Happy Birthday... Party

Alrighty-- I've been pretty depressing around here, so here's for something happier...

I got a late start with the invitation for Colby's party. I couldn't decide where to have the party or how to word the invitation or even wrap my head around the fact that Colby would be a year old. So... I put everything off for way too long. Finally, I got my act together and put together the invites. I was going to make them on snapfish, but they weren't customizable enough, so I decided to make them in word and then convert them into a jpeg to have printed. I like the way they came out! :)

We put off doing pretty much everything for the party until Colby went to bed on Friday night. We figured that with the puppy and Colby things would just get ruined anyhow if we did them sooner. As luck would have it though, Colby would NOT go down on Friday night and instead of being in bed by 8 as usual, he didn't go down until a little after 10pm.

When he finally went down, we had our work cut out for us. I started by making the cakes- I had decided to make two #1 cakes for all the guests and then I also made a sheet cake so that I could cut Colby and Connor's cakes from that. Once everything was baked, I let them cool so I could frost them the next day. (I HATE hard frosting, so I wanted to wait on that.)

We also had to completely clean top-to-bottom, do a little rearranging to fit everyone, and put up all the decorations.

For a few weeks I had been working on a timeline of Colby's first year. When Colby was born, instead of going with a traditional babybook I had decided to use a blank calendar that I could customize for his first year. This worked out AWESOME because I had everything written in it- his first walk to his first time in his exersaucer, his first bottle (at 7 weeks) to the first time he had crossed statelines to go shopping. Every day I have something written, so I was able to pick out the important (and some not-so-important) milestones and pair them with photos form the day (because I obsessively take photos and have at least 1 picture from every day of his life...). I put it all together into this nifty timeline...

It took forever to hang the photos and get everything perfect but I love how it came out.

We also had to hang up the family tree. (It didn't come out as planned, but it was nearing 3:30am when I got to this and I was too tired to care!)

And the guessing game:

We also had a photo mat for people to sign, but the photo is going the wrong way... We're going to put a picture from the party in the mat and hang it in the Colbinator's room.

Finally around 4am Colby woke up and I took that as my cue to put him back down and to get a little shut-eye myself! Johnny ended up staying up all night getting more last minute cleaning and stuff done.

Colby had me up a little before 7am and I still had a ton of stuff to do. I had put off cutting all the fruit for the fruit salad, the veggies for the veggie platter, and frosting the cakes. Plus I still had to shower, Colby needed a bath (but only after eating lunch because he's officially now the World's Messiest Eater), and finish a slideshow. Johnny had to run a bunch of last minute errands and set up tables and chairs outside. Needless to say, around 8am I started panicking because there was NO WAY I would get everything done before 1:30 with Colby clinging on to me. So, I called my parents and they headed up early so my mom could help with prep... though honestly she did pretty much everything.

And my dad could entertain Colby... it worked out perfectly!

I got the cakes frosted,

The tables set up,

(Ignore the dog bowl- I actually took this after the party...)

And everyone was clean and ready for the party.

The party itself was great... our house is kind of tiny and we had a ton of people coming to the party so I was very nervous, but it all worked out. The day was beautiful so some people hung around outside and some stayed inside.

Colby had a great time playing with his girlfriend...

And this adorable 11-year-old who I started to watch when she was a little more than Colby's age!

Then came the highlight of the day-- cake!!!

I made a little cake for Colby (which was a whole other fiasco in the AM because the original cake I had made fell apart! I had to make a whole new cake for Colby and Connor in the AM) and after a round of Happy Birthday...

...we decided to let him dig in! He was a little unsure at first...

But after a few bites he got the hang of it!

Eventually the cake landed on the floor... and we decided it was enough.

After a quick bath in the sink...

It was time to open gifts! Colby's been super Mommy-clingy lately, so I had to open all of the gifts 1-handed as I balanced him on my lap. (Daddy passed the gifts over.)

By the end of the gifts Colby was so exhausted that he literally passed out. He could have been sleeping on a bed of nails and I don't think he would have woken!

One of Johnny's uncles brought a bundle of balloons for Connor, so after everyone left we released a few of the balloons for our little guy.

It was so nice to have a few Connor touches at the party...

A few supplied by us...

And a few others supplied by others. The family of the kids I used to babysit for made a donation to March of Dimes in Connor's name. My parents gave us a Willow Tree figurine (Miss You), an angel wing, a Connor magnet, and a letter that they wrote to Connor. And Johnny's uncle brought the balloons.

Honestly, I was a little surprised that more people didn't think of Connor in some way, but I was touched by those that did.

Overall, the party turned out great and I loved that, even though it's small, we were in a place we're comfortable.