SJ First Birthday Celebration

I don't have any plans of throwing out a party for SJ's first birthday.  Originally, I planned to cook a simple dinner for the family and buy a cake at red ribbon and took a souvenir photo that I can share to my son when he grows up.  It is stressful to arrange a party - one major reason why I don't want to do it and second we don't have a house helper who can offer help mostly on taking care of the children.   If we are going to celebrate the party in a restaurant, it would be expensive and we had no budget to cover the expenses.

Kevin, Lizzele, Zymon, Pakner4lyf, Me and SJ

It so happen that our son's birthday falls on Sunday (February 10, 2012) so we are expecting lot of people will come having a husband who is a pastor and the fact that our house is one door away from the church.  Pakner4lyf decided to invite all the church members and friends for a simple celebration not only because it is our son's birthday nor it was the Chinese New Year but there are other church members who are also celebrating their birthdays this month - Kevin, Lizzele and Zymon.

I have struggled on what to do and how can I prepare the meals.  I think of menus that I can easily prepare.  I decided to cook chicken adobo, stuffed tilapia, spaghetti and samalamig for our drinks.  I have checked to see if all the ingredients are complete and prepared them Saturday afternoon.  I also ask our baker to bake me a chiffon, and I will be the one to put the decorations so that we can have a birthday cake.  I bought balloons that I personally inflate and tied it in stick.  Sunday morning I decided to wake up earlier than I used to do.  The chicken is already marinated, so I all need to do is just to put it in the stove and let it cook same with the fish that I decided to cook in the microwave.  I am thankful for our sales ladies Renelyn and Zabeth who assisted me and of course pakner4lyf who cook the pasta for the first time because I needed to breastfeed SJ.   Good thing that my mom and sister in law had brought foods too to share at the party.  A lot of guests came and I was glad that the food was enough to feed all of them.

Our children were all excited of the celebration that they slept too late Saturday night thinking of the party even SJ at his age!

To estimate I only spend not more than P 2500 for the party.  I am happy that at least I was able to prepare everything even though it was very tiring.  I had no problems on cleaning up the church hall because of our very lovely church mates who were all helpful and supportive all the time.

I should have posted this just after the event.  Our internet connection was out since February 9 because the cable and radio antenna is no longer working.  Too bad that the technicians were able to visit and replace them only this afternoon and our router was back just this evening.