Thinking ahead

For Lovie's first birthday, we kinda went big- spending more than we wanted and having everyone (family only- like 50 people) out for pizza in a private room of a pizza joint. I have no regrets because it was the first time several family members were meeting Lovie and it was important to me that we give them that opportunity.

But it wasn't cheap.

I mean, despite only getting a couple packages of balloons we blew up ourselves and some other random, cheap decorations as well as an inexpensive sheet cake, every penny went to the pizza joint for pizza and pop.

We spent what we spent agreeing that from that point forward, her birthday parties would be much smaller. Fine.

But the closer we get to her birthday, the more I'm hoping to do something more than just us and maybe her grandparents.

Enter one of those kid gym places.

A friend of mine, a SAHM, has been taking her kid there for well over a year and kept telling me to take Lovie. Hello! We spend a LOT of money sending her to daycare during the week - where she gets plenty of play time! But now that she's older and even more active, I decided to look into it for when the weather gets to be too cold or wet for us to get out to the park. They had a two week free trial so went for the first time last weekend.

It's AWESOME.

We spent an hour on the floor with Lovie, playing with her, encouraging her, spotting her. She did well with the teachers and the other kids, all older (she's the youngest in the class going up to 3.5 yo). We ended up signing her up after the class for another 8 weeks of classes starting in November so that the membership fee was waived.

I then "liked" them on Facebook and noticed they were having a contest for a FREE birthday party. So I slapped Lovie's pic on their wall and asked people to like. The contest ends in two weeks. So far (KNOCK ON EVERY PIECE OF WOOD), things look promising.

If we could win this party, it would really be ideal.

Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I need to figure out what she's gonna wear for her birthday (and any time next year) so I found some images from google images and farted around on paint and came up with two designs:

She LOVES Team Umizoomi. Like, LOVES them. And I think I'm certain she would be beyond ecstatic to wear a shirt with the characters from the show... but I'm not sure I can find a place to make the design for me because of licensing issues. That's my guess anyway. Whereas the shirt with her name (her real name would appear, of course) can easily be made.

Keeping in mind I used Paint to create these so colors and style won't be the same, of course, what do you think??