Party recap

Lovie's 2nd birthday party was Saturday and it was a blast. Better than anticipated, really. Absolutely no regrets for doing this. Sure she's still very young and won't remember this party, but she'll have pictures and some video to help remind her. And she had the time of her young life (and we had very little set up and clean up to do!).

Look at that smile!

When we first arrived, she didn't really think much of it. We were just at Gymnastics (as she calls it). But then her first little friend from school came and she started getting super excited as she wanted to show her friend around.

notice her shirt? it's a big 2 with Team Umizoomi characters on it- matching her invite

They jumped on the trampoline. They dove into the ball pit. The ran around squealing and giggling.

After a bunch more people started to arrive, the teachers gathered everyone around a large circle and sang Happy Birthday to my Lovie who sat with a big grin on her face. Then they brought out a huge parachute and laid it down for everyone to grab a hold of and start to shake. And sing Happy Birthday. Then Lovie laid down on top of the parachute and everybody shook her back and forth. Then others joined in.

They played with puppets. One of the teachers hid a bunch of small toys around the place so they had to run around and collect them and bring them back. They brought out a buttload of pom poms for the kids to play with.

They hooked up a huge swing that all the kids were able to sit on and ride. (This was funny to watch because all the parents grabbed their cameras to take photos.)

They built a fort and played hide and seek (Lovie hid by covering her eyes with her hands- *cutest thing ever*) for a couple of minutes before hiding Lovie in the back room for everyone to find.  After a minute, they directed everyone to the front of the gym to wait as they brought Lovie out in a car.

And it was the cutest 30 seconds of her life. I swear to god. She was smiling from ear to ear as one of the teachers wheeled her out in circles while everyone clapped and the Beatles Birthday song played in the background.

Then the teacher got her out of the car and brought her to the cake (Team Umizoomified with little toppers I DIY'd), lit the candles, we all sang and she blew out her candles.

The kids ate pizza and cake and went back out to play for another 10-15 minutes.

The party ended with another sock puppet show followed by bubbles. Lots of bubbles (they brought out a fan and huge thing of bubbles they placed in front of the fan causing all these little kids to try to pop all the bubbles).

After the last bubble was popped, the teachers announced that all the kids needed to get their socks and shoes on so they could get a goodie bag. The party was over but hopefully not forgotten for a while.

Nearly two hours of smiles, giggles, laughter erupting from all corners of the room. It was pure fun, fun, fun.

I'm pretty darn sure we'll be doing this again in another year, too. Yahoo for winter birthdays keeping us indoors!

everybody craaaazy shake!

Tomorrow. Her party is finally tomorrow! : )

I designed the invites myself. Not too shabby, eh? Well I don't think they are (I mean did you see I got a photo of Lovie inside of Bot's belly-screen?!??). I think they're damn cute, tyvm!

Because I blurred it all out, the party is going to be (for little kids) at a little kid gym place...The place Lovie's been going to since October for her "Gymnastics." She loves this place. Loves it. So it was really fitting to have the party here. And the price really couldn't be beat- especially considering we don't have to worry about doing any kind of set up, clean up, entertaining, etc. Nope. We just show up with a cake. Play. Pizza will be delivered at 3:30 (party starts at 3). We'll eat pizza and have cake- after singing Happy Birthday to my girl, of course. Then it's back to play play play!

My header at the top of the blog? That's from the last time we were at Gymnastics. They have a ball pit which Lovie adores. Ack, she's going to have SO much fun. She always does but once she realizes that everyone is there for HER... eek! :) I can't wait to see her reaction.

I'm a bit nervous because every single person RSVP'd that the were coming except for a small handful of people so we're going to be at the max the place allows! And then there's the chance that some additional child(ren) will show up as my husband's family kind of does their own thing.

I can't worry about any of that, though; we'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

My main focus is Lovie having a blast... and somehow, someway getting some pictures of it all to help us remember. We can only do what we can do and the H and I have already discussed that we would swap taking pictures and playing whenever we could.  So fingers crossed we get some decent photos (I'd love to have a group shot of *all* kids but not sure how/if that could work with 20 kids.)

Eek, this is gonna be so much fun!!

• After work today, I pick up the cake (just a generic one from Costco... I made Millie, Geo, and Bot characters to stick into the cake. Was hoping to keep the cake in the car overnight but our temps are supposed to be in the 50s today!).
• Bottled water and juice boxes are in the hallway at home.
• Little goody bags assembled and ready to go (with a Team Umizoomi sticker- that I made- on them)!
• Pizza to be delivered at 3:30.
• Paper plates, napkins, plastic forks, candles all in a bag ready to go, too.
• Team Umizoomi "2" shirt ready to be worn by the birthday girl.

This is gonna be soooo much fun.

And then on Sunday, we get to go to a 1 year old's pizza party! So it's definitely going to be a busy weekend. How about you?

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??