Kyla's First Birthday BASH!

MMM....what a great way to enter the second year of life - with pink cupcakes, friends, and lots of fun!

We spent last Thursday night with friends, neighbors, and even complete strangers - celebrating Kyla Jubilee's 1st birthday! 

All the planning, cooking, cleaning, preparing, hot glue-ing, shopping, buying, inviting, sweeping, and icing culminated so wonderfully with a dinner party at our house.  Our front porch was full of people and by the end of the night, we could have had 20 more people come and eat to the full.  There was so much food leftover - what a blessing!  Chicken fried rice, spicy chicken salad, sticky rice, noodles, fruit, baked chicken, pink chocolate cupcakes...it was a feast, for sure.

There were decorations...

Roses in recycled Pepsi bottles, with food coloring in the water to make it pink!  (Though, in this light it definitely looks orange)...

See, there you go, pink water!

This poster was so fun to make!  I printed out 6 photos of each kid and mixed 'em all up to test everyone.  Tricky tricky...Can you guess correctly?

This was also really fun to make.  We usually take monthly (on their "birth" day - her's: the 23rd) pics of each kid for the first year of life.  Here's all of Kyla's!



My sweet friend, View, wrote the translations to everything in Thai below the English.  So fun!

There were loads of people...


My best friend, Steph, and one of my closest Thai friends, Taa.

Our friend, P. Kiaw, made the banquet of that night possible.  YUM! 

 

Our other friend, P. Nit jumped in to all the cooking prep and serving.  She is awesome! 

Princess Lily and the birthday girl

Half of the guests got into pairs and played a game where they each called to Kyla (in her walker-chair) - in an effort to woo her to them.  Did she end up favoring anyone in particular?...



NO!  She stared at everyone making such a fuss, and then pushed herself backwards almost into the yard.  It was quite a sight!  After about 4 or 5 rounds, everyone gave up.  She's a cutie, but she's also stubborn!

After leftovers had been bagged and handed out to everyone, the guests left way after dark, and it was already bedtime.  In Thai culture, it is generally more polite to thank guests for gifts and open them everyone has left - you are considered "hot-headed" and almost greedy if you open it right away and make a big deal of it (as we Americans love to do, with everyone watching!)  So, we bathed the kids and let Kyla rip into her presents!  She, actually, could care less, but her brothers wouldn't let her go to sleep without finding out what kind of goods she got!  ;) 

Opening presents after baths.

At then end of the day, we praised God for our little Kyla.  Her name means "beauty," "crown of victory," and "sweetheart."  She is all those things to us! 

We can't wait to see what's in store for her this year: new words, first steps, being bi-lingual (we HOPE!), her first trip to America, meeting her extended family for the first time...and who knows how many countless other things...

The best is yet to come!