Leo's Lego Batman Party!

Leo turned 3 on February 25th!
I can't believe he's already 3! Every mom who ever says something about her kid's birthday has to say that right? But seriously. Wow. 3 years.

If you know Leo or have been around him for more than a few minutes you'll know he loves Batman! Combine that with his newfound love of Legos and the Lego Batman movie coming out we decided to do a Lego Batman party! 

We are now in our final year of residency (yeah!) so money for extra things like birthday parties isn't abundant, but since we skipped the party last year and Leo is now much more aware of things like parties and actually has little friends - we decided to have a party!

The total cost of the party was really low when compared to having a party at a party place, especially considering we had about 40-50some people and fed everyone lunch! I'd say total I spent around $100 and I'll share what we did.

It was such a fun day and amid all the fun I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I wish I had, but that's life. 

First, the major expense we were able to avoid was the cost of renting a space.
A couple years ago our church had a big "block party" and the teens built an awesome lego table and people donated legos to the church! When I decided on the theme having it at our church was an obvious choice. Since we are members there was no charge for using the church gymnasium (and all the church's stuff - tables, chairs, etc.)  Of course when using something like your church it's proper etiquette (at least I think it is anyway) to drop a little extra in the offering plate on top of your regular tithe.  Anyway!  Having a party for a 3 year old in a big gym was great! We set up about half of the gym and left the other half open for wild kids to run free! It was perfect!

Next the decorations were practically free. I saved all my cardboard boxes from crackers, pasta, mail, etc. and a friend saved me several large boxes from her office and we covered them in primary colored wrapping paper that I purchased at Dollar Tree, Party City, and Hobby Lobby. I found a large roll of red at Dollar Tree because it was Valentine's Day, smaller rolls of blue, green, and yellow at Party City for .99, and a large roll of good quality black paper at Hobby Lobby for $5 with 40% off coupon!
I cut out circles and glued them to the tops of the boxes to make them look like Lego bricks and used them as centerpieces (but seriously a 3 year old's party doesn't necessarily need centerpieces, lol) and with the black boxes I glued on yellow squares to look like a city skyline.

Other decorations were things we had at home - Legos!

Walmart carries Lego themed plates, napkins, cups, etc. for only .99 each! And I used the plastic cups McDonalds gave out in their Happy Meals as a holder for forks and spoons!

One thing I did spend a little money on was silicone Lego brick and men shaped molds! I found a set of 8 on Ebay for $12! I had the intentions of making crayons and chocolates and then decided on just crayons because I didn't want kids to get confused and eat the crayons! ha!
Thankfully I changed my mind because I found that after I used a mold for crayons the wax was very, very, very hard to remove entirely so the chocolate probably would have tasted like wax.
I tried a couple different methods of making the crayons but the best was melting them in the molds in the oven. I bought about 4 boxes of 48 crayons at the Dollar Tree, removed the papers (it is definitely easier to do if you soak the crayon in water for a couple seconds first!) and broke them into pieces, lined them in the molds, placed them on a cookie sheet and put in the oven at about 200-250 (I'm not big on specifics, haha) until they were totally melted - maybe 10 or so minutes. Then let harden on the counter until solid and then put them in the fridge to cool them completely.
They turned out so cute and was seriously one of my favorite parts of the party and planning!
I printed off a couple different coloring sheets on my home printer (so yeah no idea how much that cost.... but like paper and ink we already had you know) of Lego Batman and of a plain Lego man and scattered some different shapes and colors of the Lego crayons on the table.
I also put a few crayons in little clear bags (40 for $1 at Dollar Tree) and gave those out as party favors.

The majority of my party budget of course went to food. I invited A LOT of people to the party. Man, kids parties are hard. First of all we had it at our church and we have so many friends and people we love at our church so they all got invited.  Then I have a lot of friends from my mops group and that's the bulk of Leo's friends so I invited just so many people.  I didn't get a final headcount but I think we had about 50ish people there! 

I made a facebook event to invite people (oh so saved on invitations too!) and made Lee an admin also and a couple days before the party he got a little nervous and was like uhhh how do you plan on feeding all these people? haha clearly he was super involved in the party planning.

My original plan was just like oh we'll just grab some hot and ready's from Little Caesars because it's cheap, right? Well the week of the party I got an email from Pizza Hut that they had 50% off their entire menu when you ordered online! So I called and confirmed I could order 10 pizzas and get the discount AND have them delivered and they said yes!!
So our menu was pizza, macaroni and cheese (that I made), chips, watermelon, rice crispie treats that looked like Lego bricks, and of course cake!
For drinks I stuck to basics and had tea, lemonade, and water.
2 of my sweet friends actually ended up bringing lemonade and a large fruit salad to the party which was amazing and so helpful! Making a mental note to always ask my friends if they need help with food for their kids parties ;)

And then the other expense was the cake, which I made so it was pretty cheap.
I made a shot in the dark post and asked if any of my friends had Batman cookie cutters and was shocked that one actually did! So another $10-15 saved!
I saw the cake idea on facebook and practiced the technique on valentines day and it didn't turn out too bad so I just went with it! I do not recommend making your kids' birthday cakes. Just buy them at the grocery, haha, but if you're like me and likes the challenge, saving money, and how happy it made Leo.... it was all worth it.

