Baby's 1st Birthday Party!!!

The party went well - phew! The baby was well rested before the party started, the food turned out, and everyone got to relax, including myself at the end :) The end result? Baby got to socialize, eat new food, play with new toys, lots of pictures and videos for me to process, and lots of leftover food for the week.

It all went off to a late start since we fell behind in our preparation and everyone arrived 30 minutes to an hour or so late. I was actually really pleased at all the late arrivals as a result :) The party was just one big feast and chit chat event. There were no games or speeches, although maybe I should have made a small speech and talked about Tristan and how our year had been. It would have been nice to capture that on video. Oh well. We had lots of food, there was music, Tristan had his separate lunch, we took pictures, cut the cake, and opened presents. Did I mention there was a lot of food? It seemed like our guests only made a dent in all the food too! It was a good thing I cut back on my original menu. The only home cooked thing I made was the spinach dip & cut veggies, seafood stir-fry udon noodles, and cliantro-yogurt dip.





PARTY FOOD MENU

Appetizers:

• Spinach dip with sourdough bread & assorted veggies
• Baked popcorn chicken
• Original potato chips

Main dish:

• Seafood stir-fry udon noodles
• Samosas with cliantro-yogurt dip
• Soy chicken

Pop, sparkling juice


Dessert:

• Triple Chocolate Tiger Cake
• Taro Cake

It was the battle of the cakes! We're still in disagreement today about which one we should have gotten. We both agree it is silly to get two. Jean-Louis wanted the taro cake and I wanted the triple chocolate tiger cake. I always think of the cake as a nice decorative piece for a party and the cakes at Save-On Foods have really nice themes. We both chose sesame street as the theme and after the cake is eaten the figurines on top become toys. Nice, huh? As well as being tasty since it's triple chocolate, it is a very cute cake! Ok, so the taro cake is pretty too but in comparison, it's not as cute. I love taro cake too but I just thought the other was more appropriate for a kids birthday. Jean-Louis still disagrees!

For Tristan, we fed him whole eggs for the first time. I scrambled them with some herbs and cheddar cheese. Compared to what he is used to eating, this was a big treat for him! Just as I suspected, he ate it like a hungry ghost. Then I gave him a Babybel cheese and some steamed apple for dessert. No, he didn't have any of his birthday cake. Jean-Louis and I are very strict with him when it comes to food. He is not allowed any sweets until he turns two! Next birthday baby!

Tristan was shy during the party and was clingy to his Daddy. I was in the kitchen a lot since I was responsible for the food. Everyone was calling him a Daddy's boy. I'm sure Jean-Louis liked that :) To think just months ago, they didn't like each other at all. Things sure have changed.

Toys, clothes, money... there was a bit of everything for Tristan. He even took part in all the unwrapping of his gifts too. He just loves to rip paper and destroy things so it was amusing.

Once again, we are a bit relieved to have pulled off another big party. It's hard since our place is small and with Tristan it is hard to do anything aside from our everyone routine. One thing I wished I did more of was take more command of the camera. Since Jean-Louis and I had to host, we tried getting other people to take pictures and film for us. I have seen the pictures but we didn't really get great pictures of Tristan alone or of the three of us. Not that the pictures sucked but I was hoping to get better ones anyway. Oh well, we can't have everything! So at the end of the day, I was a bit relieved that it was over and that everything went well. The planning and organizing was fun and it paid off. Until next year!