basketball party

When I asked Brennan what kind of party he wanted this year, he said a basketball party with no hesitation. For a boy who loves sports, it was a perfect way to celebrate his 3rd birthday. 

My friend Lindi helped me make all the cute printables for Brennan's basketball party and we had a good time putting everything together.  My favorites were the invites that we cut out like ticket stubs.  Lindi also helped me with the water bottle labels, food signs, goody bag labels, and the birthday banner.

And like always, I had fun making the birthday cake.  Luckily, a basketball cake is pretty easy to do so it wasn't too time consuming this year.  And the boys were very excited to help me put the Reese's Pieces on the cake (and eat all the yellow ones we didn't need).

For the actual party, the kids played lots of variations of basketball type games.  The biggest hit were the inflatable basketballs.  We don't have any furniture in our living room yet so we set up two basketball hoops in there - a big hoop and a small hoop - and the kids spent a lot of time just shooting around..  We also played a ping pong toss, a "basketball" cake walk, an athlete warm up (where the kids had to do sit ups and jumping jacks and stuff like that), and a balloon game.  It was a little wild and crazy with lots of kids running around but I think they had fun and that's what counts!

When it came time to singing Happy Birthday to Brennan, he got a little shy at first seeing so many faces staring at him but he quickly got over that and got to blow out his #3 candle. I still can't believe he is 3!

Brennan enjoyed opening his birthday gifts too of course.  A big hit was his new BYU shirt from my parents (his old favorite BYU shirt "mysteriously" disappeared...) and the new BYU basketball hoop they gave him.  

And that sums up his party!

Nate also had the great idea of taking Brennan out on a birthday date with just the three of us. So a few hours after the party we dropped Aiden off at the babysitters and took Brennan out. Brennan chose to go to McDonalds and Trafalga and we really enjoyed having some one-on-one time with him.  And now Aiden has already planned out his entire date for us to take him on in June :)  I think it will be a fun new tradition.

Happy 3rd Birthday Brennan!