End-of-Summer Ice Cream Cake Party Play Date!

We're celebrating the end of another fun summer with an Ice Cream Cake Party Play Date! This simple gathering makes time with friends special, and closes the season with a sweet finale! After all, is there anything better on a warm day than an ice cream cake in the sunshine?

As you all know, we've spent our summer hosting (and attending) multiple play dates each week. After I enrolled the boys in summer camp at the beginning of the season, they quickly decided that camp was NOT for them. They would much rather stay home with me, swim in the pool, and get together with their closest friends on a regular basis.

My girlfriends and I coordinated a schedule so that we could rotate houses for our bi-weekly play dates. This added structure to our days, gave the kids some regular social time, and offered the moms a much-needed break for a few hours.

After a season of spending time with their buddies, it was hard to imagine the kids parting ways and heading back to school. Goodbye to the fun, and hello to the homework! 

Since the kids returned to school on Tuesday, we recently hosted our final play date of the season with Henry and Will. The kids wanted to make it special, but I wanted it to be simple! That's why we decided on a fun and easy Ice Cream Cake Party Play Date. This one was definitely the highlight of the summer!

Two spoons are always better than one!

The boys are constantly eyeing the ice cream cakes in the freezer of our grocery store's bakery section, which we typically get for birthdays and other special occasions. When I let them pick their favorites last week at Food Lion, they instantly grabbed a classic Carvel® Ice Cream Cake (love that blue frosting!),

as well as a big Oreo® Ice Cream Cake!

We set the larger Oreo® Ice Cream Cake aside for a cookout with friends the following weekend, and agreed that the smaller Carvel® Lil' Love® Ice Cream Cake was the perfect size for our play date.

With six servings, there were just enough slices for Gibbs, Casey, Spencer, Henry and Will...and one left for me!

Doesn't this classic Carvel® Ice Cream Cake bring you back to your own childhood? These were always my favorite desserts at birthday parties, and they're still equally delicious today! It's the perfect combination of creamy vanilla ice cream, rich chocolate ice cream, and chocolate "crunchies" in the middle for added texture. And that fresh whipped frosting? Oh my goodness...the best!

Let's just say that not a single bit of ice cream was wasted! You know it's a successful party when nothing remains on the plates at the end.

We took our ice cream cake party outside on the picnic table in the backyard, since there's no such thing as 5 "neat" little boys at an ice cream cake party!

We had some very happy children, who enjoyed their treats and were soon off and running again.

Soaking up the last few days of summer!

Our ice cream party play date was such a fun way to finish up our summer, and I hope that you'll treat yourself and your family to a similar sweet finale in the days ahead!

Thanks so much to my friends at I Love Ice Cream Cakes for sponsoring this post. As always, all thoughts and opinions are entirely my own!