Thomas Tank Engine -4yr- Magic Railroad

For my son's fourth birthday we're doing a Thomas the Tank engine party!  He's obsessed with Thomas, so he's been very involved in helping me decide what to do for his party. 

First, I sent out invitations I printed myself--I used postcards, printed with a picture of Dylan and Thomas from last year.  Then the invitation read "Sir Topham and Lady Hatt invite you to celebrate Dylan's 4th birthday on the Island of Sodor with a day of Thomas the Tank Engine fun!  Mr. Conductor is waiting to take you on the Magic Railroad to the Island of Sodor!"  The back said "Please reserve your seat on Thomas, the Really Useful Engine!  Please RSVP with Lady Hatt (aka Dylan's mom)" and "Shining Time Station is located at:" with our home address. 

We have a really long driveway, so we're going to have train tracks drawn on the driveway, and meet kids at the end with a wagon decorated like a train, and give them a ride up to our house on the "magic railroad."  Once inside, we have some printables on legal size paper for them to color until everyone's here.  Once they're done an adult will put contact paper on them and they can use them as placemats!  We'll also have Dylan's train table out. 

For games we're going to play Find the Lost Cargo in our back yard, with picture clues to help them find the next area where "cargo" will be--the cargo is engineer hats and train whistles.  Next we'll move to our outside picnic table and let them paint the name trains you find at craft stores. 

After that, a game of Railroad tag (tag but after you're tagged, you join in a train chasing everyone else).  Then back inside for more train table play while I get cake and everything else ready.

The cake is a standing Thomas cake (I got the 3d train cake pan) and train cars made out of mini loaf pans.  There will be a car for every two kids--two will be Annie and Clarabell, and the rest will be freight cars loaded with M&M's, and other candies.  We use mini Oreos for wheels. If everything's running early I'll also have some extra undecorated cakes that they can decorate themselves. 

My son is on a dairy free diet, so the cakes are Duncan Hines devils food, which is chocolate but dairy free; the icing will be colored with Thomas colors--it’s just Duncan Hines Vanilla, also dairy free.  The train cake is the center of the table, with his moving Thomas, Annie and Clarabell train running on a track around it.  One of his presents is a 18" flashing train signal, and it will be on the buffet behind the food table, along with the balloons, and Thomas centerpiece. 

For food we'll have the normal chips and dip, along with fruit and veggies for the adults.  We'll have train car PB&J with gum drop wheels.  And a Thomas blue punch for kids and adults to drink.  I don't go in for buying Thomas plates, etc, when I can buy colored ones much cheaper.  I spend that money on the goodie bags instead. 

For goodie bags, they get a colored tin pail that has their name on it in puffy paint, with an engineer hat and train whistle.  They also get a Thomas chocolate sucker with a ribbon on it for Dylan's birthday.  They'll also get the train they painted (that works with Brio/Thomas sets) and the placemat they made. 

We've got a digital camera, and I plan on taking lots of pictures of each kid, with a picture of them at the party going on the thank-you's.  We also have the Thomas Halloween costume, and if there's time, we'll try to get each kid's picture in it.  At the end will be one last train ride down the driveway in our wagon "train." 

Dylan still talks about his Transportation party from his 2nd birthday, when a fire truck came by, so I expect this party will be remembered for a long, long time!