The Day I Nearly Ruined Nikko's Birthday Party!

I never really thought about the day that I would be throwing a birthday party for my one year old son. It just never crossed my mind. I have SO much respect for ALL mothers who do this EVERY YEAR. I must have been out of my mind. Since we are away from family, we had to invite the next closest thing. All the Missionaries! That means 10-12 missionaries to feed, plus whoever was going to show from Jake's team. That's a lot of hungry boys, and big boys at that. Now, I am the biggest procrastinator in the entire world. No lie. I figured I could throw a party together that day (what an idiot!). Then we went to church and found out from the 4 missionaries we invited that word had spread like fire that we were going to be feeding them. So all the missionaries wanted to come over. Like I'm going to say no to all those hungry boys! We went to the store and had my mom not been here, it would have been a disaster! Somehow, we were able to feed almost 20 people in our tiny apartment. We even had left overs.

Now my reason for another reason why I have so much respect for Mothers.

I should have worked harder on my domestic skills when I was younger. About 2 hours before the party was suppose to start, I got the cake ready to put in the oven. Yes, the oven. That's right. The cake wasn't even made and to top it off, I was trying to make 2! One for Nikko and one for the guests. One important thing to mention, I had never used our oven before. After the first cake had been in for 15 minutes, there was SMOKE coming out of the oven. We pulled the cake out and that is when the breakdown started. My mom was SO hopeful that we COULD salvage the burnt cake. I pulled the angry Emy attitude and put the next cake in and lowered the temperature. What do you think happened next? 10 minutes later, MORE smoke! Yep, I ruined BOTH cakes! The tops were totally burned and the center was still runny. With 1 hour before the party was suppose to start! All I can say is that I have the worlds best Mother and Husband. They saved the day and were able to cut all the burned tops and edges off AND were able to finish baking the cakes. I was a MESS. I was crying, thinking to myself, I SUCK at this. What was I thinking trying to pull this off. With them both by my side, I..... NO, WE were able to throw a party for the cutest little stinker in the entire world. Thanks to LOTS of frosting to cover up all the lumps in the uneven cake, no one ever knew I had ruined them!

It was 1 year ago today, almost to the hour that he was born. He is our everything. If we didn't have him, I would be SO lonely out here. He makes us both happier than we thought we could ever be. We love him so much and are so grateful he is all ours!

Here are a couple of pictures. I tried to upload all the best shots, (like messy cake face) but it wouldn't upload. I will do it another day!


We had about 10 missionaries there. All of them helped us sing Happy Birthday to Mr. Nikko and this is how it went.

At first, the song was fun and exciting!


Then for some reason, Nikko did NOT like the song. Or the cake. Notice how amazing that cake looks. Like some professional chef spent all day on it! This cake was made from the left over parts from the cakes we had salvaged. That is why it looks like a cinnamon bun.

Once he tasted the frosting, he was a happy camper!


I wasn't able to get the pictures of him eating and smashing it in his hair.

He had lots of happy moments, then sad moments. The presents were his happy moments, then he would get a little overwhelmed with all the people watching him.