a gymboree birthday celebration
to celebrate parks’ third birthday, we decided to invite some family friends, his cousins, and some school friends to a local gymboree to play, dance, and enjoy pizza + cake. just like christmas, this was the first time that he knew and understood that it was his birthday (and to put it simply- the boy loves to celebrate) so we decided to have it somewhere that he would really love. and he did even more than we expected. if you are local to charlotte, i can’t recommend the gymboree in south charlotte enough- they were so wonderful / absolutely perfect for this age. he had the time of his life.
before the party, they asked for his favorite songs (cruise and holy by florida georgia line, elmo, moana, and paw patrol) and he was absolutely ‘high on life’ when they each came on…
we went with a school bus + trucks theme for our little car lover
a family photo before heading out to the p a r t y
i ordered the cake and cupcakes from a target bakery – people usually love the taste of them and they are very reasonable and simple.
(also from target: the napkins, gold plates, cookies, wooden ‘p’ topper, and ‘happy birthday’ topper)
i took a $5 pom pom garland from target and cut off the poms and then stuck a toothpick through each one for the cupcake toppers
i wanted him to play and live it up with his friends and family members and then spend his actual birthday in a more simple way – with his favorite things while spending time at a park/home together.
there were about sixteen kids there and it was just a dream for him
we are so thankful to everyone who took the time to come
for favors, i put ‘albanese’ gummy bears (the best! so good if you haven’t tried) in a jar and then used sticky tac to place a construction truck on top
the invites are from minted (i love that they print the addresses on the envelopes for you for free)
our christmas cards this year were also from there
-the king of pizza-
(they serve from a local restaurant and it was delicious!)
he totally hit it off with my friend’s little girl, nora
and it was so adorable.
the three gold candlesticks are also from amazon
his knit hat is from strings.of.love
parks is three
after gymboree, we picked up a smoothie and went to build-a-bear for the first time
although i don’t recommend going to a really small one on a saturday afternoon, it was fun!
he got a birthday bear (which is the price of their age during their birthday month)
so it was $3 + a shirt + a heartbeat
parks was pretty mesmerized and called him ‘bear’
gymboree made our experience so incredible
you could tell that they really wanted to make it a memorable event for parks
(which meant so much)
+ we were so happy with how everything went
and are excited to go back and play there soon!
(both boys light up when we are there)