Today was Haylee’s 7th birthday party and we decided to try out a gymnastics theme this year. She was thrilled as her current favorite pastime is practicing cartwheels 800 x’s in the living room each night.
We started off the celebration by letting her open up a few gifts in the morning. Chris had decided that she should have a leotard for her party, so I searched ebay for one that had a bit of coverage to it and found one. She also was thrilled to FINALLY get some silly bandz!
We chose First in Flight Gym in Gastonia. We were SOOOOOOO impressed and would recommend them to anyone. It was shocking to me, that for about $100 LESS than Monkey Joe’s you got the whole place to yourself with staff to assist you. Wade’s party at MJ’s was insanely crazy on a Saturday. We’re talking ridiculous-I-cannot-believe-the-amount-of-kids-here-CRAZY. With his party, we didn’t want to pay the big bucks to use one of their party rooms so we just played for a bit and then drove to Nana and Pop’s for cake and gifts.
It was so nice to do everything at one place this time. It was amazingly nice to just walk into our already decorated room complete with table set and balloons in place.
Well, they were in place prior to Wade walking in the room, that is. The only things we brought to add to the tables were the hats and noisemakers.
I ordered the cake from good old Walmart even though they seem to always shock me with their lack of ability to understand and do simple things.
I found a cute, cute picture of a gymnastics cake online with a stick figure upside down on the balance beam. A stick figure. The lady in the bakery said very bluntly… “I can’t draw that.” So…. we went with flowers instead. I gave explicit instructions and even had another picture showing the kind of border I wanted. Even so, when I went to pick it up, I was a bit apprehensive that it would actually be right. Really, I wasn’t even worried about right. I just wanted it to not look ridiculous. I literally was checking out the cakes in the display case to decide which one I was going to ask for when she brought out a hideous version of what I had wanted.
But I was happy to be pleasantly surprised to see this…
At the party, it was funny to hear people comment on the cake and see their surprise when I told them it was from Walmart. I even heard “It just doesn’t look like a Walmart cake.” Ha! So that means I was successful!
I spent some time making the favor bags “cutesy” this year which was fun! They weren’t really that hard, and I did a little at a time so I didn’t feel rushed doing a bunch at the last minute.
I made the circles with my cricut and just handwrote the message… “Thanks for coming!” Then I stapled the tag right on the ribbon… So easy!
I tried to find some “gymnastics-y” favors for the bags, but lemme tell you they aren’t exactly readily available. I ended up getting “gold medals” and gymnastics stickers/tattoos on ebay and threw in some silly bandz and a fruit roll up. :)
I didn’t get a ton of pictures of the action, but a few others were taking pics so I “borrowed” some good ones already up on facebook…
The foam pit was a huge hit! Chris even started off the grown-ups jumping in. He did a crazy flip jump, and actually went completely under all the foam. :)
Jumping from “lily pad to lily pad…” :)
Even the little ones loved running and jumping down the trampoline!
Loved this picture of four generations… Haylee, Chris, Pop, & PawPaw Tom!
I even tried out the beam. Could NOT believe how TINY it was. I can’t imagine doing flips on that! Linda snapped this one… at least she didn’t catch the one with my arms poised high in the “olympic ready” position! :)
I love how Wade is gazing up at me seemingly wondering what in the world Mommy is doing. :)
Yay! The party was a hit, and we have a future gymnast on our hands!
