Cullen's First Birthday Party!

Last Saturday, we invited some of our closest friends and family over for a little barnyard celebration of Cullen's first birthday!

We kept it simple with a milk-and-cookie theme and got REALLY lucky with some gorgeous weather so we were able to spend most of the day outside. (there is something magical about the first really warm Saturday of the spring, it is food for the soul!)

We are so incredibly grateful to have had my brother Josh, my sister Jenna, and her friend Lexi staying with us the weekend of the party. We wouldn't have been able to pull it all off if they hadn't been here to help us prepare. THANK YOU GUYS! 

We had a few small snacks but the focus was on the cookies! We made sugar cookies, brownie cookies, cranberry/white chocolate cookies, rice krispie treats, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cream pies, and strawberry cream cheese cookies (these were a last-minute addition and turned out to be my favorites- I highly recommend them!) 

I made a few pennant banners to hang, strung up all 52 of Cullen's weekly photos and got the kids some cute little milk bottles (with cow straws!) to fill with white or chocolate.  Justin and Josh created a super awesome obstacle course in the driveway for the kids to conquer and we pulled the sand table out of storage. The one organized activity I planned was a 'pig round-up game' that consisted of 13 kids gathering 24 pig-face balloons into 1 inflatable pool (thanks for creating such great pigs, Jenna!). It was pure chaos and pretty hilarious to watch. Most of the party I just wandered around watching all the little people laughing and running around thinking how grateful we are to share this life with such great friends.

Also - it seems we now have TWO boys who love to wear sunglasses!

And, of course, Cullen got his own cake to smash. It took a little convincing to get him to really dig in (probably because he'd already had plenty of cookies by the time we brought out the cake) but Avery showed him how it was done and he took over from there :)

Such a fun, fun day! It may be true that first birthday parties will never be remembered by the birthday boy/girl but any opportunity we have to get together with some of our favorite people and share some some cookies, we take it! It was even a big enough event to get a family photo - a rare occurrence indeed!

 Happy birthday, sweet Cullen. You bring so much joy to our days!