Parker James Stowe: Parker's First Birthday Party!

Overall the birthday celebration went really well, although there were a few glitches along the way. The first glitch actually came the night before Parker's party. We had decided to make Parker a carrot cake using a recipe we found in the back of "What to Expect the First Year", (it was healthier and had no added sugar so that was why we decided on this one). Anyway, I skimmed through the recipe, (I should have read the entire recipe...baking 101 I know but it's too late now) got the ingredients we needed and even borrowed a cute teddy bear and #1 cake pan from a lady my mom works with. I started reading the directions and the first was to chop the carrots into very thin slices and boil them in apple juice concentrate. After spending FOREVER chopping carrots, I read the next step, and this is where strike #1 occurred...You were supposed to put the carrot/apple juice mixture in a food processor or pureer. We don't have a food processor or a pureer. At this point I thought maybe I could just use my mixer instead but wasn't really sure how this would work out. It was also at this point that I decided I had better read the rest of the directions before continuing, so the next instruction was to put raisons in the food processor or pureer with the carrot/apple juice mixture. I knew my mixer wouldn't be able to chop raisons to the consitency they would need to be for this recipe...strike #2! James had come downstairs and I was telling him about the cake fiasco when I mentioned to him that the recipe called for whole wheat flour and I said that I thought we could just use our regular flour. James informed me that if a recipe calls for whole wheat flour, you need to use whole wheat flour because it bakes differently than regular flour...strike #3!! I was so frustrated and sad by this point, not to mention the fact that it was already almost 10:00 at night that I just turned to James and said something to the effect of "Should we just not do this?" to which he said, "Yeah, this isn't working". I felt so terrible that my sweet baby boy wasn't going to have his own little cake at his birthday party but I figured he could at least have some of the big cake.

Ok, now that I'm done with that EXTREMELY long birthday cake commentary and you've all fallen asleep, I'll move on to party day! :) Parker's was dedicated that morning at church and all went well with that, (there is an earlier post with details and pics so you might want to check that out). After the dedication we went to James' parents house to have Parker's birthday party with our family. Both sets of Parker's grandparents, 1 set of great grandparents, and all of Parker's aunts, uncles and cousins were there to help us celebrate! We were so blessed to have them there! :)

On to glitch #2...That morning James and I had ordered pizzas online through Pizza Hut and they were scheduled to be delivered at 12:45pm. After church James and I went and picked up the cake, some balloons and some pop. By the time we arrived at James' parent's house it was about 12:45. At 12:50, James remembered that when he ordered the pizzas they had said that they would send a confirmation e-mail out at 11:00 when they opened since we had to place the order before buisiness hours. James went to check his e-mail but couldn't get his parent's internet to work, (sometimes it doesn't work well for some reason). So at about 12:55, James called Pizza Hut and was informed that they "[Had] no record of us ordering any pizzas"...glitch #2!! All of a sudden James is saying he's going to Little Ceasars to go get some Hot and Ready pizzas so people don't have to wait anymore for their pizza. Everyone was very understanding and some people didn't even know until after we were done eating that it wasn't the plan all along to go pick up the pizzas. By the way, James checked his e-mail later and at 4:00 he FINALLY got his confirmation e-mail that said that the order had not been processed!!! What good does it do to even send it out when we had requested the pizzas be delivered at 12:45??!! They really need to change how they do this, because something people are in situations like us where we needed to order the pizzas ahead of time and didn't have internet access during the time they were to send out their confirmation e-mail. Everyone ended up fed so I'm fine with it now but I will NOT be trying to place an online pizza order in the future...at least not with Pizza Hut!

The rest of the party was pretty much your basic first birthday party. We finished eating, Parker opened his presents and then we did the cake! Well actually mentioning cake reminds me of one other semi-glitch to Parker's birthday celebration. When I was telling my family about what had happened with Parker's carrot cake they felt Parker needed to have a little carrot cake of his own, (my nephews and nieces had...tradition you know), so my brother and sister-in-law offered to go to Dillons to try to find a mini carrot cake for Parker to have. :) Well it turns out all Dillons had were full size carrot cakes, (and we already had a big marble Winnie the Pooh cake for the party), or 100 calorie pack mini carrot cakes. They returned with the 100 calorie pack carrot cakes and we figured it was better than no carrot cake at all! Parker was not your typical child with his cake...he really didn't like it at all and hardly ate any of it! He did enjoy crumbling it up, tossing it over the high chair edge, and playing with the plate though. All in all it was a really nice party and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Below I will post some pics for your enjoyment. This will only be a small sampling of the birthday pics we have. After I make the Facebook album I'll try to put it in a slideshow and post it to here. Hope you enjoy these pics for now...

Such a sophistiacted little man! :)

present time...

Parker surrounded by his birthday toys a couple of days later at our house. It took FOREVER to get all of the toys situated around him because he kept grabbing ag everything wanting to play with it all.

P's never even seen Winnie the Pooh but I thought the cake was cute! :)

Our hands are there because he kept trying to grab the candle...I'm sure that happens at every kid's first birthday. P.S. notice the funny look 100 calorie carrot cakes! :)