Our daughters seemed to have a great time at Claire's simple fifth birthday party at home, because Maggie requested the exact same thing. But after her "simple" party was more stress and expense than we thought and realizing I would be 38 weeks pregnant when Maggie turned four, we looked for birthday party deals in our parish school's auction last spring. We ended up scoring a party package at a local gymnastics place for $40.
We scheduled the party a week before her actual birthday, so I would be slightly less pregnant. Our daughters and ten little friends had a great time jumping on the trampoline, going down the giant inflatable slide, and running around the obstacle course for the first hour of the party.
They moved up to the "party room" for the last forty-five minutes, which is really just the upstairs parents' waiting area. Maggie had requested a Paw Patrol theme, so we did our best to simply incorporate that into the snack table.
The favors were little Paw Patrol puzzles from the dollar store with Maggie's favorite candy, Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
She planned a menu of cheese sticks, pretzels, and apples with cookie butter for the snack.
Maggie and Claire helped me bake the birthday girl's requested chocolate cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting.
We scheduled the party a week before her actual birthday, so I would be slightly less pregnant. Our daughters and ten little friends had a great time jumping on the trampoline, going down the giant inflatable slide, and running around the obstacle course for the first hour of the party.
They moved up to the "party room" for the last forty-five minutes, which is really just the upstairs parents' waiting area. Maggie had requested a Paw Patrol theme, so we did our best to simply incorporate that into the snack table.
The favors were little Paw Patrol puzzles from the dollar store with Maggie's favorite candy, Trader Joe's dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
She planned a menu of cheese sticks, pretzels, and apples with cookie butter for the snack.
Maggie and Claire helped me bake the birthday girl's requested chocolate cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting.
We sang happy birthday, devoured cupcakes, passed out favors and we were done! Much easier and actually cheaper than Claire's party at home. I'm not sure I would have paid full price for this party package, but for $40 it was a no-brainer.
My parents came to visit the weekend of her party. Despite the girls' expressions in this photo (we were rushing out the door for Mass) we all had a great time. They also got to watch Claire's CYO soccer game and go out on the town to see Aladdin with us.
The following Saturday was Maggie's real birthday. Adam took Claire and Maggie to see the Seattle Symphony children's performance of the Firebird. They met up with the girls' good friend, Paige, and her dad, Jon, for a fun daddy-daughter outing. The show is aimed at children from five to twelve, but at age four Maggie and Paige had no problems making it through the forty-five minute performance. It was supposed to be their Halloween show, so kids were invited to wear their costumes. That night, we had Maggie's friend, Theresa, and her family over for dinner, since they were out of town for her party. We had Maggie's favorite meal, pizza, with ice cream cake, and forced them to watch her birthday slideshow.
One of our presents to Maggie was that I would take her to a painting place to make her own coin bank, something we'd done with Claire a few years ago. We did that the last Saturday morning of October. It was really fun to have some one-on-one time with my middle girl and my mini-me!
I took Claire to the same painting place that afternoon for a kindergarten friend's party - she spotted Maggie's fox bank on the drying rack and pointed it out to all of her classmates. I loved that she was proud of her little sister's handiwork.
No comments:
Post a Comment
You are awesome.