Journey Through Wonderland

Last year, Sophia had such a good time celebrating her birthday with Stiles, we decided to throw another co-bash with the Cottons. After all, nothing says twice the fun like two two-year-olds. So on Saturday February 20th, Sophia and her good friend Stiles celebrated with a party for their friends. We thought an Alice in Wonderland theme to be in order because (1) Stiles can only celebrate his unbirthday as he was born on Leap Day 2/29 and (2) his mother, my good friend, is already named Alice. Turns out Tim Burton stole our idea and decided to release a movie a few weeks later, thus causing confusion that we copied him. Not so.

Official announcements were sent inviting people to the very important date of an Unbirthday Tea Party.

The original location was Village Park, where we held the one year old party. All week it threatened to rain, but day of seemed like it would hold out. Alice and I went over to set up, got half way through, and of course it started to sprinkle. Not wanting to take our chances, we quickly put plan B into place, loaded everything back up in the car and headed over to the church gym to reset up, while Warren went through the phone tree to reroute all the party guests.

With a little help from early arrivers, everything got put into place and the children were soon welcomed to Wonderland by the White Rabbit (yes that's me. and yes, that's part of the White Rabbit costume I wore when I played said part in the 8th musical play).

First the children colored paper Cheshire Cat masks:


Then they followed Alice down the rabbit hole

and into the White Rabbit's house, where they were so large they could pop their heads out the top.

Then, it was a visit to the Caterpillar, where they all got to pop his pipe smoke (aka bubbles)

followed by a very interactive game of "croquet" where basically the children threw balls or themselves through the hoop.

Lastly was the chance to bounce the twins Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum (we bounced beach balls on a parachute)

The parachute got such rave reviews from the crowd, that we extended the game and had the children go under it while we waved it up and down

and then sit on top of it while we spun them around.

All that spinning, turning and bouncing got us right over to the Mad Hatter's for our unbirthday tea.

The full table spread

Cupcakes were passed out and before we could get a candle in them, the birthday kids started chowing down...

We somehow got the cupcakes back on the plates for a redo with singing and candles.

Lovely Alice serving the crowd

Sophia loved her cupcake and ate it all on her own. She also learned the word cupcake that day and very frequently now asks to be served them for dinner and lunch :)

After a long hard day of partying, Sophia relaxing by walking around holding all her presents.