My baby girl turned one, and we decided to celebrate with a "bloom & grow" themed birthday party for our little sweetheart! apologies in advance for the massive amount of pics!
My original intention was to keep things really small scale since I went a little overboard on my daughter Jia's first birthday that she found kind of overwhelming.
I simplified by just ordering some jet's pizza (our favorite) and only inviting a few close people, though I did still enjoy the decorating.  I justified making a couple dozen enormous flowers by deciding to decorate the girl's room with them after the party. I also decorated the cakes for the party by myself this time and I was pretty proud of my first attempt!

this is the last post about jia's 2nd bday...i promise...but i couldn't leave out the party!

compared to last year, we had a really simple party for jia this year. it was pretty much just a family party this time around.



i loved jia's party last year...we kind of did the whole big first birthday thing and invited all her little friends, but even though it was adorable and cathartic for me, i don't necessarily think it was her idea of a good time. it may have been a little too overwhelming. there were several tearful moments.

so this time we just celebrated with relatives and people she is really familiar with and she had an absolute blast, and it was way less work for me too!

the theme was just a simple backyard birthday. i wanted to take full advantage of having our new patio!



shomik made her a little picnic table for her bday, and we set up her kiddie pool and the kids had the sand box and water table and bubbles to play in as well and the kids were all set.





the girls raided the gift buckets.





once it started to get a little darker we put in Frozen for the babies on the outdoor screen. it was jia's first time to really get into a movie...she was totally focused!



for food we just cooked out. to go along with the backyard summer time theme we also had s'more cupcakes, root beer floats, and watermelon!





we served all the food out of our kitchen window! it opens up onto a small bar in the backyard, so we kept the things that we wanted to keep away from flies on the inside so people could just slide open the window for those. i can't believe we'd never used that feature before...it was great!

jia has fully embraced being two, and even blew out her candles all in one try! such a big girl! she needs to stop growing up so fast. love her!

on jia's actual birthday we wanted to make it a little extra special even though she wasn't having a party or anything on that day.



i started off the day by filling the hall with balloons, so when she woke up she had to kind of wade through them. balloons are her favorite, so that definitely kicked the day off right! it took her half an hour to get down the hall because she was so enamored!



then there was cake for breakfast! in my defense, it was zucchini cake, so it was semi healthy. (and it's surprisingly yummy!) we had to blow out the candle for her the first time, but then she wanted us to keep lighting it so she could try again and again.



after breakfast we decided to go for an outing.

since it's june and it's already pretty hot, i turned my sights on indoor fun with a toddler.

i kept hearing that the perot museum was great, so we decided to check it out.







the museum itself was pretty awesome, though a lot too old for a toddler to get into, though she loved the children's museum...so that part was totally worth it for her.










in the evening we went out to eat and let her play for a bit a kid mania. which is basically a giant indoor maze. she went crazy there and it was hard to finally reel her in!




at the end of the day it was safe to say she had a good birthday...it's a good day when you can wear out a toddler! :)