We celebrated Garrison's 8th birthday with a fun, wild and crazy party with all of his friends on Saturday and the birthday boy LOVED every second! Yay for another year of birthday party success!!
I am struggling a little with him turning 8 because HOW DID WE GET HERE SO FAST??!! Eight just feels like a really big one. We're almost to double digits!! Time goes so fast and I just want to slow down and enjoy the childhood days so much. Even though it's tough on my mama heart to watch him grow so fast, it's also the best thing ever to have a front row seat for. But before I get carried away and emotional, he's not 8 yet so we're going to soak up this last week of being 7 big time!
Garrison decided right away, without hesitation, for the first time in his life (haha!) that he wanted a Pokemon birthday party. So that's what we did!
Megan designed the PERFECT invite!! She is the best at making every detail personal and we love her work. She's famous to us. =)
Things were a tad stressful leading up to this party because of our busy week last week but thankfully we pulled it off! Garrison was even a little apprehensive and nervous because he wanted everyone to enjoy his party and have fun. Bless him. Our little thinker and pleaser. So the pressure was on! Especially given I wasn't on my A-game! Sooo thankful everything turned out so fun for him!!
Our traditional pre-party family picture is a must!
And since Austin didn't smile for the first 10, we had to make a few more until we caught him in the act! =)
The cake table!
After much viewing of cakes and much indecisiveness, the birthday boy finally decided he'd like to have a cake like a Pokemon card... but he decided on all of the details. And it turned out perfect! 100% personalized for our Garrison Cade. =) He picked every number, damage, and feature and was so impressed with the final product. Also, for the 4th year in a row he went with chocolate. Yum-O!
Pokemon was an interesting theme for me to work with. Super easy in some ways, but pretty challenging in others. How do you decorate for Pokemon?? Haha. We rounded up every little thing we had (even though I have no idea what any of it is or means) and used it all!
Garrison's reaction when he saw his cake in person for the first time. =)
The favor table! I framed his party invitation, had the boys round up a few more things, and then put out the packs of Pokemon we later gave our little guests. We also added to our favor table thanks to Little Cesar's Pizza giving us tons of packs of cookies with our pizza and Terrell's Granny donating a bowl full of suckers (her Bingo winnings from the night before!). I think the favors were pretty big hits.
One of Garrison's main requests for his party was an opportunity to trade with his friends. Since trading and Pokemon in general typically aren't allowed at school unless it's a special day it's pretty rare that friends get to trade. And of course that's their favorite thing about Pokemon! So we set up 2 card tables in our dining room to be designated as the trading tables. Plus we had them available to use as extra seating for lunch.
We also set up a long table in the basement where the kiddos could eat. Given it was on the chilly side on Saturday we planned for all the kids to eat inside and the basement turned out to be perfect for them! I'm not sure where we would have put them if we didn't have the basement!
Our first guests of the party ready to trade!
Once the majority of the kids arrived everybody was all about trading and almost immediately they divided into a table of boys and a table of girls. So funny!
I'm so glad we made the trading tables a top priority! For a while there I thought they might trade for the whole entire party! Haha!
After kicking off the party with trading we had lunch.... and I'm pretty sure this crew enjoyed their kid-only, unsupervised meal. =)
These 2 cuties enjoyed their semi-private lunch as well...
They had some serious conversations over pizza and bread and made sure to cover the topic of weather as well. Hahaha. I can't even handle the cuteness!!
After lunch everyone played outside and fun was had by all. =)
After we managed to round everybody up and gather everyone inside, it was time for cake! Singing Happy Birthday is one of my favorite parts of every single birthday party. #allthefeels
The cake was DELISH and I am not letting this cake lady go! She can't move or retire or give up making cakes for me. Haha! We moved right from eating cake and ice cream to opening presents. I think all the friends were just as excited as Garrison and he received some super cool gifts along with cold hard cash. =)
His birthday list this year was super specific and unique and I think our families covered it all. A Fit Bit, Pokemon toy, construction paper, Power Ranger figure, word search book, Pokemon book, terra climber, a kids dictionary, and a "weird but true" book of facts. He was spoiled good. =)
Our birthday boy had a GREAT party and loved his massive play date at home. After presents everyone went back outside and played until their parents were ready to go. We are so thankful for such a sweet and special group of friends for our firstborn and all of their sweet parents and families. We loved our friends in Covington but hometown living and raising our boys here is the best.
Thank you to everyone who helped us pull off the party and came to celebrate Garrison's upcoming birthday with us!! It just means so much to us to celebrate birthdays with our boys and to make their special days fun and memorable, and we so appreciate our families and friends helping us do that year after year.
We're on countdown to the big 8th birthday now!! Super Bowl Sunday should make for a great one!!
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