For Makai’s 5th birthday we celebrated at Josi’s Frozen Yogurt Cafe. This is a really cute spot that we visited a few times over the summer, after we moved. It’s literally a 5 minute drive from our new place. Everyone at Josi’s was super nice from the planning to the day of the party. It felt good to support a local business in our new neighborhood.
On the off season (Oct-June), Josi’s doesn’t open until 3pm, so they host parties from 1-3. There is a restaurant (Easy Street Pizza) that they partner with to order food and a bakery (Sweet Delights Cake Boutique) they partner with for cake. Guests can get whatever drinks they need from the the cooler and all the frozen yogurt they want. At the end, Josi’s just gives you one bill for everything. So easy!
The theme of the party was dinosaurs. We had dinosaur masks, dinosaur goodie bags, dinosaur table decorations, and dinosaur cake. Makai is super into dinosaurs right now, so he was very happy with all of this :).
We were so happy that so many of our friends and family could come to the party. We balanced out between some closer school friends, our friends outside of school, and my family from Wisconsin. Everyone seemed to have a great time!
I wasn’t sure what the cake would look like. I only asked that it be a dinosaur theme. I also told them Makai was a choco-holic. Yvonne at Sweet Delights Cake Boutique ended up doing chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. It was almost like a diorama with dinosaurs in the mud and drinking from ponds and grazing in the grass. Makai loved it. And it tasted great! For the first time, Makai didn’t cry when the whole party sang to him! (Last year we celebrated with family but didn’t have a big party.)
Thanks to everyone that came and celebrated with us at Josi’s! Makai loved every second of it. You all sure made him feel special and loved!
Now that we’ve moved, we have to drive Makai to daycare every day. Dallas and I take turns. Somewhere on West Fullerton there’s a shop where Makai always sees pinatas and will excitedly tell us when there’s a new one in the window. He started telling us individually that he wanted a pinata for his birthday. So we decided to get one. I figured out what the store was just by Googling for “chicago fullerton pinata”. It’s Dulcelandia. Dallas took him over there one day and they came home with a Catboy pinata so large, it was like we adopted a second kid! And it freaked me out when I’d see it standing in the hallway!
So, we weren’t really going to have an after party, but since we couldn’t do a pinata at Josi’s, we invited some people to come over after the party. Some of our other friends also came by, who didn’t come to Josi’s. I felt bad when all the kids were hugging their new friend, the pinata, because they had to club it to death a few minutes later. It was pretty tough to get open! Declan, Rory, Makai, Johnny and Konrad all took turns. Then Stephanie came in and broke it open!