Birthday Party Recap

Pictures are posted on Facebook. I'm reticent to post pictures on a public blog, particularly pictures of other people. So go there to see them, and if you're not my friend on Facebook, then 'friend' me so I can see your pictures too! :)

Nothing says lovin' like your camera crapping out the night before your daughter's first birthday party! I really don't like my camera. It's a Sony point and shoot W-55. We had it less than 30 days before we had our first 'issue' with it. We had to send it back to Sony to get it fixed. Now it seems to have crapped out again. You completely charge the battery, and the camera won't work. Today I ordered a battery online, and if the camera still doesn't work with the new battery, then we'll have to get a new camera. Blech! That would be our 3rd digital camera in 5 years. So we had to use our old digital today, and also our friend took lots of pictures. All worked out though it was weird to use the old digital camera. It's one of those that you can't use the picture preview LCD thing. You have to peer through the teeny tiny viewfinder. Very retro!

The cake turned out pretty good. S is a great cake decorator, very patient, and skilled. It's so sad to cut into it after 12 hours of work. It tasted great though!

We kept it very simple for food: veggies, fruit, chips & pizza. I really thought 5 pizzas would be just enough. They were big pizzas from Costco, and we were expecting 30ish people. Except kids don't eat that much, and probably most people ate lunch before they showed. It turns out we had about 2-3 pizzas left.

It was great to see our friends and family come together for Julia's birthday. Julia herself did pretty well. No meltdowns on her part. For the first hour she insisted on being held by S or me. The second hour she was okay on the floor near us, and by the third hour she was playing on the floor with other kids without us in the room. She ate a few bites of cake, but it was more of a squishing experience - as I'm sure it is for most babies. The biggest surprise is that she really dug the pizza. She ate quite a bit (for her).

Julia was spoiled with lots of clothes, toys and books. She got a lot of dresses, and even a bathing suit! I love it because she now has summer clothes, like sundresses, which she really didn't have before now. She got some fun toys to play with and lots of books to read and music to dance to. One of the songs is, "I am a grocery bag." Hmmmm....kids' music is kinda weird.

All in all, it was great. The adults got into the Cheerio game we played. I was kind of at a loss of how much to 'plan' for the party - i.e., there were lots of people and how can we have games and keep people entertained given that there's such a range of ages. So I just had one simple game and treat bags. We can get more complicated in future years!

I should get snoozing. I'm so exhausted from staying up late the past few nights getting things ready.