Kate loves Drew: Lila's FIRST birthday party!

We chose to celebrate Lila's birthday with a big party a week before her actual birthday. We invited all our closest friends and family and had the party at the Children's Museum after hours so we could have the whole museum to ourselves. It was fun and it turned out perfectly!

I made her smash cake before the party. Decorating cakes is definitely NOT my forte, unfortunately. hahhaha but it was fun to make anyways and she'd be destroying it so I wasn't too picky over it. I just made a simple funfetti cake in a round cake pan, cut out smaller circles, and stacked them with frosting! My objective was to make a cute naked cake... it kind of worked. It looked more like the leaning Tower or Pisa, but it was fine hahaha.

I wanted to have donuts at her party for all the guests so instead of order 3 dozen premade donuts, we opted for 3 dozen plain glazed donuts! (MUCH cheaper) Then with the help of my sister and my mom, we melted down some store bough frosting and dipped each donut in the melted frosting and sprinkled them with sprinkles! They were so cute, little did we know that they would be super delicious!! Even the next day!!! Talk about a success!!!

Then later, right before the party started we had both mine and Drew's family over for pizza and pre-party games. I went through hundreds of photos to pick out some of the funniest of Lila from her past year of life so we could play "Bubble Talk" with her pictures. It was so funny and fun to reminisce and laugh about the past year with Lila and everyone else. It was the perfect game!!

We had pizza from Papa John's (half off because the Jazz won the night before, haha) and our little townhome was packed full of all our family and loved ones. Even my good friend Joey from college surprised us and stopped by to spend the evening with us!

After we ate, we played one more round of "Bubble Talk" and then we packed up all the decor and goodies and headed to the museum for the big party!

We set up everything in the party room. We put up the cute banners, set out the donuts and Lila's smash cake, and eventually guests started to trickle in! The window sills filled up with gifts for Lila and the party began!

We welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming. I got choked up as I was speaking about Lila and how special each person was to all of us. Their support means so much to us!! It was special:)

I then handed out a piece of paper for a little game for everyone to play, "Lila's Birthday Trivia!" It was fun because it was for everyone to get to know her! We went over the answers and everyone seemed to be surprised by a few of them but it was fun anyways! Both Shay and Kambry ended up winning the game so that was cute!

After the game we passed out donuts while I helped Lila open her presents. She did so good!! I helped her open them, but she did a lot of the work herself and was patient, excited about each gift, and happy the whole time! And trust me when I say there were TONS of presents. I was afraid she'd lose her cool or get tired of it, but we managed to get through all of them! Everyone was so generous and patient too as she opened each gift haha.. it was fun. She received lots of fun books, cute outfits, bath toys, and yummy snack type treats.

After she finished her presents we did the cake smash! We sat her in the high chair, put her birthday hat on, sang Happy Birthday to her, and then let her have at it! She is very particular and does not like to have messy hands so she picked at her cake. It was kind of a slow process haha but it was cute anyways because she is the CUTEST little girl in the entire world!!!

After her cake smash we cleaned her up and people began to leave. We wandered through the museum for a little bit before totally cleaning up and heading home. The whole party was a huge success. We had around 30 people show up and it turned out exactly how I imagined it would!

Lila was so happy. She always is. She's so loved and I want her to always know that! Even after one short year of life, she has influenced and touched so many lives already! So many people love her, including all her family members (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc.) and she is SO SPECIAL!! We are so lucky to have her here and to have her sweet spirit to bless our lives every single day!

A big thank you to all those who helped out with so much of the party planning and prep. I couldn't have done it without you!

The next day we just played some games with my family and made lunch together then sent them on their way. The weather has been really crappy this weekend full of snowstorms and rain. (Just rain for us down here in southern utah, but snow everywhere else) so they wanted to get on the road soon to be safe.