It's good to be 3

We wanted to have a special day for Bennett since birthdays rarely fall on Saturdays where we can be home all day, but we didn't want to spend a lot of money since her birthday party is next week. So we catered our entire day to what Bennett would like and what would be special to her and we did it on a budget.


Every birthday we fill our kids rooms with balloons in the middle of the night. They wake up so excited and it's a fun way to start the day off right for the cost of a bag of balloons.

We came downstairs and she found her horse. Her annoyingly large horse. Birthday presents were clearly not included in our budget. His name is Beauty of course. I wonder how the 35 other horses in our house named Beauty feel about that.


She was in such a good mood that she actually let Will ride Beauty. That is about as nice as it gets around here. And while she was doing that, Rob and I played with her new puppet show theatre. It's nice to revert to your inner 3 year old. Except we have really creepy puppets. They are too scary to show on this blog. They came from Rob. Not me.

After we played with this kids for a bit we all loaded into the swagger wagon (aka our mini van. aka "The Crimson Express") and we went to get donuts. These are normally a big no no in our house. In fact, she has only had them once in her life. But apparently that was a memorable once. She asks for them all the time. So we gave in on her birthday and she got the best strawberry donut with sprinkles that I have ever seen. I may or may not have eaten a few as well. That is to be determined.

After breakfast we went to Bennett's favorite place in Kansas City, Zonkers. This is a great indoor amusement park/arcade. We had left over tickets and tokens from our last trip there, so it was a very inexpensive trip for us. Always a plus. Here are my kiddos on their favorite mechanical rides.

Dominating her brother at air hockey. You always get to win when it's your birthday. And when you're playing a 1 year old.

Riding the train.

A Merry-go-Round. Of course. A Bennett Webster birthday would not be complete without a merry-go-round ride.

We love Zonkers because all of the kids arcade games are at their level and Bennett is really able to play them.

We came home and checked the mail and she was so excited to receive cards from her grandparents and aunts and uncles.


And then it was time for family nap time. We pushed the kids hard all morning and didn't get home from Zonkers until way after nap times, so we all crashed pretty hard.

After naps we headed out to the mall to ride....you guessed it.... another merry-go-round. Bennett had a wardrobe change because some of her lunch unfortunately landed on her pre-nap outfit. Oh, well. Before we left though, Bennett got to open a few more small presents from Mommy and Daddy.

How cute are these two together? Seriously.

After the merry-go-round we took our usual trip to the Disney Store. We never buy anything, but we spend the longest time wandering around and saying hello to all of our "friends."

We had dinner at Bennett's favorite restaurant, Chick-fil-A and then ended the evening at home watching a princess movie while dressed in her new fairy outfit that she got for her birthday.


It was pretty much the perfect day celebrating our spunky, creative, beautiful, loving, strong willed, talkative, funny, smart, sensitive, and joyful three year old.

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights." James 1:17