Our Little Super Hero

Gavin has been obsessed with Super Heroes lately so I decided it would be the perfect theme for his 3rd Birthday Party. Thankfully he didn't ever change his mind on what he wanted because I got busy prepping a month before so that I wouldn't be stressed out or overwhelmed. I'm so glad I did too! It was a lot of work, but everything turned out just how I had hoped. 

 

This cute boy was so hyper & excited about his party all day long!

My friend Camille was in town visiting for the week & the poor thing got thrown into helping out way too much for this party. But there is no way I would have been able to do it without her. So a big thanks to Cami for watching my boys so I could go run around, get the church set up, frost the cake etc. 

(Isn't she the cutest prego lady ever?! Love her.)

Above I mentioned the church. I was originally wanting to have the party outside & I thought by mid September that it wouldn't be so hot here. Boy was I wrong! It is still super hot & now rain showers tend to hit in the afternoon or whenever they feel like it. So thankfully we were able to use the church gym which turned out fantastic because it has A/C & there was plenty of room for all 16 kids to run around. Uh huh. That's right,16 kids. Crazy right?! There would have been absolutely no way they would have fit into my little house, so yet again another great reason to have access to the church building. :) Anyhow, on to the party.

 Warning! There are a LOT of photos. And that's because my nice friend Holly volunteered to be photographer for the night & she rocked at it! There is no way I would have been able to capture this much being in charge.

Gavin's birthday present from us was renting a bounce house. I searched & searched & finally found a company that was actually reasonably priced. Yahoo! It was most definitely the hit of the party. And because most of the kids were 4 & under, no one got hurt. Well too bad anyways. I think I counted 3 kids exiting the bounce house sobbing. Pretty good considering what I've seen in the past. :)

The Food Table
My favorite decoration by far was the comic book banner that I made. I was so excited when I found a comic store & even more excited that they had avenger comics that were from 1984. So cool! And I also really liked how the skyline turned out too. Everything was super easy thank goodness!

 Some of the party guests.

L to R, T to B:
The Graff, Steel & Rhodes
Mackay, Mongillo
Wendt, Trockel
Reheisse, Peterson, Laura & Liam

It really was so fun that Camille & Draven were able to be here to help us celebrate!

I was real excited about the activities that I had planned. And I was so happy that the kids all participated SO well & everything ran smoothly. Yay! The big one was that we had the kids go through SUPER HERO TRAINING. And when they completed their training they were awarded a cape & mask that they got to keep. They were all pretty excited about that! :)

 Check out all those capes! Making them took a lot of time, but I'm so glad I did it. Seeing the kids' faces light up when they knew they got to keep them was priceless. And they all look adorable wearing them too!

They were all listening so well as I explained & showed them what to do. We set up an obstacle course for them consisting of crawling through the train, running zig zag around the cones, going down the slide, jumping the hoola hoops & finishing off by squirting the villain with silly string.

 Of course the birthday boy got to go first & he did awesome! I think their favorite part was shooting the silly string. :)

I had made Gavin an extra special cape that was blue versus red so he would stand out as the birthday boy super hero. Boy was that a mistake! He completely broke down. Check out the sequence of the below photos. Not really making a to do at first, but then slowly he realizes that his is 'different'. Apparently at 3 they already don't want to be different then their friends. Good golly!

 

So to avoid a complete disaster & tantrum we quickly gave the birthday boy what he wanted. A red cape!

(I should have known as he was been exclaiming the past while that his favorite color is red)

 Super Gavin!

 It was so fun watching the kids do the obstacle course & become little Super Heroes.

After letting them run around while everyone finished Super Hero Training we gathered them up & I asked who liked Super Man. I They all agreed that Super Man was awesome because he can fly to high. I also explained what kryptonite was & that it can hurt Super Man's powers & prevent him from flying. They looked very concerned. :) So cute! Anyways, I told them that they needed to practice flying now that they were Super Heroes. So Doug had them running through the halls working on their flyin skills & when they came back they saw that there was a TON of kryptonite all over!!! They had to hurry & collect all of it into the big black bags in order to save their Super Hero Powers!

 Don't they all look so cute in their matching red capes?!

The rest of the time they just ran around & played in the bounce house. Some of the dads took all those balloons into the bounce house & that was a big hit!

Some of the kids were asking about cake & opening presents so we couldn't wait any longer.
So everyone gathered around & we sang Happy Birthday to Gavin. He loved every second of the attention that he was receiving!!!

Making a wish & blowing out his candle.

PRESENTS

Holy excited Batman! These kids just kept inching closer & closer to me & Gavin to get a good look at whatever he was opening. I think I said like 3 different times for them to take a couple scoots back. :) Kids are so much fun & have so much enthusiasm that it just makes everything so much better!

Gavin definitely got spoiled by his friends. He wanted to open every one right there to play with it. Thank you everyone for the gifts!

My sister Laura is quite the artist so I had her draw & paint a Super Hero photo op for the party. It turned out amazing! I can't help but giggle when I look at these pictures.

Up, Up & Away!

 Happy Birthday Super Gavin! Momma sure loves you & am so happy to have you as a son. Throwing you this party was SO much fun!