Violet's First Birthday Party

A couple of weekends ago we had Violet's first birthday party at our house. Over the last few months, I'd gone back and forth a lot about whether or not I wanted to have a party at all, I kind of wanted to just have a nice family dinner with presents and cake. But finally, I decided we would have a party here with family and close friends. After all, you only turn one once! Violet is a very social little girl, so I knew she'd have tons of fun playing with a bunch of kids and having a lot of people around. So Joe and I found some cute party supplies and did some DIYing and baking (does dipping pretzels in white chocolate count as baking? haha) and hosted our first party! I was nervous about having so many people in our relatively small house, but it worked out perfectly. We ended up having enough food, favors, and room for everyone. The only somewhat disappointment was that Vi wanted nothing to do with her smash cake. She had the tiniest taste then was completely over it, which surprised everyone because that girl can eat! I was expecting some awesomely messy cake smash photos, but that's okay, she had a ton of fun with everything else, so that's all that matters!

Halloween 2016

I think it's safe to say that Violet had the best first Halloween ever. We weren't sure how she'd like wearing a costume and wandering around in the chilly weather in a big crowd of people, but judging by the huge smile on her face the whole time, she absolutely loved it. We decided to go trick-or-treating in a neighborhood in town that always gets super into Halloween. All of the houses are decorated spooky and tons of kids come to collect candy. Even though Vi isn't only enough to eat candy (or even know what it is!) she held on to her pumpkin bucket so tight the whole time and got so excited whenever someone dropped a piece of candy in. We arrived downtown at about 4 and stayed until about 5:30. It was perfect timing since it was mostly other little kids out and the huge crowd of older kids started to arrive right as we were leaving. I had an absolute blast watching her enjoy herself so much, and it makes me so excited for all of the Halloweens to come!

Here we are trick-or-treating as a baby giraffe and zookeepers (or maybe we were safari guides, that's what a lot of people thought, haha!) I hope you had an amazing Halloween as well!

Our Day at the Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend we decided it would be fun to go to the next town over and let Vi experience her first ever pumpkin patch! This same farm has hosted Fall Festivals since I was a kid, and always loved playing, eating and picking out a pumpkin! This is one of those things we weren't sure Vi would actually enjoy yet, but she does seem to love seeing new things and watching people. And this was no exception! She just looked around the whole time and took it all in. She especially loved sitting in the "corn bath" and throwing around corn (and we made it home with only on kernel in her diaper!) I'm glad we let her experience things like this even if she's not quite old enough to participate, I say the earlier the better for fun traditions like this! I think next year she'll really love running around and actually being apart of the fun!