Lily & Leo

Happy 1st Birthday to our previous Lily pad!!!  When Lily was born, she was 6 1/2 pounds, 19 inches and pretty much slept all day.  I remember having to always wake her up for feeding times.  Now, Lily weighs 18 pounds, and stretches 27 inches tall and she developed quite a spunky personality!  She is already walking, playing, eating solids really well, and is oh so vocal!  She still loves to sleep and eat, but she now also loves to party and explore!  Still, I cannot believe that it has already been a year since our little baby was born into this whole and filled our hearts with more love than we  can ever imagine!  I must say I have been planning her party ever since she was born!  haha! I even bought her birthday dress a few months after she was born! Also, how convenient is it that her birthday lands on a Saturday?!  I wanted to make sure that her very first birthday was super special and so I didn’t hold back and totally went all out for her celebration!  Even though I know Lily won’t remember any of this, at least we will have the memories and have lots of pictures and video to show her later!  We are so grateful for all our friends and family who helped us prepare for this special day, and we are so thankful for everyone coming to celebrate Lily’s birthday!  We are the luckiest parents in the world, to not only have such a wonderful group of people who love Lily almost as much as we do, but for having such a sweet, smart, irresistibly lovable baby in our life!

We hired an amazing balloon twister from a company called Super Inflated, we saw one Emmy’s birthday party and we just had to have one for Lily’s, and she was a huge hit with all the kids, big and small =P.  We also had a DIY photobooth where I made all the 2D props and Natalia lent us her equipment and helped us set it all up!! IT was a lot of work so we really appreciate all your help Natalia!  We also set up a fun bubble station, ball pit tent with tunnel, and basketball hoop play area for all the kids!  That definitely occupied the kids while the adults mingled and it also burned out a lot of the kids’ energies, you’re welcome! =P We ordered tons of Vietnamese food and my mom made her famous pasta salad and my aunt made her yummy fried rice!  We bought a bunch of fruit and stuck them on skewers for our rainbow fruit skewers, and I also baked all the yummy goodies for Lily’s dessert station!  I made French Vanilla Mini Cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Frosting, Oreo Truffles (thanks Natalia for dipping them!!), and 6 types of Macarons (rose, mango, lemon, macha green tea, vanilla, and raspberry)!  Since her party was held at the pavilion in front of our house, I made her a display cake instead of a real cake because I didn’t want it to melt in the heat.  We ordered a mixed berry cake from Givral, that wasn’t decorated since we were just going to cut it up and serve it!  We also got two small special cakes for our niece Ngan, and cousin Mimi since the 8th is also Ngan’s birthday, and the day before (the 7th) was Mimi’s birthday!!

We had tons of balloons everywhere since her theme was Up inspired that eventually turned into a rainbow theme with cute owls with an earthy feel haha.  Auntie Jennifer made a really nice banner from her pre-birthday celebration in Canada back in April.  I also made another banner myself since we had a lot of space to display banners, and Pixar’s Up inspired centerpieces. Khoa was a huge help in making the goodie bags for the kids!  These bags are filled with movable dinosaur erasers, color pencils, puzzle blocks, squeezable rabbit heads with popping eyes, flute whistles and a fun polka dot pinwheel!  Roger and Khoa was also a big help in filling up the mason cookie jar favors as well!  There are 4 types of flavors for the favors, chocolate chip, white chocolate macadamia nuts, oatmeal raisins, and brownies!  We also had personalized water bottle labels with normal size water bottles and cute little baby water bottles, after all, it is Lily’s party! =)  I also hung pictures of Lily from this past year and had a little fun fact about her behind each photo! I’ve also been singing to Lily the birthday song days before her party so that she would be familiar with the song, so that way when everyone sings it at her party, she won’t get startle by the loud noise and be excited instead!!  Hehe.  Also, thanks Chi Hai for the amazing tip to buy the white plastic dessert tray/plates from Party City!  They’re very light weight, looks really nice, is a really good size, and most of all CHEAP!  It’s so convenient and it’ll make your display looking fabulous without breaking the bank on fancy ceramic plates!  So if anyone needs nice plates to display their yummy treats on, go to Party City!  I also had a Jenga Guest Sign-In where each person gets to take a piece from the Jenga tower, and sign a birthday wish for Lily!  They have to be careful not to make the tower fall though otherwise Lily’s birthday wish won’t come true!

