Long time, no read, I know! Maybe one day G-burg will get some high speed internet! We had a great summer, but it went by too fast. Niley also turned into a "big girl" this summer. We enjoyed traveling to the beach with Granna one weekend and then back to the beach with the baseball boys.
And since my last post Niley has turned 1!
I can not believe our little tiny baby is 1! We had sooo much fun planning and enjoying Niley's first birthday. I tried to actually calm down and enjoy the party. Usually when I plan or help with parties I am crazy thru the actual party and I don't usually get to enjoy it. I'm usually stressed and nervous making sure everything is "just right"... which is the way I was for my Mom's big birthday party the weekend before Niley's. I know this about my personality and I do not enjoy it, so Yancey gave me some good advice...Just take a deep breath..!
I am so thankful to have such a supportive and helpful family that helped make Niley's party all fit together. They helped cook, pick up food, decorate, move tables, bake cupcakes, babysit, etc and I appreciated it sooo much!
And as my dad said...We flew Niley's cake baker in from Cleveland, Ohio!... Which happened to be my sis-n-law :)She helped me decorate the owl cookie party favors, cupcakes and then she did Niley's smash cake which I thought turned out perfectly adorable!Thanks to all of you for your help!
Jasmine and Karis all the way from Ohio!
We kept with the owl theme for Niley's first bday party. It seemed to work out well because we were able to have the party in front of our house under the shade trees. The heat, thankfully, that morning was suprisingly tolerable.
We had colored bubbles everywhere, that I didn't realized popped a colored dot on clothes..oops.. and thanks to Kylie we had a little face painting...
and some kids enjoyed swinging...
Niley already had a sweet tooth, thanks to Uncle Brad, Bro. Vic and Uncle Dave so she LOVED her cake!
The hit of the party was of course, Yancey's idea with no stress and not much preparation required...A snow cone machine. The kids and Niley loved it! but probably not as much as Yancey did ! My dad had made this wagon a few years back and my mom threw away this umbrella and together what a perfect wagon for snowcones!
I wanted to do owl cookies as favors so we used a tulip cookie cutter and Ms Rhonda's yummy icing recipe to make them. I put pretzels in the bottom of the bag to make the owl look like it was sitting on a tree. I had fun decorating these cookies. I wanted all the "owls" at the party to have blue eyes and a bow, just like the birthday girl :)
Yancey and I wanted to do something to give back this year for Niley's birthday. We have been so blessed in Niley's first year. We couldn't decide exactly what we wanted to do and I wanted it to be "personal" and relate to Niley...so after hours of searching on the web for ideas we found one..In lieu of a gift for the birthday we asked guests to bring a "headband bows" for donation to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. As all of you know Niley doesn't have much hair and ALWAYS has a "headband bow" on so I loved this idea. We were so blessed to have received 71 bows!!
And a few pics from the day...
Happy First Birthday Niley!
