Spring has Sprung and Isaac is ONE!

Suddenly the trees are fully sprouted in the bright greens of spring, and the flowers are their vibrant companions; and in our household Isaac has reached the milestone of turning ONE.

To celebrate, we had a small gathering of family join us for dinner, cake and presents. We asked them to arrive in the afternoon so that we could all attend Jack's T-Ball game first.

With a second born, things are different. Obviously, we love Isaac just as much as Jack, but we (meaning I) are not quite as crazy about the details as we once were. While I did spend some time perusing Pinterest for ideas, I didn't go overboard.

We hung streamers and blew up balloons (mostly at Jack's request), and Daniel asked me to grill chicken for burrito bowls in lieu of ordering pizza, while Jack requested dirt cups with gummy worms. 

I agreed to their suggestions and also made my family's traditional pistachio birthday cake. Nothing grandiose, but still lovely.

I don't repeat many meals, but the burrito bowls will happen again (I made them once that week for our family and then again for the party). They were THAT good! Check out the recipe here.

After the T-Ball game we came back to our house to open presents. I think Jack enjoyed this more than Isaac, but both boys are thrilled with the loot. 

Especially a big green wagon. We haven't even bothered to put the wheels on because Isaac loves to climb in and out, while opening and shutting the door on the side.

Jack picked out a toy garbage truck to give to Isaac (which he really wanted to play with before the party) and there were so many other gifts – books, stuffed animals, clothes, a noisy VTech dinosaur. Isaac loves it all (though he may have cried when he took the clothes out of the bag, but he's a one-year-old, so no hard feelings!). 

After presents, I finished up meal prep for the grill while my brother whipped up some fabulous guacamole. We ate and then prepared to let Isaac have his smash cake.

The only problem was, it was already his bedtime (7pm), and he had missed a nap, and he was pretty much over it all. We sang to him and he tried to grab the candle (maybe a little pyro like his daddy?), and after Jack blew out the candle, Isaac took one look at the cake and burst into tears.

I guess I might burst into tears too if I was tired and there was a gaggle of people staring at me, trying to get me to smile for a camera! 

So we tried to coax Isaac with icing. Then we offered him some chocolate pudding from the dirt cups as an alternative, but he wasn't having any of it.

We gave in and had everyone give him final hugs and kisses, and it was off to bed for our little, tired one-year-old. I'm sure next year will be better and maybe we will shoot for an earlier party time!

We still have cake in the fridge that we need to give him an opportunity to smash...

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to celebrate with us!

Trucks Go Birthday Party, Jack's 1st Birthday Party

Other possible titles for this post:  
Birthday Mania or This Birthday Brought to You by Pinterest

That title was actually suggested by my brother-in-law. Thank you Robert. Most of my ideas were actually from other blogs, not Pinterest, but Pin Boards do tend to drive this mania to have a great, well-crafted party. Though I was planning/organizing/creating stuff like this long before the advent of Pinterest.

Plus my sister, Angela, does over-the-top, creative birthdays for her kids, so I have that to live up to, right? Daniel would emphatically say, "NO."

Thankfully Angela also volunteered to help me out since I always help her the night before her kid's parties... we typically stay up way too late doing things like blowing up balloons and sewing together streamers to make cool-looking decorations.

After going through the birthday party creation as the one in charge, I have come to the conclusion that I go over the top with food while still having fun decorations, while Angela goes over the top with decorations. Between us, we make a pretty good team.

The week before the party, Jack came down with a bad cold. Running nose and cough. He would wake up every night coughing. So for an entire week neither he nor I actually got a good night's sleep. By the time the party rolled around, I was running on fumes. Thank goodness for my sister. We have teamed up for so many of these kind of get-together's that I know she will make decisions like I would want without me having to tell her what to do. I think everyone needs someone like that it their life.

Anyway, we decided to have a Truck themed party. I have been taking monthly photos of Jack with Daniel's childhood Tonka truck for the past year and I knew I wanted to incorporate that truck into the theme. Then I came across this cake idea on Pinterest and I knew we would go this route.

I designed the invitations around the truck. I also created 5x5 prints that I mounted to foam board and hung on the wall to show how Jack has changed over the last 12 months.

From there I scanned the words from a favorite book, Trucks Go, and pulled out letters to make a sign that read "Happy Birthday Jack." I sewed the letters together to form a banner. I also used construction paper to make the pendants for the banner.

We decided to use CAUTION tape instead of streamers. For balloons, we just blew up a bunch and let them lay on the floor -- the kids had a blast playing with the loose balloons, so that worked out.

One other thing I did was have engineering prints made at a local print shop (one 3x4 foot sheet cost me $3.50). I printed 12 of our favorite photos on one sheet and then mounted them to 12x12 inch foam board. I painted the edges of the foam board black and hung them on the wall. The whole project was super cheap and was a great way to display photos gallery style. I got this idea from the blog, Bower Power, though I modified it for what I needed.

For Jack's first birthday, we opted to only invite family -- which was still a pretty big party. We were sad that my parents and brother were unable to attend, though we did Skype my mom for the cake eating. We will have another celebration with them later.

Jack's two cousins were in attendance and many of Daniel's family were there. Jack is one loved little guy. We feel blessed to live closer to both of our families. 

Confession #1: The night before the party I had a panic attack that we didn't have enough food, so I went to the grocery store and picked up more ingredients. Note to self, don't panic, we had way more than enough... stick with the original plan!

Confession #2: I ran out of icing sugar while making the cake... I read that you could substitute granulated sugar, if you ran it through a food processor with 1 tbsp on cornstarch for 10 minutes. FYI -- I was able to ice my cake, but the icing was kind of sandy. This was ok since I was doing a dirt-style cake, but I wouldn't do it again.

I'll let the cake pictures speak for themselves:

The party was a success, though we do need to work on Jack's sharing skills... He loves his cousins, but does not like sharing!