5/9 Beck's Birthday Party

Six weeks before Beck's birthday I looked into party ideas. I wanted to do something with trains. I originally thought about having it at Happy Hollow since it had reopened in March, but then I found out the park doesn't actually have a train ride. I considered Lemo's Farm, Oakland Zoo, the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad before deciding on renting the caboose of the Niles Canyon Railway -- a working steam engine train. By the time I called, the earliest date available was Sunday, 5/9, Mother's Day (the train only runs on Sundays), and the times were 1:30 or 3:00. I picked 3:00 because I was afraid we'd have a bunch of kids falling asleep during the 1:30 ride and I figured kids could get a nap in on the drive out to Sunol for the 3:00 train.

On average 24 people can fit in the caboose although the person I spoke to said they have fit up to 30. I wanted to try to have everyone fit in the caboose instead of having some people in other train cars, so we only invited a half a dozen kids from his class on top of family and family friends. There ended up being 27 of us (13 adults, 14 kids).

I put the party's start time as 2:30 on the Evite, so we'd have time to make the 3:00 train. Luckily, the train was a little late due to weather (it had rained earlier) because one family got there after 3:00. It was cool seeing the train pull up with the steam rising up over the engine.

I was a little worried about the caboose feeling a little claustrophobic since there didn't appear to be a lot of windows and not very big ones at that. The windows were fine. Big enough for kids to see out of, but standing adults couldn't see much. But the cupola definitely made up for the lack of windows. It was practically all window. The cupola is the part sticking up in the back in the below photo. The view from the cupola was like what you'd see if you were riding on top of the train. Getting up to the cupola was a little precarious, just ladders that went straight up, so a few kids did not venture up while my cousin's kids didn't want to leave :)

We passed out snack bags and juice boxes for the kids and had other snacks and drinks for the adults. Instead of passing out goody bags at the end, we passed them out right away because they included these Auto Bingo cards we were going to use for one of the games. http://www.amazon.com/Regal-Travel-Auto-Bingo-Game/dp/B000FPCWYC. The kids had to find four things on their cards (other than the free space) to get a prize. I thought finding five in a row would be too hard since the cards are meant for road trips. I included other things in the bags they could play with on the train. I figured it was necessary since they were going to be in a confied space.

We had cupcakes and then played a similar game on the ride back with a different prize. Overall, I think everyone had a good time, especially Beck, who spent the first half of the trip in the cupola and the second half sitting with his best buddy from preschool.

This is the best photo we have of Beck blowing out the candles. The other photo does not have my arm but still has the pole.
After the party, we went to dinner with Leilani, Hannah, and Zachary. Al was out of town at a family wedding. We ended up at a restaurant that actually had a Mother's Day menu.