We celebrated Isabella’s (or Moysee as we call her) first birthday last weekend. As I was putting together the guest list, I realized that Moysee doesn’t have any friends. I don’t have any friends with kids her age and we haven’t participated in any activities yet to meet friends…something I need to work on before her next birthday. So we decided to have a family party, which turned out to be over 40 people! The party was a BBQ and thankfully the weather cooperated and it was a beautiful day.
My parents stayed with me at the house a week before the party to get everything ready. My goal was to do very little cooking the day of the party besides BBQ’ing so that we could hang out with our guests. That meant all meat needed to be marinated, dumplings wrapped and frozen, corn husked, salad washed, fruit cut, decorations hung…there was a lot to do. And even with all of this preparation, I was up till 3am the day before the party, and my mom was up till 5am! I found this DIY birthday sign on Pinterest, made some modification to jazz it up a little bit, and had Jeff make the letters and numbers with his sticker machine. It took me three days to make but it looked great and I was so proud to make it myself. Because it was so much work, I decided to make it for ages 1 to 99 so we can use it for all our birthdays every year!
One of my Dad’s projects for the party was to paint the dining room. Boy, was this a big project…especially when you have a baby crawling into everything. As much work as parties are, it’s a great way to get you motivated to clean the house from top to bottom and take care of all home improvements on your list.
It rained in the morning but by the time the party started it was a beautiful day. We blew up the water slide jumping castle for the kids to play in. It was a huge hit!
We also had water balloons for the kids to play and throw. It’s amazing how 100 water balloons could be gone in less then 15 minutes. The kids had a blast!
Moysee played in the water for a little bit. It was a little hard with all of the big kids splashing around but she was happy to just be around them.
Then she went to her swing to hang out.
We had so much to BBQ my dad brought his charcoal BBQ from the house upstate. After dinner, we let the kids roast these gigantic marshmallows I found in the store. I found out later Mimi had two of them! No wonder she had a belly ache the next day.
Isabella’s birthday cake was an ice cream cake from Carvel. Two weeks before her birthday I started to replace her formula with cow’s milk to make sure she wouldn’t be allergic to her birthday cake. And of course we had the hello kitty candle we use for all our birthdays on top. Our cousin Zui took this photo. I love that he caught us all blowing out her candle.
Moysee loved her ice cream cake.
After I fed her a few times, she wanted to use the spoon to feed herself.
She was doing a great job with the spoon.
But she couldn’t scoop up a lot of ice cream so she started to use her hand.
Using the spoon and her hand was the best (and messiest) way to get the ice cream into her mouth. She had to take a bath right after finishing her cake.
The next morning Moysee opened her gifts after Mimi gave her a morning kiss.
She loved ripping the paper.
Mimi helped her open the gifts.
Oo-Oo Melissa (Chinese for paternal aunt in kiddy speak) always knows the fun toys to buy. Moysee played in the car all day.
Ee-ee (Chinese for maternal aunt in kiddy speak) really wanted to open a gift also so we finally let her.
Happy Birthday Moysee! I hope you had a wonderful first birthday.
Love always, Mama