Brady's 7!!!

This year was Brady's first friend party! I really wanted to do them for 'big' birthdays or milestones, like 5, 8, 12 and 16 yrs. . .something like that. But he missed out on his 5th friend birthday party because Lauren was in chemo at that time. So I guess he will get 2 parties in a row since he is 8 next year. He had a blast! I made the invitations (pictured below) they took a little bit to figure out how to make them with the Silhouette Cameo I bought a while back, but they turned out great especially for my first venture at this. It was a splash party, so we started out with a good old fashion water gun fight while we waited for all the kids to get there. We played some other games, water balloon tosses, and a super fun 'racing' slip 'n slide which was a huge hit (the grass didn't like it so much. . .we had a huge dry/brown rectangular spot for weeks after), some snacks (watermelon, goldfish, water, Caprisuns. . .water themed stuff). Then cake, ice cream, and present time. I think everyone had a blast and left soaked! They all got to take a water gun home in there goodie bag complete with Swedish Fish. It was a super fun afternoon, but pretty exhausting and it surprised me how fast things add up, definitely not cheap to throw a party, but I know he is glad he FINALLY got a friend party:)

On his 'real' birthday we had cake, ice cream, brownies and yummy homemade hot fudge sauce for his family party. He has a wonderful time playing with his cousins too! I made the same cake he had for his friend party, it was easy and turned out good. He loves Lego's, so got a few fun sets for his birthday. He got a little transformer, paper airplane kit, some snacks, star wars Madlib's (which he thinks are hilarious:), $ to save up for a big Lego set (at least that's what he says he wants to get), and  a circuit board set which he will play for hours when he gets it out, it's pretty neat to be able to make different things function (light, fan, alarm) by hooking up the wires differently. He was especially intrigued when we had a repair man come and change the circuit board to our garage door a couple weeks ago, it's hasn't been working consistently for months now so we finally got it fixed. The guy was nice enough to let Brady watch and ask his million and one questions (always very inquisitive) while he explained how the circuit board was similar to his. He loves to see how things work and to build things so these were perfect for him. He is going to be starting the 2nd grade which is super hard to believe, but will be nice to get back to a little more normalcy and schedule.  Only a few more short weeks of summer left!