It's Already Been 1 Year?

How can one year fly by so quickly? Does this mean that every year will continue to go quicker? I would really like to feeze time right now because I'm not quite ready for things to progress in every way imaginable. It is so hard to wrap my mind around the fact that my first born baby is already one!

Lane was such a good baby and made being a parent incredibly easy. There wasn't any more strain than normal between Mark and I, Lane slept pretty descent and was a joy to be around (saving all of his fussy episodes when we were home alone), and all in all he was a textbook baby. I can only hope that our next baby (if we're lucky enough) will be as much fun as this little guy has been.

Now on to what this post is actually supposed to be about. The Party!!! We had an amazing day albeit a little windy to have a house full of some of Lane's biggest supporters in life. I really wish that I would've gotten a picture of all the attendees!!!! Put that idea in my mind for future reference. I had BIG plans for decorations and food but only about 1/4 of them successfully happened. Without further adieu here is what went down last Saturday!

The decorations were pretty minimal but we were also tight on space. I

highly doubt many people cared what our house looked like as long as there was a little boy that was crawling around to be the entertainer. The two main decorations were a balloon wreath for the front door and a banner with picture of Lane from the past year. Both done with the help of Pinterest. The instructions for the balloon wreath called for floral pins, 3 bags of 72 balloons and a 16 inch straw wreath. This thing was so easy to make but it did take some time. Two movies and a 4th bag of balloons later it was done. Looks pretty darn good if I say so! It took so long that this sucker is going to come out for everyone's birthday EVERY year. Lane will thoroughly appreciate his birthday wreath when he's 16!!!! I just know it.

The banner was initally going to be quite elaborate but instead the pictures got taped to a Christmas ribbon. In fact, it's still up in our kitchen..I just can't bring myself to take it down yet. Maybe my subconcious is hoping that Lane won't grow up if I keep it hanging.

Now for the main attraction! FOOD. We love food and I love The Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) so basically our entire menu came from her delicious recipes. I've been following her blog for about 2-3 years now so I was super excited when she started a Food Network show AND came out with a new cookbook recently. Everyone needs to check her out!! For meat we did her Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork and Mark also smoked some extra pork butt that we had. I'm proud to say that my pork was a clear favorite! Although ours ended up not very spicy because I couldn't find the canned peppers...instead I used spiced red peppers which aren't nearly as hot.
For potatoes we had potatoes au gratin. I thought they were delicious! Ree's green bean casserole is definately not your average canned beans with cream of mushroom!! It wasn't very popular but I thought it was delicious as well. Then again there was pieces of red and orange pepper that could be seen and my family isn't into 'different' food. The bright colors probably threw them off. Also I made banana pudding & monkey bread (aren't I clever going with the whole monkey theme?) We also had the typical fruit, meat, cheese etc.

What I'm most excited about is the cake! A huge thank you to Adrienne Krantz with Sophisticated Cookiefor the awesome (and delicious) work. It was absolutely amazing!! I recommend her to everyone in the Des Moines area. We had 3 flavors of cupcakes (lemon raspberry, banana pecan caramel and chocolate peanut butter) and Lane's cake was lemon raspberry.

I'll say it again....she's awesome. Look at the detail she went into putting buttons on each cupcake?!?!

My poor little man wasn't too interested in the cake. All he wanted to do was play with the monkey on top and eat the red dots along the sides. After about 10 minutes he was done & ready to get out. Oh well...more cake for me to eat!

The day might not have been as I imagined but it went amazing nonetheless. A huge thank you to the invitees for spending your evening with us and we look forward to many more years sharing these special memories with you!