Lily had a special Smash Cake session a few days before her birthday so we can capture her first time eating cake!  Also, this is convenient because not only do we get super nice photos from it, but it allows Lily to get all frosted up and covered with cake goodness, and then we can hose her down and not worry about time or keeping her party guests waiting while we do so!   We also took family photos the weekend before Lily’s birthday to document out first year with our precious baby!  Our photographer Janet was also our wedding photographer who also did our engagement photos (5 years ago!) and so it was a great way to complete this cycle but having her take out 1 year family milestone photos!  We took photos at this great venue called the Monteleone Meadows in Murrieta, and we got super lucky that a wedding was going to take place later that day because we got to take advantage of all their pretty decorations!  They had this cool vintage looking chair right as the dock of the pond, and they had a cute dresser that Lily was very fond of as well.  The venue was beautiful and it provide a variety of locations for shots!  We then went to Havertown Park to take photos with Lily and balloons and bubbles and she sure does love the bubbles!!  We then went back to Janet’s house for her in-house studio for the cake smash session!  A special gift we got for Lily was that our friends David and Drexelle offered to take photos of Lily’s birthday party along with some portraits of Lily!  They have their own successful photography business at D. Park Photography, and they also did Lily’s newborn photos!  Thank you so much for these wonderful pictures that forever documents Lily’s 1st birthday!!!  I made her cake myself, it’s French Vanilla with swiss meringue frosting.  The inside of the cake is 6 layers, with each layer being one color of the rainbow!  I embellished her cupcake cake with some fondant flowers and a butterfly on top.  I added gold trimming to the flowers and butterfly for some added elegance!

We actually did a second smash cake session because we wanted a more white and brighter background, so her second cake that I made her had normal buttercream frosting since it was softer by nature and we hope it’ll stick to her face better =P. When we first put her in front of the cake, she literally just ignored it and kept crawling right past it and towards us!  haha.  It’s so funny but it made sense since she has NO idea what sweet deliciousness sat right in front of her!  So we had to help her along and took and frosting and put it in her mouth.  She loved it!  However, she didn’t “smash” the cake or grab it herself.  She’s quite a diva and we ended up having to break apart the cake ourselves and then feed it to her haha.  A few times she did seem quite excited and waved her arms in the air and rubbed the cake all over her arms…Overall, it was a lot of fun memories to watch her enjoy her first birthday cake!!  Thank you SO MUCH to our photographer Janet from Purely Capitvating Photography and to Mieng Saetia for taking these beautiful cake smash photos!!!  The turnaround on these photos were amazingly fast and we appreciate all the hard work and accommodations you’ve made just for our Lily pad!!!  Thank you!!!  More photos from these session to come!

Lily seemed to have a good time at her first birthday party.  Even though she won’t remember it, I know we can one day show here these pictures and show her what we did for her!  She partied pretty hard on Saturday and so she slept pretty long and didn’t get a chance to finish opening her gifts, so we had to wait till the next day to open most of her birthday presents and boy did it take a while!  She sure has so many people who love her and not only because of all the gifts she got, but from all the people who came to share this celebration with her and us, and all the wishes she got from those who weren’t even able to make it.  The day after giving birth to Lily, we had a celebratory dinner at the hospital.  It came with these small bottles of sparkling cider and I thought it was so cute!  We got a bunch of them, at least 5 bottles because Steve was able the nurse to give us more since we were having a big “party” in our room haha, and so I decided to save one bottle.  I wanted to drink it after Lily was 1 month old, but then we forgot, so then I figured we’ll drink it at 3 months since that’s also our 3rd wedding anniversary, but I also forgot.  So finally, I decided we’ll just wait till she’s 1 years old!  Don’t worry, I checked the expiration date and it doesn’t expire till March 2015 =).  So on her birthday guess what happened, I FORGOT!!! haha.  So we FINALLY drank it the following day, which works out nicely because we had the celebratory dinner the day after she was born anyways!  So I’m glad we finally got to celebrate that! =)

Lily with all her opened treasure!

Lily with her celebratory cider!

Mommy daughter matching toesies!

Words cannot describe how I feel about our little angel being 1 years old.  She is the joy of our lives and she deserves the very best in everything.  All our hard work, late nights, exhaustion, and stress is all worth it to see our baby have a great time and have a huge smile on her face the whole time!  She also already watched her first Disney movie, only 1/3 of it, and it’s The Little Mermaid.  She loves to sit on my lap with and watch while chomping away at cheerios from her snack catcher!  I just watch her in amazing at how she’s slowly becoming a little toddler, and I just can’t get enough of how cute she does every little thing!  I love that her forehead crinkles every time she takes a bite of her cheerios, more like stuff her mouth with 3-4 cheerios, and how she gives me sweet kisses on the cheek, and how she knows to say “mom” every time she wants something!!  This first year has flown by and so much has happened with so many memories.  She’s even has a career as a baby model and has made a good amount towards her college fund already!  We can’t wait to see what other adventures Lily has in store for us.  Each day is a blessing with her and we cannot ask for a better life than this!  Happy 1st Birthday our sweet baby Lily!  We love you to pieces, forever and a half times double infinity!!!

Throughout this past year, I’ve been taking video clips of Lily whether it was of milestones, tiny accomplishments, or her just being silly and being Lily!  Jennifer pieced together an AMAZING video with some clips we took of her in her first year of life, and it is a great recap of how much joy and love she brought to all of us!  Thank you SO much Jennifer for doing this and for creating such a memory time capsule for us! Enjoy this super cute video of our precious Lily pad!  Happy 1st Birthday our baby doll!  We love you so so so so much!!!!

Lily Turns One from J.N. on Vimeo.