cake as well. We also bought a couple boxes of confetti cake mix and the squirt can frosting for easy and quick decorating, and of course blue and green sprinkles.
   After Mason was in bed Friday I started baking cupcakes and decorating the house. By 11:00 I was exhausted. I decided to frost the cupcakes Saturday and head to bed.
   The next morning Mason, his dad and I all walked down stairs together. As Mason came around the corner at the end of the stairs and looked into the living room and saw all the decorations he stopped and said, "wwooooowww!!!!" It was the cutest thing ever, and I wish we would've had the video camera on! The rest of the day was a blur. We went for a run, picked up the cake, cleaned, cleaned cleaned and got Mason back in bed for a nap by noon. Then I started getting ready for the party while Corey shopped and did yard work. By 3:30 we were exhausted but the house looked amazing and guests were arriving.
  The party turned out wonderful, the kids covered themselves in train tattoos and played all afternoon. We had no rain and everyone seemed to have a really nice time together.

  It's now Monday and the house is still decorated with Thomas the Train, but it will have wait another day because today Mason and I area babysitting again, and after that we're headed to Michael's to return all the Mickey party favors I bought. Guess it wasn't the "amazing find" I originally thought it was...