Leander’s 2nd Birthday | Disney’s Cars Party

Of all the things I looked forward to 2020 bringing – planning birthday parties was not quite one of them.
See, I have an exceptionally large family & while I desperately want to gather all of my very favorite people together to celebrate my kiddos’ special days, we don’t quite have the house for such gatherings.
For further clarification (and just in case you aren’t aware of what I mean by “large family”) we hosted 31 people for Leander’s first birthday party – thirty-one humans (plus Abby-dog) in our living room & dining room (and I’m pretty sure people overflowed into the kitchen & found themselves sitting on the steps). And looking forward to 2020, we were looking at adding 4 more to that number.

Maybe someday Derrick & I will have a big, open house that we can host everyone, at the same time, comfortably, but unfortunately, right now is not that time.

Unfortunately (which kinda-sorta turned into “fortunately”), our party guest list was cut short this year – partially due to a possible COVID exposure & subsequent quarantine, partially due to active sickness, partially due to being of elderly age & wisely avoiding large groups of people, and partially due to my cousin breaking his collarbone less than 48 hours before the party (oops!) So, instead of hosting 31 people, it was just my immediate family + 3 of my cousins who were able to make it out to the party. And it turned out just perfect.

Of course, we celebrated with a Cars & Lightning McQueen themed birthday party for our Cars obsessed little man! We actually found a ton of unopened Cars birthday decorations at one of our favorite little thrift shops earlier this summer, so for less than $10, we had some super amazing decorations!

Before we get too far along though – Leander’s actual 2nd birthday was on Thursday night, but since his party wasn’t until Friday night, we had a little “mini” celebration for him, with just the 4 of us, on Thursday. It was great fun & great practice for the next night!

(If you want to skip back & see the highlights of Leander’s party last year, we threw a Little Blue Trucked themed 1st birthday party & you can see it here!)

Gotta love 2020 & technology! This is not a photo of Leander watching a movie on Derrick’s phone – but it’s a photo of Leander video chatting with his Nana & Papa!

Some pre-party presents!

Speaking of our favorite little thrift store – I also found these remote controlled Lightning McQueen & Mater cars over the summer! I think I paid $3 for both of them & I looked them up on Amazon – you can’t even buy Mater, but the Lightning McQueen car was going for $83.99! I told Derrick we should just pack them back up & sell them (ha ha).

Which brings us to Friday night & his birthday party!

My sister, Ruby, came over on Friday & we made the cake! I barely had enough ingredients for all the icing – it was close! I didn’t realize just how big the “2” would be! We made it work though!

In an attempt to be as sanitary as possible – we made Leander his own individual cake. That way, he could blow out his candles & we wouldn’t have to worry about him spitting on the cake everyone was going to eat. (Remember, like, yesterday, when we used to do that & didn’t think twice about it?)

Little man was SO ready for cake!

Big shout-out to my sister who snapped almost all of the following photos for me! I’m so thankful that I have a sister who is willing to take photos during my kid’s birthday parties – that way I can enjoy & be more present in the moment!

A whole box full of Cars!

Another big hit was dinosaurs!

These cake photos are some of my favorite ever – they just make me so darn happy. Leander started (attempting to) blow out his candles the moment we lit them – it was hysterical!

“Ummm, excuse me cousin – this is MY cake.”

(If you’re worried that he ate this entire cake – you can relax – he only ate the icing off the very top of it!)