Braxton Turns 3!

It is so hard to believe that our oldest baby is not really a baby anymore - all grown up and 3 years old!  As much as he will complain (when he is older) about his birthday being so close to Christmas, it is so nice that I can take time off between Christmas and New Year's to celebrate it and have a day just for him.  This year we celebrated by taking him out for a pancake (blueberry at that) breakfast at J. Christopher's.  We headed home for a quick nap and then we were off to Legoland!  I am so glad we were proactive in getting tickets because once we arrived they were turning people away if they hadn't ordered tickets in advance and they were sold out until Sunday.  Once we made it in, we headed to the first ride.  We had so much fun shooting the bats, spiders and bad guys to save the princess!  Braxton still talks about it to this day - "shoot bats, spiders, and, uh bad guys...legoland!"  They take a picture of you on the ride so of course Momma had to get it as a memento and it is now one of Braxton's favorite photos on display in his room.  We had a great time seeing the gigantic recreation of Atlanta scenery all built with little legos - this was our favorite part by far.  Next, we headed over to the buckets of legos and made a car which we raced on the track.  Braxton had so much fun and his actually one a race.  Unfortunately, the 4D movie was broken so we were unable to  check it out, but we headed into the gift shop to look around.  Braxton loved the wall of legos that were sorted by color.  Before we left we did a penny press and he has not put that penny down since.  Before heading out we stopped and grabbed him a birthday milkshake in the mall.  That night we celebrated with a yellow cupcake and a #3 sparkler candle.  It was such a fun day!!!

Since his birthday fell on a Friday, we decided to have the birthday party on Sunday (12/30) this year.  We were super excited about the venue - Catch Air - an indoor play area.  He has been there a few times and loves it.  He calls it the "dance place" since they have a light-up dance floor for dance parties.  It was also nice (esp for Momma) because they took care of everything from setting up to taking down and even ordering the pizza, getting drinks and providing goody bags!  All I had to do is bring the cake, snacks and balloons (if you wanted them to be a theme).  This year's theme was all about fire trucks!  They even did a slide show on the big screen of photos that I had put on a thumb drive - it was so neat watching his pictures come across for everyone to see the birthday boy!  Braxton had so much fun playing with his friends Cooper, Bryce, Hudson, Jackson and baby James.  His favorite part (as always) was dancing to his favorite song - "I like to move it, move it" from Madagascar.  After play time we headed into the Red party room for pizza, cupcakes and ice cream.  It was such a great party and we are so thankful to all our friends that came to help celebrate and make his birthday so memorable!