Post Birthday Blogging

It seems like we have asked the advice of anyone who has anywhere near a Christmas birthday, what we should do to make Ava's birthday special. We only ask knowing that it must be hard to make Christmas Eve or Christmas Day feel like a birthday. One hundred percent of the people said to make it feel like a birthday rather than Christmas. So, it seems rather ironic that I chose "Twas the Night Before Christmas" as Ava's theme for her first birthday. I kind of thought this might be the only year I could get away with it.

  

 

I used Pinterest for many of the food ideas including the cheese, rosemary, and tomatoes tray as well as the veggie sticks in cups filled with ranch dressing. However, I have to say the cake was mostly my doings or rather undoings. It seemed like I had a disaster on my hands about thirty minutes before the birthday, but managed to pull it together with a little help of peppermints and coconut. I added a little peppermint extract to the cake so I guess it was fitting.

 

 

Almost as soon as the kids walked in I had them head over to the cookie decorating station. Somehow we managed to accumulate just enough Christmas hats for all of the kids.

These kiddos knew the appropriate amount of sprinkles, but apparently my son thought it was a contest to see who could get the most sprinkles on their cookie. I wish I had a picture but let's just say there were so many sprinkles on his cookie even he wouldn't eat it.

 

 After the cookie decorating, I took the kiddos outside for a few games. Here, this cutie is looking through "snow" to find hidden treasures.

 

My sweet friends agreed to be precious presents that were "wrapped."

 

Then, with some crushed Christmas bows I found, the kids had a relay race. It gave me an opportunity to clean up  the festivities of cookie decorating.

 Unlike her brother, Ava seemed to take a liking to her birthday cake.

 And perhaps one of the sweetest portions of the party were to see Ava's guests carrying bags and bags of groceries and household items for the Ronald MacDonald House. This place has a sweet spot in our hearts as it was were we stayed inside Texas Children's Hospital while Ava was in the NICU. This housing allowed us to literally be a five minute walk from Ava's hospital crib. I owe such a big "Thank You" to our family and friends for the donations and for celebrating our sweet little girl.