First Birthday Bash!

Yesterday was a big day for us.... we got to celebrate a very special birthday! It was time for Cassandra's 1st birthday party!

Gabe's parents were so wonderful and decided to host the party for us since we invited 75 people. We ended up with about 35 showing up (yes I was a little bummed-we had around 60 for Avery's)...the number dwindled the closer the day got due to a lot of illness going around.

Gabe, the girls and I headed to his parents house around 2pm. Cassandra went down for a nap shortly after we got there (and slept through the first half hour of the party!) and we did some decorating and setting up. Gabe and I ran out to get balloons filled and when we got back, my Mom, Aunt, and Dad had shown up already! 

We did a balloon theme for the party-sister loves her balloons! When we got them filled at the store, we knew she would be so excited when she saw them....look how great they look (we had another set of them just like this too!):

And here is her beautiful cake we got (courtesy of Cakes by Karen):

Avery and Cass ready to party (love the faces!):

The very happy birthday girl!

Once everyone got there, we brought out the food-we had the meats catered and did the side dishes ourselves (with our parents' help of course!). Everything turned out delicious!

Cassandra eating some dinner

After we ate, it was time to open presents!

What's inside?

New clothes!

Helping rip the paper

Giving hugs to her new stuffed animal

My sweet girl

Clapping when she was done!

After gifts, we sang! I wasn't sure how she'd react to everyone singing, but she did just fine! Along with the cake, she had her own little cupcake to smash/eat.

This face cracks me up!

Hmmmm...what's this?

I was a little disappointed in the frosting on the cake/cupcake...it was way too hard, so it didn't make a mess like you would like it to do for a 1st birthday. It had the consistency of a fondant frosting, but it was buttercream. It tasted fine, but was just too hard to smash! So that was a little disappointing...I wanted her to put on a good show! At least we let her have a cupcake on her real birthday as well and she did get a little messy!

Too much cake!

Playing with her cupcake!

After cake, people started to head home. We all had a really great time and Cassandra received some wonderful gifts from everyone. Thank you to everyone who came and celebrated with us!

Cassandra was very happy to have all of the balloons home with us....here she is today enjoying them, even though they're deflated!! I'm sure they'll be around until there's nothing left to them!