Addison jumping on a trampoline at her friend's birthday party

Chase's FIRST Birthday Party!

We had such a fun time throwing Chase his first birthday party ever. We chose a snowman theme for our jolly little fella.

We decided to give our house a break and host the party elsewhere. The fact we were expecting around 70 people made this much more appealing! We found a great community room at one of our township parks.

It was nice to have it outside the house, but the prep work was a little more challenging. I spent weeks sorting supplies and decorations into bins and carefully planning the menu.

My main focus was the dessert table. It didn't turn out according to plan due to some inexperience in the preparation of a few of the items. For example, did you know that if you want to make "lollipop cookies", you need to bake them with the skewers in them? Yeah, me either!!! However, even given the few mistakes that no one else would know about but me, it was pretty cute! Dustin worked hard making our pretzel snowmen and marshmallow snowmen.

All of the food was snow-themed and turned out great!

A week and a half before the party, our friend, Andrew, passed away. He left behind a wife and two young children (ages 2 and 3 months). A family support fund was set up for the children and I asked our attendees to consider donating to the fund in lieu of gifts. Though it doesn't even begin to compare to what Brooke, Aiden and Addison have lost, we collected some very generous donations and it felt good to send that money in the next day.

I was really excited about our craft tables. We had a play dough table, a sand table where the kids could fill a snowman bottle with different colors of craft sand, and a coloring table where the kids could color in a gift bag. They could then go to the bins and fill their bags full of favors, all snow/winter themed, of course. :)

Addison strategizing at the desert table.

Some pictures of our friends and family....

Addie, Grandpa, Grandma and Chase

Chase and his Gammy

Chase, Gammy and Faith

Chase and I with my long-time friend, Beth and one of our Godsons, Andrew

Great friends

Friends and family

More family

Beth and Andrew

Poppy, Matt, Beth and my future Godson, Owen!

The birthday boy, also known as Justin Bieber. :)

Addie high on sugar.

Momma and Bieber

Addie still high on sugar

Addie, Faith and Gammy

Mommy, Chaser, and Aunt Emily.

Grandma, Uncle Jim, Nicole and Aunt Dee

Addie and Grandpa

Chase getting excited for his cake

which quickly turned into a full-blown sob fest when Mommy tried to put his hat on him.

Fortunately, he quickly recovered!

Family picture with the birthday boy

Poppy and his fly boy

Aaron and Grandma

Logan

Julie and Faith. Poor Noah had to stay back in Cleveland with a fever. :(

Addie and more sugar. The fruit definitely wasn't eaten, but the sugar coated marshmallows were!

Thanks to all of our wonderful friends and family for showing so much love for our Chase. We had a great day celebrating his first of many, many, many birthdays!!