Birthday Party Frenzy!

We have been in a birthday frenzy at our house! In the past month, my girl has been to 3 birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese, Bounce-It-Out, and the Young Chef’s Academy. They were all a lot of fun, and we are now getting ready to go to Long Island for my nephew’s 5th birthday party, which will be held at Chuck E. Cheese. So this week is a flurry of getting ready for our trip, finishing up Christmas shopping (if you can imagine! – we still haven’t celebrated Christmas with half of our Long Island family), and birthday shopping.

We have also been getting ready for our girl’s 8th birthday that is coming up next week. Having had the opportunity to sample from a variety of different birthday party venues, my girl requested that we have her party at Bounce-It-Out. This is a great new place that opened up in our area this past November. In addition to her friend’s birthday party, we also went there the day after Christmas with our family that was visiting. The whole place is full of inflatable slides, bouncy houses, inflatable obstacle courses – you name it. We had a great time and we booked a date with them for her birthday party. They offer packages that include a party room, pizza & soda (I picked Hi-C), and of course play time for the kids. You can also print off invitations from their website, which is great, but I had this cute picture of my girl on one of the slides and I wanted to make a photo invitation. I started out on Kodak Gallery but this year I am trying to economize, and my cards originally looked like they would be $ .69 per card, and when I went to order they turned out to be $10.99 per set of 10 – and I needed 12! Before I gave up on the photo cards completely, I checked out Walmart.com – I got 12 adorable invitations, done in 1 hour, and picked up at the store by my husband for only $5.18!! That was a great buy – I’m going to have to remember that for my holiday cards this year!

We’ll have just a few days when we get home from our trip to finish birthday shopping for the birthday girl (I’ve picked a few things up here and there), and to put together the goody bags! Oh, and order a cake. Oh, and of course she also wants a cookie cake to bring in to school to share with class. And, I’ll have to find some time to WRAP her birthday presents. Anything else? Oh, right, I have to find some Webkinz figurines, because she wants a Webkinz cake and they don’t make those at the store, so she thoughtfully suggested that I buy Webkinz figurines to stick on top of the cake. Remember when she just wanted an inexpensive Webkinz-themed party at home this year? Apparently SHE doesn’t remember that!

Two weeks after my girl’s birthday is my husband’s – thankfully he’s nowhere near as particular about his birthday celebrations!! ;)