{WHW}: 1st Birthday Partying

You may be tired of hearing about Ella turning 1, and if you are...sorry (I'm only a little sorry). This was a big milestone in our lives, and our girl's life and it was just crazy how quickly the year went by. It's so cliche, but it's incredibly true.

Ella's birthday weekend was busy busy busy but oh-so worth it! Everything came together perfectly, and even though Ella was a little overwhelmed by everyone being around and was kind of a stage 5 clinger to mommy and daddy, it was a great day celebrating our favorite girl!

So, let's get to the details and pictures!

My BIL has a bouncy business on the side, so they offered to put one up for Ella's party. I figured she wouldn't really use it, but girl LOVED IT!

She got in a lot of bouncy time before the party started and her cousins were more than thrilled to play with her:

The cakes turned out even better that I had imagined! Believe it or not, these are both Walmart cakes and were incredibly reasonably priced (in fact the smash cake was free):

 Birthday banners--the bottom one is Ella's 12 monthly photos from her first year. It was so fun to see how she grew and changed each month!

 We had quite the spread of food and beverages. We may have gone overboard because MG and I took home 7 bottles of wine with us (oops)

Everyone started arriving a little after 3, which was perfect because Ella napped until 3 on the dot (she must have known she was needed haha). 

The pink tutu and headband only lasted for a little while, but they were cuter than cute!

Lots of photos were taken through the afternoon:

We opened the mounds and mounds of gifts that were brought (so generous!)

After eating and chatting, it was time to sing happy birthday and see our girl's reaction to her first bites of cake.

Surprisingly, she was very dainty about it, taking tiny bits of icing and eating it. I helped her dig into the cake part and she happily shared it with me--including my face and my hair lol

We sang happy birthday again a little bit later around her big, fancy cake and at the end Ella clapped (and then screamed lol):

All too soon it was time to clean up, pack up allllllll the gifts, and head back to my in-laws' house.

It was the perfect day, with the most beautiful weather we could have hoped for, surrounded by our family and family friends. We are so blessed to have this loving family--Ella doesn't even know how lucky she is :)