Week 158

Mar 7-13

Jack's 3rd Birthday Party!

My baby turned the big 3 this week! My how the time has flown by! This post is going to be quite picture heavy. I just couldn't help myself. We had such a nice day and coincidentally got tons of great shots. Honestly there were easily 20+ more pictures that I wanted to put in, but didn't want to make it too ridiculous. I will upload to FB one day when I get time This party reminded me a lot of Jack's 1st birthday party. There were tons of friends and family ready to celebrate! We probably had more fun than we should at a 3 year old's birthday party, but hey that's how we roll.

A typical family picture. Hilarious. *love*

Although we invited some of Jack's little people friends, they all seemed to fall through due to illness, unexpected events, and other obligations. Oh well. He really didn't care. He had a huge crowd of people who all love him to pieces. I don't even think he noticed there weren't kids there. This was our first kid birthday party we have thrown since returning home to SC. Honestly I didn't realize how much family we actually have until I started my list of invites. Jack and Abel are two very lucky little boys to have so many people who love them.

The night before the party Aunt Caroline and I did our usual ritual of making and decorating a million awesome cookies to match the party theme. We are really starting to get good at these cookies. We made sure all of Jack's presents were wrapped and ready to go. Saturday morning the whole house got up early to make sure everything was clean. We proceeded with decorations. I promised that I would let you guys know how I saved money on my party since we are still on our budget, I know you all are wondering, so here goes the breakdown.

I found a bunch of card stock random scraps of paper I had used to make Jack's 1st birthday banner. A few nights before the party Ed and I stayed up late to make Jack a birthday banner. It turned out very cute with a dump truck, backhoe, and construction cones. This was free since I already had the supplies.

I had shopped before we went on our budget for a few things...I hit up the dollar store and got balloons, streamers, and the cute construction hats that you see. I think the total purchase for these items were $6.00. The yellow and black plates, cups, napkins, etc. were saved from Ed's 30th birthday Steeler's themed party. As far as the pull apart dump cake I had all supplies except for the cake mix and two bags of powdered sugar (oh and some butter) so total cost $8.00. We made some dips for people to snack on. We also purchased some beer and wine. This is where we accrued most of our cost. Probably groceries were around $75.00. Some friends pitched in more beer so that helped a lot.

We had already purchased Jack a bunch of presents in the months before his birthday. When we would find something on sale or something special we would buy it and put it away. Since we didn't buy anything after we set our budget, I have no idea how much we spent, but it wasn't much. Total cost for a birthday party I would say under $150.00.

Okay back to the actual party. Since it was mostly family and friends we did the usual kids birthday party sequence of events. Snack on food/drinks, mingle, open presents, sing Happy Birthday, eat cake, and then proceed to drink more and hang out. :) Jack got so many nice presents. I want to thank everyone for his presents, even those of you who couldn't make it. He loved everything he got and even now after a couple of weeks he is still playing with all of his new things.

Jack got so much attention on his birthday. He just ate it all up. I think he practically passed out standing up by the end of the day. He was so excited the morning before the party. He kept saying, "Today is my Happy Birthday!!!" I think this was the first year that he really understood the concept. We had gone to his friend London's birthday party a couple of weeks prior and Jack had a blast. Enjoy all of the pictures of Jack's special day!

Here are some pictures of all the special couples who came. Decked out in their construction hats! ;)

Coming soon an update on Jack.