Cooper's 1st Birthday

The day has finally come that my baby turned ONE!!! I honestly can't believe that this day came so quickly. I seems like we just barely had Cooper or just found out that I was pregnant! It is crazy how fast time flies.

Well since Cooper is my first and it was his first birthday we had to make a big deal out of it. It just so happened that Brad's whole family was in town for the reunion so they could all be at his birthday party. I knew there was no way everyone was going to fit at my house so I decided to do the party at a park. Every park that I wanted to have it at you couldn't reserve the pavilion. So I decided to have the party at the pavilion at my church. There is a huge field so we would have a ton of room.

Since the reunion was the week of his birthday I knew I had to get all the planning and shopping finished before the reunion. I worked really hard to have everything in order and everything figured out in advance so I wasn't a basket case and totally stressed on his birthday. I knew I wanted to do a monkey theme considering we call him monkey and he really acts like a little monkey. It was just to perfect!

(Invite that I made and mailed out)

I bought monkey plates, napkins, party hats, table cloths, ordered balloons (yellow, green, brown, and a silver #1), made a banner that said "Cooper's 1st Birthday", printed water bottle labels, found the monkey cupcakes I was going to make. I had wanted to make Cooper's cake but knew I wouldn't have time so I paid someone to make it for me. There were a few more things that I had wanted to do but just didn't have time.

( I didn't get pictures of everything but here is what we did get pics of)

Making 6 dozen monkey cupcakes Thursday night

We had invited some of our closest friends and all of our family. We had a really good turn out. It was so nice seeing all the people that love Cooper and who support us.

Here are the kids we got pictures of.
There were even more that we missed.

At the party we had some games set up for people to play and a slip n' slide for the kids. We had lots of food and just hung out. Everyone seemed to keep busy and have a good time. Brad was at the grill for most of the party until we did presents and cake. I felt like I was running around doing things the whole party I never really sat down to eat or relax. If I were to do it again I would take more time to enjoy it and not worry about everything so much. I just had the way I wanted things pictured in my head and things just weren't turning out the way I had pictured. Oh well!

Cooper was very spoiled this year. He got tons of awesome cars/dump trucks, some chairs, books, push lawn mower, helicopter, clothes and hat, sprinkler toy, bath toys, football ball pit, Mr. Potato head, sippy cups, music cd, dvd, blocks, drawing pad, and lots and lots of BALLS! He has loved it all. Our friends and family really knew what he would like.

Cooper loved his cake. I had forgotten to grab the candles so Cooper didn't have anything to blow out :) I had gotten the cake made with butter cream frosting instead of fondant so that he could dig into it. Good thing because he loved digging in to the cake. He sat there for probably 30 minutes and would just grab cake and eat it. He got his face completely covered but didn't really make a huge mess. We even changed him into a 2nd birthday shirt just so he could get all messy! My mom had bought him 2 adorable birthday shirts!

I didn't get pictures of everything that I would have liked. And some pictures are missing, my camera was being weird and created 2 folders then a folder got deleted :( Also our photographer (aka Jason) had to leave early and I didn't get to talk with him about everything I wanted before he left! All in all Cooper's first birthday was a success. Cooper was happy the entire time and loved spending time with so many people.

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY COOPER!!!
Mom and Dad Love you SOOOO much!