Bouncing off the Walls - Peach's 3rd Birthday

My eldest daughter just turned three. I can't believe how much time flies. To celebrate we threw her a birthday party at a local "bounce house". A bounce house is basically a huge room filled with 10 or so moonwalks, foam pits, and inflatable slides. This was our first experience with a party away from home. Peach loved it!

There were certainly many pros and a few cons. The biggest difficulty with the bounce house party is that we had to haul in all of the food, favors, and decorations. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you are also trying to manage two young kids, it becomes quite a handful. Luckily, my mom flew in from Florida and was there to help. We also only had a limited time to set the party up. It is a good thing I did not go crazy with the decorations. We had just a few pink princess themed table cloths and a pop up Princess Ariel "thing".

Once the party was all set up, it went fairly smoothly until the cake arrived and Peach refused to leave the cake's side (it was a large cupcake cake with The Little Mermaid (TM Disney) on it). I had to change plans quickly as I could not have the birthday girl sitting by the cake the whole time while her friends were all out playing.

We did the cake cutting right away, close to the beginning of the party (but when mostly everyone had arrived). We did the whole birthday song and candle blowout. Peach was happy to blow out all 3 candles on the first try. She was even happier to get her cupcake. It was so cute seeing her young friends all sitting at the tables eating cupcakes.

The cupcake cake worked out well. It had the advantage of the cute design on top and also the advantage of easy serving.

Peach and friends (about 15 jumping friends) got all sugared up on cupcakes. (sarcasm)Thank you HEB for the half an inch of frosting. We really needed the extra sugar!(/sarcasm) The kids all went nuts and were literally all bouncing off the walls. It is a good thing the kids could actually bounce off the walls at this place! I loved watching the kids bounce around with huge smiles on their faces. It seemed that they all had a total blast. I could tell when the sugar hit Peach when she perked up and wanted to play (instead of sitting next to the somewhat demolished cupcake cake). I really enjoyed seeing Peach bounce and go down a crazy fast slide with her friends.

People began to leave when their kids tired out. First went the young toddlers, exhausted and being carried out by their parents. Then the older kids began to wear out. I could tell Peach was getting tired when she started playing with the infant toys.

The bounce house had the great advantage of providing all of Peach's friends with some much needed active fun. I would certainly do a bounce house birthday party again. I can also see the appeal of places like Chuck-E-Cheese or Main Event where the food is provided.

The one thing I question on my part was the handling of the presents. I will discuss that in a separate post. All in all, Peach's party was a huge success.