One year birthday party
Greetings from Florida! 🤍 I'll get back to our trip to America, but first I want to tell you about Jordan's first birthday!
We were originally going to celebrate his birthday on the official day, Sunday, but we had been to the spa in Saimaa the previous weekend with about half my family, and it just so happened that most of them got sick afterwards. We then decided to move the party by a week, as it was important to get everyone there.
On Jordan's actual day, we decided to have a tiny celebration at home, and I thought it would be nice to make him a "smash cake", which is a cake suitable for a baby, which he can destroy in any way he wants. Massive mistake 😅.
First of all, the cake took two days to make. I mean, really, I think it's absurd to make a recipe for the parents of a one-year-old that requires hours of time over two days. Free business idea you can use: a cake shop that sells Smash cakes. Parents of a one-year-old don't have time for that, and if there had been a party that weekend, I really don't know how we would have survived. Secondly, Jordan wasn't into the idea at all. He didn't understand what he was supposed to do with it, he took a little bite of the cake and then looked a bit upset because his hands had gotten dirty. The flavor didn't seem to make much of an impression either, okay, in the end he ate a little bit of the cake, but it wasn't particularly fun for him, and let me remind you that about six hours of work had gone into this. Really 😅.
My mom and nephew were already healthy and came to our place for smash cake coffees and we opened a few presents. My family had bought a really beautiful children's kitchen for Jordan because Jordan's favorite toy at Albert's living room is a play kitchen. My mom assembled it and after the guests left, we played with it for the rest of the day.
The actual party was a week later and we celebrated it at our place. The theme was adapted from "wild one", i.e. jungle animals. The colors were green, gold, white and black. We usually never wear black, but now Jordan wore black jeans as a part of his party outfit and I think they were great, although otherwise we will continue with light clothes. The outfit also included a golden silk bow, golden sneakers, black suspenders and a nice shirt. And a crown when the birthday boy allowed it.
Eerikki and I gave him a guest book as a gift and we plan to use it at all of his celebration events until he comes of age, then he will receive it as a memory of the great parties and the relatives and friends who have been there to celebrate him. We had a polaroid camera and made a photo wall for the guestbook.
We prepared the food ourselves and at least no one reported food poisoning, so solely on that basis I count them a success. I made a couple of pies and some cookies and Eerikki made his lovely cupcakes. There was a snack buffet for the babies and toddlers, and in addition to that, there were hot dogs and meatballs, as well as crocodile snacks for kids. Since it was brunch, mimosas, fruit smoothies, coffee and tea were served.
Jordan liked opening presents and enjoys parties and people, so I think he had a good time, although I'd argue that birthdays for one year olds are more for the parents than for the baby.
We had divided the party in two, one for family and one for friends, so that family arrived first and friends later in the afternoon. However, three friend families had to cancel on the same day because their child was sick, so there were significantly more people at the family party. I made jars of bath salts as a thank you gift, although I didn't really count how many we need and I made a huge amount of them for some reason. I calculated afterwards that even if all the invited people had made it, there still would have been more than 15 jars left over. Spoiler alert: next Christmas everyone gets bath salts as a gift 😄.
We just got back from Miami a few days ago and now we are trying to get Jordan used to the Finnish time It seems to be happening pretty slowly, but maybe next week we'll get to normal time. Happy new year everyone and I'll write again soon!