Celebrating a Winter ONEderland

Winter is a busy birthday season for our family and with another birthday arriving soon for our family I'd feel awful without sharing about our youngest, JP's, Winter ONEderland.  For all of our kid's we celebrate their birthday with a family birthday party surround by grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  It is always a lot of fun and a great way to get everyone together.

To start off, we made invitations for all of our family members.  For all of the kids' first birthdays the invites have involved their footprints.

To get the "Winter ONEderland" feel, the older kids helped me cut snowflakes, that we hung around the house with copies of photos of her from over the past year, and we made a big letter snowman.

The party started with a soup dinner.  I made chili and chicken and dumpling soups in crock-pots, and I made Jeni Eats's Funeral Sandwiches, which we affectionately called Birthday Sandwiches for the party's sake.  We also had a snowman cheese ball and relish tray out for people to munch on as everyone arrived.

The hot chocolate bar was a huge hit with everyone too.  I think everyone had at least one cup, if not two, before the end of the party.  The hot chocolate bar included individual hot cocoa mixes, mini chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, Heath bar toffee chips, peppermint chips, whipped cream, and wafer rolls.  I thought the wafer rolls would be the perfect "stir sticks" but they didn't last long enough in the heat of the water for that purpose.  So word to the wise, have extra spoons ready to stir your hot chocolate!

After we had the soup dinner, we opened presents.  JP loved having her big siblings help her, or should I say that they loved helping her :)

And all of the cousins had fun in JP's new sled!

After the presents were open, it was time for our traditional birthday cake and homemade ice cream!  I made a snowman cake with a cake pan I received from a family friend's grandmother.  It was the perfect touch for JP's Winter ONEderland party!

Our family - MP, My Farmer, me, JP and LP with JP's cake!

JP always has a smile on her face and is such a huggable, lovable kid.  She looks up to her big brother LP so much and loves to "train" with him as he likes to call it (aka practice walking).  Her and MP already have a sister bond and enjoy playing kitchen and dolls together.  It was so much fun to get our family together to celebrate such a special member of our family!  We all had a great time and felt very blessed.

Do you want to check out the other kids' first birthday parties?  Look at LP's First Tractor Birthday and MP's First Butterfly Birthday!  What is your favorite part of JP's birthday party?  What are some other first birthday party themes you thought were creative?  Remember to Comment for a Cause!