Audra's First Birthday

It's official!  Our sweet, baby girl has turned the BIG one!  We celebrated with my family at Chuck E. Cheese near my hometown.  It's the exact same one that I went to during my childhood, which brought back so many memories!  Xavier had a blast playing all the games and both kids really enjoyed watching Chuck E. Cheese come on stage and do his little song and dance show.

We picked a unicorn theme for her party.  Audra loves her unicorn stuffed animals so it was the perfect choice.  We had a bakery in town make her unicorn smash cake.  It was a two-tiered, vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.  It looked and tasted amazing!!





We used this cake as her smash cake and handed out cupcakes to the guests.  She very carefully got into her smash cake, putting just one finger in the frosting and licking it.  Steve also helped her by putting some on his finger and letting her taste.  She didn't really like it and wanted to spit it out.  Her favorite part was putting her whole hand in the hair that was on the front.  We also did a smash cake birthday photo session for her at J.C. Penney and she reacted pretty much the same way with that cake.  Although we got some amazing cake pictures from that session, she doesn't seem to be a fan of cake!

For the decorations, I put together a collage of her monthly photos we took of her next to her very first stuffed animal that Steve got for her, a pink penguin.  Steve bought it because my favorite animal is penguins.  It's fun to see how much she grew month to month.



I had a design artist make Audra's sign telling everyone a little about what she's been up to.  I thought it would help family members to get a sense of where she's at now since she's been changing so fast.  Things to note - she loves screaming contests with Xavier!  They sit in the back seat and go back and forth, screaming at each other, laughing hard!  She also calls most things "doggy".  She loves the ABC song and always laughs and claps her hands when she hears it.  And when she sees books with pictures of other babies (I am a Baby), she points to the babies and says "doggy". haha!  She's the best!


For the food, we had pizza and pop provided by the restaurant and everyone went nuts over how good their pizza was.  It was stuffed crust and so delicious.  I can't wait to celebrate my birthday there! (wink, wink)  For the favors, Lori had a bakery she knew of make unicorn decorated, almond flavored cookies and gooey, chocolate cake pops.  Both were delicious and everyone went wild for them.  I had some extra cookies to take to work and got so many compliments.













And last but not least, we put on display Audra's time capsule that she will open when she turns 10.  Inside were some examples of today's product packaging, a kids entertainment magazine, menu from a restaurant, and some receipts showing today's prices.

And just this morning, she waved to me.  She's growing up way too fast!!  Happy 1st Birthday, Sweet Audra.  You've brought so much joy into our lives.  We can't wait to see what the future holds for you and love you so much!