Princess Isabelle turns 1!

Time sure does fly! We cannot believe that we have a 1 year old! Do you remember when that marquee read differently, welcoming Isabelle Anessa? I swear it seems like yesterday!

Isabelle's 1st birthday celebration started on her actual birthday (last Friday). Michael and I took the day off knowing that we had a full day ahead of us! I made an appointment to have her 1 year old pictures done at the Picture People where we had her Christmas ones taken. However, this time around we were a little disappointed. The girl was either new or had a "case of the Mondays" on a Friday morning. Perhaps we are being too critical but, we thought it was a bit much to ask us to have our daughter who wants to walk around everywhere, sit still while she sits there taking the pictures from the floor instead of ummmm, maybe getting up and moving around a bit with her? We are not saying that she should be walking around the studio snapping shots of Isabelle but maybe stand up in our little "Area #2" and get a few action shots. Needless to say, she did manage to get a few cute pictures of her sitting still that we did purchase :)

The next order of business was to head home for lunch, a nap and then over to Scooters Jungle (http://www.scootersjungle.com/) for our next door neighbor's, Sofia's 6th birthday party. Oh my goodness, what a fun place! It is located in the Valencia industrial center in a warehouse and once you get inside, you understand why. It is basically a huge bounce house! You get a private room that hosts three to five blow up play "toys". There was a huge slide, smaller slides, zip lines, an air hockey table and even an enclosed room where you have a ton of little bouncy balls that you can throw against the wall and bounce everywhere (you have to wear safety goggles though). Isabelle and her Papa went down the big slide twice and once I got the guts too, I took her down once as well. She was grinning the entire time. It was a blast for young and old...as you can tell!
OK, we need to back track a bit. On Wednesday Isabelle received a birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa O and Aunt Ashley...an electric ATV! We had that thing put together that night and started charging the battery (the first charge needs to be 18 hours) and she played on it the following morning regardless that the battery was not in it. So after Scooters Jungle, we met Tia Tara at our house and decided to take this baby for a spin-literally! Isabelle got right on and Papa was showing her the button to push to make it go. The first time it started to move, Isabelle giggled her butt off! We are still trying to teach her how to make it go and stop and slowly but surely she is getting the hang of it. I would say by the end of April, we will be cruising this bad boy down and around the park!

Friday night Tara and I finished getting everything together and organized in the garage all ready to go. We had to make sure we had Michael prepared for his 7am call to go and confiscate the area we wanted to set up the party at in the park. Since it is a city park, it is first come first serve and there is no way we were not going to get that spot! Michael even volunteered to camp out. Anything for his daughter...or maybe it was so he wouldn't have to hear it from his wife? :)

As you can tell, we got it (Way to go, Papa!). Michael made his first trip over to the park at 6:45am and reserved the spot by hanging fabric that he brought from the theatre, from post to post to enclose the area we would be in. It was BRILLIANT and ohhhhh so cute! (My hubby is so creative sometimes!) From there we had a schedule of when and who was going to pick up what from where, a new nap schedule for Isabelle for the day (we kept her awake until 9pm Friday night and then woke her at 7am-mean Mommy) and had it all put together shortly before 1pm when the party officially started. We did find out one new thing by being at the park on a somewhat breezy day; just like her Mom, Isabelle has allergies. We got to the park and noticed that one of her eyes was red, a little puffy and watering uncontrollably. Then came the nose, EWWW! Tara and Michael ran back to the house to get a few more loads of party supplies along with some Benadryl which within about 20 minutes, did the trick.

All in all we had between 45-50 people come by to wish the Princess a happy birthday. The older kids had a blast playing in the park and we had some arts and crafts for them to do too (crowns for the boys and princess door knob hangers for the girls). The little ones were hanging out with the adults while they were chatting it up or playing in the "ball pool", pushing around Izzy's favorite Disney car, playing on the grass or swinging on the swings.

Almost 2 hours into the party, and just about time for another nap for Isabelle (and a few other friends), it was cake time. We decorated her highchair (aka: her throne) with pink satin fabric and iridescent fringe hanging from the tray. When we were getting ready to light the candle and sing to her, I started to put her in her "throne" and huge crocodile tears came pouring down. She wanted nothing to do with it! So I held her while we thanked everyone for being there and sang happy birthday to her. Part way through "happy birthday", low and behold our little princess decided to start smiling once again and clapping along with everyone. After we finished singing and she hammed it up for the cameras, into the highchair she went without even batting an eye...except to check out the cupcake cake (who ever created this is a genius!). With that, we gave her a cupcake and let her dig in! Papa decided to join in the fun with by smearing a cupcake on his mouth to look like her (big goober!) and of course, she ate the remnants of his cupcake too!

It was around 3:00 when Isabelle was finally done and Grandmama put her in the stroller and took her back to our place. Shortly after that we decided to start cleaning up and head on out. We invited everyone who was still there to come over to our place to open gifts, eat more food and drink more beer (we were very discreet with it at the park...shhhh, don't tell). Isabelle napped for about an hour and then got up and came downstairs to join the continuation of her party and start opening presents. She was interested in opening about the first two gifts and then it was all left to me. She got soooo much stuff (thank you everyone!). One of Michael's and my favorite gifts was a helmet from Tom and Marcy for her ATV....seriously, don't you love it? LOL! When everything started winding down, we had to make sure we got our infamous rugrat "group shot". We had everyone there but Lexi and Mia. Maybe I can superimpose them? What a superfralicagilisticexpialidocious day we had...especially Princess Isabelle! Happy 1st Birthday baby girl!
P.S. A HUGE congratulations on the upcoming newest addition to the Molloy family! Yeah for Mini Mo 2.0!