My Fruitful Life: Our 4 year old's Big Backyard Birthday Party

Today we celebrated Blue Rock's 4th birthday. We decided to have it at our house this year. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone here. I love having people over but the list grew and grew and before we knew it over 50 people had said they were coming! 25 kids came and 26 adults. I was honestly not sure if everyone would fit comfortably in my backyard. The party turned out great. God took care of the rain and we had a beautiful day. Everyone seemed to have a great time.

One key thing to having a big party at your house and not having a wrecked house is to keep it outside. Of course anyone was free to come in and go to the bathroom as needed or change clothes. I just didn't want wet children coming in and out of my house and potentially getting into things that are off limits. I don't mind smaller groups but that many would create quite the clean up, especially once they started eating cake. In my original plans I had a number of games set up including a relay. When the kids got here they were having so much fun exploring and playing that we threw most of the "structured" games out the window. The only games we did were the water balloon toss, even though some of the kids didn't join in because they were busy playing on the water slide and small groups played pin the tail on the donkey.

We didn't get to invite everyone we wanted so we invited Blue Rock's Sunday school class from church and the kids in our small group that are his age, some really good friends we used to go to church with across town, and a few friends I grew up with including my best friend and her family. In addition we invited my parents, aunt, and siblings. Blue Rock really wanted to invite his whole class from preschool. However, I thought it might already be overwhelming. There were also some kids from my Moms Club I wanted to invite but like I said it was already going to be a full house. And I was getting a little stressed because I had never hosted this many people before. Thankfully once the party started it went very smoothly and I'm glad we had it at our house.

I really love backyard birthday parties. We were able to invite more people than if we were having the party at a bounce house or Chuck E. Cheese like we did last year. We didn't have a ton of money to spend (and I spent more than I was planning on) but with our budget I came up with the following. I'm only including my budget to help others decide what they might want to do for their kids parties. I did a lot of research and planning and it really helped me to get ideas from others and know what things cost and how they cut corners.

Big Water slide, this is also our birthday gift to Blue Rock. This should last all summer and we may get to use it again next year which would be a big bonus! - $300 (if we rented one it would cost around $250, so we decided to buy one and make it Blue Rock's birthday present as well)

Big Trampoline - already own

Swing Set - already own

Log Cabin Play House - already own

Bean bag toss game - $8

Ring/horse shoe game - $8

Small pool - $10

Food and drinks - I bought 40 sandwiches, a fruit tray, and a veggie tray from Target's Deli. Since we were having around 50 people I cut one tray of 20 sandwiches in half which was perfect for the kids. Blue Rock didn't even eat any. This way I ended up with 60 sandwiches. I also bought lots of bags of chips and lots of juice and water. I spent around $125 for food and drinks.

Cake - a friend of mine was going to bake one for me but she got sick so I got one from Costco - $20

Water balloons - $15

Big Balloons - $10 (Dollar Tree)

Plates, napkins, etc. - $10

Party Favors: big loopy straw, chalk, and bubbles (which I forgot to hand out!) - $25

I think that was about it. That comes to around $531. If we don't include the cost of the water slide since it doubles as his birthday present then the average cost per child is $9.24. Of course we bought enough food to feed the adults so if you added them in the equation that would come to around $4.53 per person and we had food left over. However, the biggest hit was his birthday gift, the water slide. I'm really glad we bought one. Next year the overall cost of the party will be less if we did the same party again with the water slide. The stations might change a little but the big attractions, water slide and trampoline would be the same. The cost for the party was honestly not bad. His party at Chuck E. Cheese last year cost around $300 and there were only around 8 kids plus adults. We bought extra food to feed everyone and extra tokens. It's still expensive but if you're creative you could do a party like this for less. You also don't have to worry if kids bring their siblings. A few things to make a party less expensive would be have a slip n' slide instead of a water slide. Invite less people. Not feed them lunch or make the lunch. I considered doing a nacho bar and making a crock pot of queso and beans and add additional toppings to put on top but decided I needed to make it less stressful and just have someone else do the food. You could even make the sandwiches yourself. Target's sandwiches cost around $1 per sandwich so that is really a good price. They were also very good. The fruit trays cost as much or more than the sandwich trays. The main thing kids want to do is play with their friends and have fun. If you've had your child's birthday party at home and have blogged about it, please leave a comment with the link below. I'd love to read about it. Here are some pictures from his birthday party. Thanks everyone for coming!