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Last month, my husband and I decided we would skip having a party this year and go to Disney for the first time with the kids.

We live in South Florida so the drive to Orlando isn’t too bad. We drove up with my in-laws, the kids, and our dogs (two cars and one person flying from out of state)- it was a great family reunion! We enjoyed our day at the Magic Kingdom Park and the next day drove back.

It was an interesting trip to do with two toddlers and a family of 7 during the summer heat. Check out my post about this in more detail.

His birthday was the next day, Monday, so I didn’t have much time to prepare. My husband and I spent the remaining of our Sunday night taking turns inflating some latex balloons I purchased while watching TV.

Before my husband left for work, we set up the living room with the balloons and had the tv set up ready to play a birthday song from Mickey Mouse on youtube. We quietly walked into his room and covered him with kisses and wished him a happy birthday, once he kind of woke up he came down with his new Mickey Mouse stuffed animal and his Doggy (his older stuffed animal) and his water to find the balloon filled living room and Mickey on the TV.

He was half asleep and in shock, immediately attempting to place his things in color combination with the balloons (I’m pretty sure he’s OCD haha!). We then played with the balloons while Daddy got ready for work, we had a great time! And then my daughter overheard us and I went to get her to join the party.

When we decided to not do a birthday party, I planned a small park playdate nearby. I invited some of our friends to a more shaded playground with a splash pad. The kids had a great time between the playgrounds and the splash pad. We sang happy birthday and enjoyed some cupcakes.

After the playdate we headed back home with my parents and my mother in law to have lunch and sing happy birthday with cake.

My parents brought gifts and he got to show off his jigsaw skills with one of his new puzzles before nap time. I was so exhausted from the entire weekend I ended up napping too.

By 5pm my husband called (and woke me) to ask what we were doing for dinner, since we were improvising a family birthday dinner. He was on the way to pick up the cake I ordered online from Publix. We decided on Chaufa, kind of like a hispanic version of fried rice with chicken or beef, from a Peruvian restaurant that we ordered to be delivered from DoorDash to make things more efficient for us.

Before 7pm we were all enjoying our meal and got to sing happy birthday with some more cake  (third time eating cake and singing happy birthday that day!) I even let him help me cut the cake since he’s getting so big and independent.

Then he got to open his gift from his other grandparents, a really cool training bicycle from Paw Patrol. Daddy had to build it and he got to practice a little inside the house. He’s going to need a lot of practice because he’s very uncoordinated but hopefully soon he’ll get the hang of it.

He then got to play with one of the gifts he had opened earlier from my parents, a Cars Microphone Stand. He’s been obsessed with this thing, even having tantrums because he wants to play with it all the time.

The kids had a really good time putting on a little concert for us that it became really difficult to “convince” them it was time for bed, even though it was already two hours past. But once we got them to bed everything was calm and quiet.

Looking back, we had a pretty great day. Even if we hadn’t taken him to Disney, we gave him a pretty great birthday. And he deserves it. Happy Birthday little guy!