Happy Birthday!!!

This year has gone by so fast! We just can not believe are little baby is ONE now. Jayna has been such a joy in are lives and we can not imagine life without her. All the trails to get her here were very worth it. She has amazed us with how well she has progressed despite her early premature arrival. Jayna as small as she is has such a huge personality that makes us laugh and wonder in amazement everyday at the things she comes up with.

This being our first birthday together not drugged or in the hospital I wanted to do something fun and exciting to celebrate our special day. I figured since it was also my birthday that I could get away with doing something a little nonconventional for a first birthday party. So don't ask me how I came up with it, but we ended up having a "HIp Hop" party and it turned out really great.



Jayna was all decked out in her Puma jacket, glitter shoes (courtesy of my aunt), initialized hat, and of course her blinging gold necklace I made her.



Ryan and I were an security detail with badges and everything. We checked people in at the door and made sure they had on their hot pink wrist bands so that we knew they were part of Jaynas "crew".





I decorated her highchair all cute for her with stickers and garland I made. Then behind her highchair on the wall I put up pictures of her imposed with different celebrities. The pictures were hysterical, and were my neighbor Holly's idea. Thank Holly!





We had a fun little spread of berries with whip cream, pita chips with spinach parmesan artichoke dip, pretzels dipped in milk chocolate with pink chocolate drizzles and sprinkles, and cupcakes in gold wrappers with fondant ones on them. I also spray painted tapes and records gold and pink and had them scattered on the table and around the house as decoration. All in all I thought it turned out really cute.



I have to admit that I impressed myself with the cake I made for Jayna. I had bought this giant cupcake cake mold a while ago and had done several trial attempts at frosting and decorating it, but it never turned out how I wanted it. So I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled this off the night before the party. Not bad for my first time using fondant. The pain was hand painting the whole bottom part with an edible metallic paint and dusting it with edible glitter. Some how along the way of thinking up this cake I also had visions of it spinning on a record player in the middle of the table. So after calling everybody and every place imaginable to either rent, borrow, or buy a record player or turntable that would not cost me more than $50 dollars I found this one on craigslist in Arizona the night before my mom and Mark were coming out and had my brother hurry and go buy it. It was only $15 dollars and it cleaned up well. He had to go to the ghetto in Phoenix to get it though, and he was pretty sure he gave the girl money to buy drugs, so it was pretty authentic for the party to say the least.



We have been teaching Jayna how to blow out birthday candles for awhile in hopes that she would be able to do it come her birthday. She is really cute when she does it and pulls a funny face when she blows. The only problem is she can not differentiate between the candle and the cake, so long after we took the candle away from her giant cake she was still blowing on the cake instead of eating it. It was really funny and we all got a good laugh out of it. She was not too sure about everyone singing to her, but she didn't cry or anything. After the cake had been on her highchair for awhile she finally dug in.





We played some fun games at the party too. I drew a picture of a gangster and you had to "fix the grill on Lil' Will" so I had gold teeth that you had to try and place on him like pin the tail on the donkey. We also played a slang game where you had to fill out on a sheet of paper the real meaning of all the slang words listed and then I had a jar of multicolored twizzlers that you had to guess "how many twizzles are in the jarizzle?" They were fun and tongue 'n' cheek and who ever won a game got a Jayna Berry signature perfume called Berrylicious. It was just dollar store perfume that I had changed the labels on. Then everyone got to take home a CD titled Tunes From the Crib that had hip hop music on it.





We had fun putting on the party and hope all those who came to celebrate with us had fun too. It was fun having my Mom and Mark out. Thanks for all your help you two.



Jayna is such a good baby, but I thought for sure if she was going to have a melt down her Birthday would be the day. She didn't though, she just partied the whole time. In-fact we were worn out way before she was. It got Ryan and I talking about her little personality and how it must just be how she is. We thought back to a year ago that day and how stressful and overwhelming her situation in the womb must have been and how none of it affected her. She was just fine her heart beat never even fluctuated. Even the doctors where shocked at how well she was handling it. She had no amniotic fluid, the placenta was already mostly deteriorated, and she was breech, but none of it bothered her. We love her little personality and know it is what helped her get here.



Jayna was the best little birthday present I ever got. I am not sure any present could ever top getting her, so I just hope we will have this much fun together every year on our Birthday.