Happy 1st Birthday, Big Girl!!

On Saturday, September 13th, Michel and I hosted our first ever baby birthday party. To continue our owl theme from her nursery to the Look Whooo Is Getting Older posts that I've done since she was born, I chose to do a Look Whooo is 1 Year Old party. I ordered everything off of Etsy, printed it at Fed Ex Office, and then cut and mounted everything myself. Ummm....what was I thinking??? I started off doing a little bit at a time, so that I wouldn't be overwhelmed to do everything at the last minute, but as always, my natural procrastination set in, and here it was the day of the party and I was still scrambling to get little things taken care of. Luckily, my in-laws had come into town the night before, and were more than happy to come over at 9am on Saturday and watch Audrey so Michel could mow the lawn and I could take care of last-minute birthday to-dos. :) When it was all said and done, I thought it turned out really cute!

 This smash cake....oh. my. goodness. It caused me the biggest headache. Ever. I got it from Wal-mart. Need I say more? No, j/k, I do like Wal-Mart. Issues started when I placed the order. The baker was not on duty, so a guy who really didn't know what he was doing took my order. He didn't know how to put down the proper page number of the cake that I wanted, icing colors, etc., and assured me, "the baker would know." Yeah. Right. So I went back a couple days later when the baker was there to clarify everything that the baker didn't "just know." However, even after talking tot he baker, telling her that I wanted the cake to look exactly like the picture shown (a big 1 - not filled in) with the name "Audrey" inside of it, I wasn't thrilled when I saw what she had done, but it was OK. Oh, and I said that I would pick it up at 6pm the night before. When I got there (at 6:02), there was NOBODY in the bakery!!! I had to hunt down a manager, get them to page someone to the bakery, and that had me frustrated. Then as I was paying I noticed the sticker with the description on it said it was a white cake when I had ordered a chocolate cake. Urrrrgghhh....but anyways, if that was the only issue we had with the party I think we did pretty good!

As guests arrived, I asked them to each take a picture with the birthday girl so that we could remember everyone who came to celebrate our special day. We invited grandparents, aunts/uncles/cousins, a few of my friends that Audrey and I regularly do play dates with, and our small group. Unfortunately, illnesses had left many people unable to attend, but we still partied hard and had a great time!

Aunt Janette, Karys, and Audrey (Zane was one of the sick ones, and had to stay home with his dad...we missed them both!)

Nana and Granddaddy

Mommy and Daddy

Josh, Jax, and Jessica

Grandpa and Grandma

Erin, Eva Mae, and Richard

Once everyone arrived, we had pizza for lunch. Audrey ate almost an entire piece of pizza minus the crust. My girl can put away some food! After pizza we moved straight to presents. Since Audrey had opened presents that Michel and I gave her just a few days prior on her actual birthday, she was a total pro! For this birthday we could have gotten her tissue paper and she would have been happy, but she has loved all of her gifts!

After presents, we undressed the birthday girl to get ready for smash cake. I think she must have been too full from her pizza because she barely touched her cake...and I've given her cake before, and she scarfed it down! At her party...not so much, lol!

She was very cautious with her cake

All in all, we had a great party experience! Plus, after the party was over she took a 2+ hour nap! That's a sign that we were partying hard!

We love you, sweet girl!