It was such a fun party and we have such great friends.
Stuff like this just leaves me feeling so overwhelmingly thankful.
Thankful for that precious 3 year old boy of mine and thankful for all the people in our lives.

Happy Birthday Leo!

Leo 2 Years and 4 Months

I almost said 28 months.
But didn't, because I know how people find that annoying... haha! And I know it's annoying, but for blogging about one's development I think it's sort of relevant, right?

My Leo is well on his way to being 2 and half!! It's crazy!

I don't even know where to start with all the things this kid does!  He has so much personality and interests and energy!

Since my last post specifically about Leo he has become a big brother!  I don't know how much I can or should brag about what a great big brother he has been... but I have seriously been blessed with the best big brother for Houston!  Leo has a great balance between loving and doting on his baby brother and sorta ignoring him (in a good way!) and giving Houston and I space when we need it.  He'll give him kisses and ask to hold him and share his toys with him... but when I'm nursing Houston he's perfectly fine to play by himself or sit next to me and wait.  It's been such a relief.

In terms of learning I can barely keep up with Leo. He's constantly wanting to know more and more.  He requests to do flash cards, haha, and his new favorite questions are - what is that called? what's that do?  what's that smell like? (usually asks about smells when it's something he wants to eat or drink! ha!)
He knows the alphabet perfectly - can sing the whole song (including the difficult lmnop part clearly lol) he can recognize every letter - he has upper case down and is getting good with lower case too! He can spell his name!  Granted he does have a super easy short name :)  He can count to 20! He can recognize every number 1-10.  Double digits are still tricky.  And we've started with counting in spanish!  He can do 1-5 by himself perfectly and 1-10 with a little guiding.  We're going to try to keep adding more and more spanish... he and I can learn together.
One way he's gotten really good with letters and numbers is by "playing" Scrabble and Rummikub.  I keep some board games under our couch (we seriously have NO storage!) and he has recently discovered them.  He loves them because he thinks they're grown up games and something he shouldn't be able to play with, but jokes on him.

I've been encouraging him to "read" he has dozens and dozens of books memorized and so instead of just saying the words I've been pointing to each word and having him say the story as we go.  Who knows if this is working, but there are lots of words he can recognize, so maybe.  I've read that a good thing to do is label things around your house so I might work on that soon.

Leo still loves to do art, for which I am thankful.  Water color paints and markers are his favorites. Also his dry erase/chalk board easel that I keep in the kitchen keeps him occupied while I cook sometimes. He's getting pretty good at drawing things!  He can make faces, sorta and draws lots of snakes and worms :) and for a 2 year old I think he is actually sort of exceptional at coloring within the lines.  But I'm his mom and think he's exceptional at most things...
We also do sidewalk chalk almost once a day or at least every other day! And we've added a spray bottle to our tools and he loves to "make the chalk dark."

He is a great helper around the house these days too! He throws away every single dirty diaper for me! Puts his clothes in the washer or hamper.  Puts away his clothes in his drawers.  Cleans up his toys - sometimes.  He's finally tall enough to see into the silverware drawer and can put away the clean silverware into the right spots!  He can sweep with a broom, dust, and clean up spills with a rag. He does dishes... which is usually just playing in the water with a scrubby brush, but it keeps him occupied for a while!  He helps cook - he loves to stir and pour things.  And he's getting pretty good at spreading pb and jelly on a sandwich.
I really just let him try to do anything that he has interest in.  I think it's sorta Montessori of me, yeah? haha

He's been doing really great with potty training!  We've had a few more accidents in the past few weeks since Houston was born, but I fully expected that and have been pleased with how well he's done still!  He pretty much wears underwear everywhere we go now and only a diaper at nap time and bed time.  He's not happy about having to wear a diaper then though... he says diapers are for babies lol.

Next week they're letting Leo go to the 3 year old class at Bible School at our church! We''ll see how it goes, but the children's pastor said she thinks he's mature enough, haha. Or they just wanted my help in the crafts so they knew I'd need to put Leo somewhere ;)

I know I brag a lot about how smart Leo is, I'm a super super proud mom!  But what makes me even more proud is how well he behaves and how sweet he is to me, his dad, and his baby brother. He is thoughtful, helpful, and polite.  He seriously is such a good boy and makes my life easy. 

I wanted to skip Mickey this trip because I was tired (34 weeks pregnant) and didn't want to wait in line, but my sweet boy kept asking all day long - see Mickey now?? 

My big boy was finally 38 inches and could ride the water ride at Animal Kingdom! 

Sweet baby fell asleep on the safari :) 

found momma's lip stick :| haha

Meeting his new baby brother Houston!