Whew!
What a fun day! Thank you all for the kind birthday wishes for Thomas!
The party went great. Thomas had a really fun day. But let's start at the beginning... (warning - lots of photos today - you did want to see pictures, right?) Here he is this morning (6:02 am? :) in his jammies in his "Lighning Akeen" car. 
He went back 'on track' (year round school) today, too - HOORAY!!! That was a present to everyone! :) He
was very excited to go see 'Miss Sheri' and got a birthday crown to
wear.
Thomas helped make the cake yesterday. He loved it ("For my Happy Birthday!"). Aaron's mom sent him a set of cars from the Disney store (we don't have one here anymore) to put on the cake. He was VERY excited about that - esp. since we didn't use all of them and so he got some new cars to play with. He watched me frost his cake and oohed and aahhed the whole time - it was hilarious. I love to decorate cakes. I'm not amazing or anything, but it's fun and tastier than store-bought. I was a little worried, having to make a gluten-free/dairy-free cake - I used a mix and the results were better than expected, everyone agreed it tasted really good.
Eventually I decided on making a small cake for Thomas, and 'regular' cupcakes for everyone else. I made a few cupcakes for Thomas, too - in case that's what he preferred. A bonus of this plan was that I got to use my new cake stand and my new cupcake stand for the first time. Hooray!
The first picture cracks me up, because I put the backdrop from the cars package behind the cake. Ahh, nice scenery! :) Under the 4 is Thomas' real name. (And yes, the tractor got tipped at some point - like the movie! :)
The flag on the top cupcake is also to remind us that is the gluten-free one!
I decorated mostly last night, while watching 3 episodes of the best show ever. It looked nice. Until about 7 am, when some of the streamers were pulled down, and others were literally shredded. I know, I know, what did I expect, right? 
(after shot) (bad lighting! There are streamers you can't see -from the corners of the room to the ceiling fan, and the balloons are hanging from streamers from our ceiling fan)
Princess helped me make a butcher-paper race track around our table- which is oval, so it was perfect. I cut the yellow strips and she glued them on - she got out her ruler and measured 3" between each one - hey, math! Thomas loved that, too, and raced his cars on it a lot.
I used the extra Cars fabric on the table and the top of the buffet - not hemmed (or evenly trimmed) or anything.
I put the cake on the table way too early. Monkey really wanted it - I moved the cake (after the second time - stupid!):
We had pizza, chips, veggies, dip (my MIL's yummy recipe), oreos (tires!), and my mom brought a cheese ball.
For the kids we had Cars coloring pages, the bean bag toss, and we brought up the car rug (with roads) from the playroom. Plus, the Cars movie was playing, of course.
Thomas was awesome. I was a little worried about that, as he's been very French the past week. He waited and smiled huge while we sang to him - and tried and tried to blow out all the candles (he was blowing an F sound, so it wasn't entirely successful). He sat and colored with his friend (for a minute) and was excited to give him his goody bag (right when he arrived). He loved all of his presents - I love this next picture because it's like the ones I had growing up - my little brothers are always right next to me in all my birthday pictures! (They're looking at this big book of trains we got him).
He was excited to see everyone - how lucky my kids are to have local aunts & uncles who are willing to come to birthdays/dance recitals, etc. And this time to have grandparents and a friend there - that was great. He was, of course, completely wired by bed time - but it was wonderful.
The Best Racecar Happy Birthday in the Whole World!
