BabyBear's Birthday Bash: One Year Old!!

Happy First Birthday, BabyBear!
Last week we celebrated our beloved BabyBear's one year birthday! We can't believe it came so quickly!! Thanks to Robbie Rogers, Thursday we were able to get some pictures taken on Baylor's campus outside Waco Hall- more of which you can see here (on a side note, read more about Waco Hall's 80th birthday in the latest issue of the Baylor Magazine, hitting mailboxes soon). He's growing up so much!! Definitely looking more like a little boy every day and less like a baby. When people say the time flies, they are really not kidding. According to unofficial numbers (i.e., taken by mom and dad at home), BabyBear is now 28.5 inches tall and weighs 19 pounds.

On Saturday we had BabyBear's first birthday party, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves (I hope anyway). :) Our families, neighbors and Lifegroup had some great food (thanks everyone, it was yummy!) and fun celebrating the big day with BabyBear.

As you may have guessed, the theme of the party was the card game UNO (as in, BabyBear's birthday numero uno). I found about six decks of UNO cards (some 1980s original and some newer) and with those was able to make the invitations, banners and most of the other decorations for the party.

Two of BabyBear's favorite things right now are straws and balloons, so I wanted to incorporate those things into the party. The balloons were easy enough; we blew up a bunch of clusters and hung them all over the house. We also bought some helium-filled ones and let those wander around from room to room (the kids enjoyed those a lot). We hung UNO cards from each balloon and two from each cluster and I really like the way it came out. When BabyBear woke up from his nap and came out before the party he loved seeing all the balloons. That totally made my day!!!
The straws were a bit trickier. I ended up ordering some loopy, crazy straws from a nice gentleman in England via eBay and then added some labels with each guest's name on them. These worked really well as party favors and also as markers to distinguish one person's beverage from another! BabyBear really liked his crazy straw too. In fact, he's still carrying it around the house on occasion.

BabyBear had a carrot cake cupcake with cream cheese icing (recipe is here if anyone is interested) and while it took him a little while to decide that it was food, once he tasted it, he polished it off in no time and with very little mess. See what I mean?


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He didn't get to try any of the chocolate zucchini cake (recipe is here if anyone is interested- I used all King Arthur's Whole Wheat flour) this time around, because he really liked the carrot cake. We'll save the chocolate cake for another day, I think...if there's any left.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Grams, Gramps, Grandma and all the others who helped or made something for the party. Without you there would not have been nearly as many balloons blown up, banners made or hung well, or UNO cards strewn about the house, and there would have been a lot less food that probably wouldn't have been quite so tasty. You guys are wonderful and we really appreciate everything you did to help make BabyBear's day special!

After the big party, we enjoyed a few hours together with family we hadn't seen in a few months. It was definitely fun times!

Happy Birthday, BabyBear!

Feel free to click here to peruse a gallery of pictures from the day.