Blake's 1st Birthday Party

Blake's first birthday party was a hit, I believe we had roughly 40 people in attendance. The weather was pretty nice that day with the temperature rising to over 60 degrees.

The theme for the party was sports, so Blake and Kyla wore baseball outfits and we had various ball-shaped balloons. Grandpa Doug brought over his inflatable plastic ball pit and we set it up in the bonus room along with a dozen beach balls for the toddlers to jump around in.

In a departure from how we typically feed guests at big parties we used Qdoba's catering, which was appropriate because Blake is a big fan of rice and guacamole. Becky even made him his own vegan cupcakes (he's allergic to eggs and dairy), though everyone else ate cake from Costco.

Continuing the tradition I started for Kyla, I created a movie that highlighted the last year of Blake's life (which so far is his only year of life). I feel like with this movie I reached a milestone as it was the first one where I lived up to my guarantee to Becky that it would take a lot less time to finish than my previous movies. This was due mainly to some of the time saving features of the latest version of iMovie and being able to upload it directly to AppleTV instead of burning DVDs.

This was the fifth big party that we've thrown at our house and it was probably the easiest to prepare for. I think Becky and I are starting to benefit from some experience, and outsourcing the main entree helped. I'm not sure that Kyla and Blake will always want to have big parties at the house; many kids have their birthday events at a park, Little Gym, or Pump It Up with just their friends. Becky is great about coming up with fun party themes, so maybe we've got a few years left.