Emma and Lexi’s Build-a-Bear Party

Today Emma and Lexi had a combined birthday party.  Yes, we had the family one for Lexi’s at the house this week but this is the “big one” with their friends.  I don’t make them have combined parties but when they have a choice to have separate or get to invite an extra friend (because of savings) they choose the combined party.  We’ve never held or attended a Build-a-Bear party and was pretty curious how it would go.

First blog-worthy moment of the day is that we forgot the card to our camera.  Thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law we had a photographer for the afternoon.  I’m going to try to use pictures that don’t prominently show the other kids so here we go.

First off, you pick a set price for how much you want to spend per kid.  Base price is the $10 bear that is offered in two colors plus however much you want to spend in clothing/accessories for each kid.  So we decided not to do any accessories, but they could pick a full outfit.  So the party helper set out all the outfits that were that price.  It was SO much easier to only have 7 or 8 choices instead of that entire store plus accessories.  Some of them were pretty bummed that they didn’t get shoes, etc but I told them their parents could bring them back for that and that seemed to satisfy them.

The next thing they did was really cool.  Each kid got 3 hearts instead of the normal one.  He had them prepare the first heart by doing different things like rubbing it on their hip “so they’re hip” or rubbing them on your nose so “they know you” and then finishing with a wish and a kiss.  The cool part was the first heart of each girl went into Lexi’s bear and the second set all went into Emma’s.  The third was for their own bear.  Sweet, right?

The guy we had to do the party was FANTASTIC with the kids.  Waiting for 10 other kids to get their bear stuffed is not the most fun thing to do but he got them to play games for probably 45 minutes.  The first game they passed a heart around and Lexi had to determine who had it when she turned around.

They also played charades.  Emma got “robot” and I thought for sure she was going to be bashful and back out but there she went, doing the robot.  One of my favorite moments!

Next the girls got to wash and then dress their bears.

Here is Lexi’s.

And Emma’s.  They got the same outfit but different colored bears.

I loved this…the guy brought out 6 big containers of bows and let the girls each pick out FOUR.  You would have thought he’d just dumped a million dollars on the floor.

Finally , the kids do a fashion parade to the front of the store and take a group picture.  It was SO cute watching all the girls holding their dolls.  Several people walking by ooh-ed and aah-ed.  Very cute moment.

Oh and they present each of the girls with another special bear that each guest gets to sign.

The bad part about our Build-a-Bear is that it doesn’t have a room for the cake/presents.  So we left the store and squatted in a few tables in the food court. 

A little story about the cake. 

I painstakingly ordered the cookie cake yesterday.  It was supposed to be the normal round one that said “Happy Birthday Emma and Lexi”.  Well, we went to pick it up and it was not ready.  He said, I thought it was supposed to be 3:00?  No, 1:00.  Then he pointed at a design of a super hero.  No, Build-a-Bear.  He promises it will be ready in 20 minutes.  So Scott leaves during the party to get it and comes back with this humongous cookie cake that says “Happy Birthday Bennett”!  Turns out the whole order was for someone else and they never could find ours.  And this one read “Happy Birthday Ben”.  Scott told them to fix it by putting Bennett on there.  And THEN we had to pay TWICE the cost than the original size.  GAH!  Oh well, no one could care less and everyone was starving after building a bear so we dug in.

My favorite moment of the day of course was Emma opening her American Girl Doll.  This picture just makes me so happy.

  

Thank goodness for Groupon that was put out yesterday though as every single guest we invited showed up and while I am SUPER glad they did, my envelope system sure didn’t.  But I think I can safely say my envelope system’s memory will never outlast the memories we made today.