I’m sure every parent says this, but where did this year go? This year went by fast but slow. I also gave birth during a pandemic and the majority of the year was spent not leaving the house, with a lot of fear and anxiety, and with a face buried in a mask. It’s wild to think that for Archie’s first year of life, he’s only known adults in masks.

Last year, I was meant to have a baby shower in the beginning of May. I had invites printed, but by the time I was going to send them out, the worldwide shutdown came into effect in March. I’m not one for big parties and for all the attention to be on me, like, I choose not to have a bridal shower for that reason. But, I was excited to have a baby shower because it would be an opportunity to get the families all together since buying our farm.

Fast forward to this year and most people are vaccinated and we felt safe having a party with our family and close friends.

One of the first things I did was put a deposit on a bouncy castle with local business Bouncin’ Blast. They were also so sweet to gift us a yard card as well in exchange for a mention on social media! The co-owner, Olivia Vollmer and I recorded a podcast episode together, “Mompreneur: Balancing Motherhood and a Small Business”. We really hit it off and since then we’ve become friends! Her husband Dave is also so sweet. The day of the party, Dave arrived promptly to set everything up!

Although I knew Archie was technically too young to fully enjoy the bouncy house, I always thought they were the coolest things ever and I think I secretly always wanted one for my birthdays. As my birthday is in January, I never got to experience the joy and lightness that summer birthdays experience. My birthdays were always usually in the middle of an arctic freeze, a blizzard, or some other snowpocolypse situation so I got used to a lot of birthdays spent alone or eating pizza on the couch. Now that I have a summer baby, I think I’m just going to pretend his birthday is my birthday and go all out 🤣. Actually, the best birthday I ever had was my 30th birthday while we were living in Thailand and we went to Japan!

One of the most special moments was having my grandma finally meet Archie! My grandma lives a few hours away so because of the distance and the pandemic, we weren’t able to get together sooner. I absolutely love these pictures of them together and will treasure them for the rest of my life!

One of the best decisions I made was to hire a photographer for Archie’s Birthday! Photography can be a large investment, but it was one of the things I absolutely wanted because I knew that the day would get busy and I would forget to take pictures and it would absolutely devastate me if I didn’t have photos of Archie’s first birthday. I actually lost my phone literally the second the party started and didn’t find it until everyone had left! I hired Kristin Helfman on Lauren Anzevino’s team. She was incredible and I already asked that she be available for next year’s birthday 🤣❤. All the photos you see on this blog are her photos. I cried while looking through the album the first time!

The party was on Saturday, June 5th and it was 95F/23C! It was so hot out, thank goodness we got two tents. What’s funny is last year when he was born it was sweltering hot too. Fun fact: Archie’s original due date was on June 9th but because I was high risk with gestational diabetes, they induced me 1 week earlier in the afternoon of June 2nd. If you’re interested in reading about my birth story, you can read it here.

Something I would do differently next year would be to have more of an itinerary. I didn’t have a timeline or anything of when we would play games or cut the cake or anything. There were a lot of people who didn’t get to have cake because they left before the cake cutting and that was totally my fault! The party started at 1pm and I should have cut the cake around 2:30pm after everyone ate lunch.

When it was time to cut the cake, I sat Archie down on the table and an unintentional cake-smash happened 😅

Archie got this amazing splash pad for his birthday from his friend Leah. Leah’s mom, Katelyn, kindly suggested that we should open the gift and let the kids play in it because it would be perfect for a hot day. She was right! The kids had SO much fun! Archie wasn’t sure how he felt about it initially, it was his first time splashing in water not in the tub!

My friend Marissia and I had babies around the same time last year and went through a lot of the same challenges of motherhood during the pandemic. We joked about how far we’ve come because just a few years earlier we were in Vegas in full celebration mode for her sister Brianne’s bachelorette party!

We have a lot of pictures of Archie’s cousins and baby friends that came to celebrate his birthday but without their parents permission, I feel uncomfortable sharing their photos! I’ll be sharing the full album with them and I’ll let them post the photos of their kids on their personal pages 😊❤

John and I were running around so much that day hosting and entertaining family and friends that we don’t have too many pictures together. I figured him and I could get pictures anytime together, what was important to get photos with family who came from out-of-state!

Overall, Archie’s 1st birthday party was amazing and I’m so happy we went “all out” with everything. Next year, maybe we’ll add a few water type activities for the kids (and adults?!) and definitely have an itinerary. I toyed with having waitstaff at his party but decided against it. I think next year I’m going to hire a few waitstaff to help serve guests and clean up in between food and cake. It would be one less thing for me to worry about!

I’m not sure when the next family get together will be. The first year we bought our house we hosted Thanksgiving and it was hard in our tiny farmhouse. I’m not sure we’ll be hosting Thanksgiving or Christmas anytime soon as we just don’t have the indoor space. We’re talking about putting an expansion on the house and it would be amazing to have an indoor space to host parties. We’ll see! Possibilities are endless and we never plan on moving, so I look forward to having many more years of birthdays and parties!

Thanks for reading!