Emmarie's 1st Birthday Party {Fun Stuff}

After we had done all of the traditional birthday party stuff: food, cake, presents... We went outside to play on the WATER SLIDE!  My dad is a go big or go home kind of guy, so when we started looking at waterslide rentals for Emmy's party and Kari's graduation, he decided instead to buy one.   So the beauty that you will see below is available to be rented if you are  in the south Texas area. :)

One  more picture of the birthday girl because how can it be a birthday post without her.



We got a family picture of the three of us on this milestone day.  We all look happy, and I think that describes how we really felt that day.


Here is a picture of Emmy and Daddy.


Lauren and I have been friends since middle school, and now our babies will be able to grow up hanging out as well.


Emmy was super excited about the water table that Brian and his family got her.  She wanted to open the box and set it up right then!


Melinda is another one of my life long friends.  She made the trip down from Austin to be with Emmy for her birthday.


She got a couple of super cute outfits from Ollie, April, and Mike.


Then it was time to get outside to the slide.  I took a million a lot of pictures, but I will try not to bombard you.  Emmy was fearless, and she even went down the slide a couple of times on her own without Daddy.


Mal thought the slide was super fun!


Layla couldn't wait to climb up and go again!


Some of the "older" people thought it was fun just to watch. :)


Steve and Dana won the prize for best splash!


Emmy hugged all over Papa and Granny.


She modeled the new backpack that Grandma Susan made for her!


She showed off the activity walker that Henry brought her.


And she unwrapped the sweet puppy that Raeassia, Trey, and Darryl gave her!


All in all her birthday was a day full of fun, love, and happiness.  We are so blessed to have so many wonderful people in Emmy's life that wanted to celebrate with her.  I hope that in the coming years, they will all continue to have such a positive impact on her life. 

After the party was over, I started thinking about what her theme for next year's party should be.  Bradley just shook his head and sighed.

Emmarie's 1st Birthday Party {Cake Smash}

The cake smash was one of my favortie parts of first birthday parties.  Emmy's cakes were especially beautiful (in my unbiased opinon of course).  Raeassia worked so hard on Emmarie's cakes.  She made a three tier cake and two smash cakes: one for the party and one for professional pictures.   Each cake was made up of seven different colored layers of cake, one for each part of the rainbow.  I gave her an idea of what I wanted, but she took the meager ideas I provided and ran with them.  Everything was so much more beautiful than I could have expected.  You will notice below that she even tried to match the smash cake to the invitation.


Here is Emmy standing by her cake.  It is almost as tall as she is.


She looks so confused about why she is being allowed to stand on the table.


I am so amazed that this year passed by so quickly when I look at my sweet little "big" girl.  She was enthralled with the candle.


At first she wasn't quite sure what to do with the cake.  The outer layers of icing were a little thick, and she had only had cake once before on her actual birthday.


But it did not take her long to figure out what was "going on" on her plate.


She was quite happy to make a wonderful mess.  And for once, I was happy to let her do it.


She was in such a good mood from her sugar high that she was even willing to share her cake with Nana.


If I had to caption this picture, I would say "Nana, watch this!"


It is amazing how happy a little bit of refined sugar can make a one-year-old.


That's probably the biggest she smiled the whole day.


Her aunts sure do love her a lot!


We decided to take a mini group pic of the people that take care of her on a daily basis.  I don't know what I would have done without each of them this past year.


A slightly blurry picture where you can see all of the layers inside the cake.


Nana was eager to start passing out the cake.


This is the remnants of the smash cake.  She ripped the top red layer off in all of her Godzilla-like destruction.


Everyone (especially Dana and Halle) seemed to enjoy  the cake.

Emmarie's 1st Birthday Party {Say Cheese}

There were lots of special people that made it to Emmy's 1st Birthday Party.  In the picture above, you can see her birthday outfit.  My cousin Billie made the embroidered shirt for her.

This is a picture of Aunt Kari, GiGi, and Oliver.  He was almost as big as Emmy already.


Henry and Lauren were there, and he was ready to Par-tay!


Layly was feeling a little camera shy, but Nicole didn't mind giving us a smile.


Aunt B tried to juggle two babies.  We laugh and say that these are our twins.


A quick pic of Mommy and the birthday girl.  She wasn't impressed.


Ms. Halle was here and took a pic with Brittany.


Hmmm...someone stole the camera for a moment for some selfies.


Nana was hard at work in the kitchen.


Ms. Linda came to hang out with us as well.  Henry was really excited to wear that hat.


Christopher and Emma enjoyed the hot dogs.


We headed outside to take a few pictures of the littles.  These are some of the cousins from my mom's side of the family.  I think they are going to be so close!


These are the cousins from Brad's family.  So far, these are all of the grandkids that Joe has!  They are a cute bunch aren't they?


Great-uncle Robbie stopped in to see the birthday girl!


Aunt April had to leave early, but she wanted to get a picture with Emmy!


There are probably a hundred more pictures that I needed to post, and there were tons of people there that refused to have their picture taken (party poopers), but this was a nice sampling of the group!

Emmarie's 1st Birthday Party {Details}

This party was a labor of love.  Heavy emphasis on the word labor.  From the time she was about 4 months, I knew that she was going to have a Rainbow birthday party.  I saw several rainbow parties on blogs like Chickabug and Hostess With the Mostess, and I thought it was the funnest "non themey" idea for a 1st birthday.  It's not that I am not a fan of Mickey Mouse and Dora the Explorer, but Emmarie wasn't really a fan yet.  And, let's be honest, a lot of those party kits aren't really that cute.

I wanted a fun party with the kind of style and panache that would do both Emmarie and (my new love) Pinterest proud.  So 150 pins later, Emmy's party was born.  We had such a good time.  Rather write it all down in a chunk, I will attempt to recreate the scene through pictures and add words where needed.

We had lots of signs and decorations.

This is a picture that I took of her each of her first twelve months.



I also had a wall of her weekly photos.  This was a massive undertaking that took dedication and motivation on my part, but it is so worth it to have a picture of my little girl from every week of her first year.  She changed so quickly, and now I can see those changes frozen forever.







Her cake table was a little wild.




I absolutely loved Emmy's cake.  It was amazingly constructed and decorated beautifully.  Raeassia did a fantastic job on it!







There were also a few other decorative items that were Pinterest inspired.














I think this party will probably take me at least three posts to fully write up so stay tuned!