It’s My Party

 

Okay, okay.  I realize that it has taken me forever to write about Jack’s birthday party!  I’ve been busy!  Sorry!

Jack was fortunate to have two celebrations for his birthday.  I’m a huge fan of birthdays!  I think that it is the one day that should be all about you!  I want to make Jack feel special every day, but I want him to feel extra special on his birthday. 

His actual birthday was on a Wednesday this year, so we decided to have dinner with just our parents and Ryan's sister Lindsay (my sister had to work).  Ryan’s parents offered to let us have dinner at their house since our house isn’t really conducive to a party of any kind (our living room and kitchen are tiny!). 

Since I had the day off, we decided to take Jack to have his one year pictures taken.  We went to Portrait Innovations in Fairview Heights (which is where we had his awesome Christmas photos taken).  I tried to schedule them at a time when he would be happy.  Yeah, that didn’t work so well. 

We got some gems like this one.  Yup, he was super happy!

But then there are cute ones like this one:

This is the only other picture we got that day where he was smiling.

We tried to do a wardrobe change and see if he would calm down.  We wanted some baseball photos, so we put on his little Albert Pujols jersey and went to see what we would get.  Yeah, what we got was little man throwing the ball at the photographer and pouting.

 

I like this next picture because this is how he sits all the time.  I think that he is practicing to be a catcher.  Watch out Yadier…here comes Jack!!

After the disastrous photo attempt (we have a certificate for a family photo session that I hope to use later in the summer.  Hopefully by then Jack will be walking…or more likely running around and will be more fun to photograph), we went home and let Jack nap for a while before we went to Ryan’s parents for dinner.

We had a nice dinner and then let Jack open some presents. 

 

He was very excited by the card in the picture above! 

Jack is obsessed with our laptops, so we got him a little laptop, in the hopes that he would stop trying to play with ours (it has not worked).  He does like to bang on the keys on this one though.

Then it was time for cake!  I figured that Jack would not have any problems digging into the cake, but I wanted him to make quite a mess! 

He was a little tentative at first

 

Eventually he dug in

What?

 

When I started to plan for Jack’s first birthday, the details were really important to me.  I plan events for a living, so I decided before I even had kids that I would put as much thought and effort into their parties as I do for an event at work.  That being said, I realize that Jack is only one and will not remember this party.  I didn’t go all out like I will when he gets older (I mean, I have connections….bounce houses, face painters, here we come!). 

I decided on a theme a long time ago…Jack would have a baseball themed birthday party.  He honestly does love baseball.  He has a baseball (a foul ball I caught at Busch Stadium on Ryan and my first date) and he chases it around the house all the time.  He has just figured out how to throw the ball.  So, the theme seemed like a no-brainer to me.  Plus, if he really is a baseball fanatic, we can have another baseball party when he gets older. 

The first thing I did was design the invitations.  I combined a couple of the ones that I found online and just made them myself.  It was cheaper and I liked them better. 

This was the front of the invitation (I ended up printing this on 5x7 photo paper so that it was glossy and the photos looked nicer)

This was the back.  I printed it on card stock and just used double sided tape to secure it to the back of the photo paper.  I thought that they turned out super cute!

Once the invitations were done, I started working on the decorations and food.  The food was easy…we went with ballpark food and had hamburgers and hot dogs, nachos, and then picnic kind of side items.  It was quite delicious. 

We ordered the St. Louis Cardinals cake (sorry Cubs fans!) from Wood Bakery in O’fallon.  The cake turned out super cute and was pretty delicious. 

I really wanted Jack’s cake to be a baseball, but I seriously couldn’t  get anyone to make a baseball cake.  It’s not that hard people!  It’s a cake, frosted with white icing, and slap some red stitching on it.  I could have gotten the cake from St. Louis but I just refused to drive over there for a $6 cake.  So, we went with this cake from the Dierberg’s bakery, which was cute as well.

This was the cake table.  I put all of Jack’s monthly photos into picture frames and displayed them on the table.  They are now hanging on the wall in Jack’s room, so they served two purposes.

I really wanted some sort of baseball cake, so I decided to make my own baseball cupcakes.  I had a hard time finding a fine tip for the icing, but they turned out okay.

This is Jack and his Paw Paw (my stepdad) as the party was getting started.  They were both in their Cardinals jerseys!  It was super cute.  Jack loves his Paw Paw!

We opened presents, but Jack was so tired (he refused to nap that day), he barely kept his eyes open during the present opening.  I hoped that some sugar would wake him up, so it was time for cake again!  He knew exactly what to do

He barely held his head up!  He kept leaning back in the chair!

What?  Do I have something on my face?

 

This is good stuff mom!

Not long after the cake, Jack needed to go take a nap.  So, we put him down to sleep.  Then I got to spend some time with this little beauty.   This is my niece, Miss Ava Lynn.  I kind of love her a lot too!

After a two hour nap, Jack got up and decided that it was time to party…on the neighbors trampoline.  He thought that it was hilarious!  He let Ava jump to bounce him.  Then he started walking all around the edge of the netting.  It was hilarious.  I have a feeling he will love a trampoline when he gets older!

 

If you haven’t been able to tell, his shirt says “I can barely talk and I already hate the Cubs!”.  Yes, I am spreading hate at a young age!  My child will not be a Cubs fan! 

After some time on the trampoline, it was time to go home.  We had a great party and loved seeing all of our family and friends!  This was what Jack looked like about five minutes into our ride home.  He was completely beat! 

All in all, we had a great time celebrating Jack’s party.  Can’t wait to do it again next year.  Don’t worry…I have a theme already!!  Pirate party here we come!