Maya's First Birthday Gouter

This past weekend, we had a small party  in a nearby park to celebrate Maya's first birthday.

The E-vite for the birthday Gouter

As usual, we had some fun with the decorations...

Table and tree decoration

More table and tree decoration!

A bit after I sent out the E-vite, I took Maya to the zoo and she became very interested in (obsessed with?) monkeys - seeing monkeys, feeding her postcard monkey and making her monkey sign left and right. We therefore decided to add a little monkey theme to the gouter which we thought Maya would enjoy.

First off, some monkey balloons... 

Then... some monkey cupcakes (the decoration was surprisingly easy - the only hard part was finding Nilla wafers and mini-Nilla wafers in SG!! We failed to find mini Nilla wafers and had to improvise). 

Our monkey cupcakes smiling up at us

Well - some aren't actually smiling.

we did make a set of M A Y A - 1 - cupcakes too

Since monkeys like bananas, we also made some banana bread and some banana (and kiwi) chocolate covered lollipops (we had cute lollipop sticks but all of those have already been eaten and I forgot to take some pictures...).

These were relatively easy to make and soooo good

Noah eating a banana chocolate lollipop (notice the monkey and banana on his T-shirt!)

Maya eating hers (she ended up eating two banana lollipops)

We tried to find some activities that both the older and younger kids would enjoy. First, the kids played hide-and-seek with some monkeys (ie laminated pictures of monkeys with numbers in the back) hidden all around the picnic tables. The kids had to find all 10 monkeys and show them to Maya when found. Once all were found, the kids could exchange their monkeys for a candy. 

There was a drawing area where the kids could color in some monkey drawings or learn to draw monkeys from easy steps I had found on the web. We also set up some free space on the floor for kids to draw on.

Here G (you can see one of the monkeys that was hidden earlier) - 

Maya enjoyed trying to draw on the floor 

Then the kids helped the monkeys find their coconuts (balls) and put them in a basket.

Everyone running around trying to find balls and put them in the basket

Here Lucie and Z. helping out

The kids had also brought their bikes and scooters and just had fun running, biking and scootering around. 

Lucie on a scooter

Maya trying to scoot (with some help from Eleonor)

Maya's little friend from upstairs  

After some fun and games, we sang happy birthday to Maya and she blew out her candle (well with some help).

Setting up 

There was a lot of wind so it was hard to keep the candle lit

Trying to light the candle again

Nope - it blew out again

The candle is lit! One, two, three blow...

Bravo Maya!

Monkey cupcakes again

Yummmm

Our sweet Maya eating her cupcake 

(she actually got chocolate all over her face but not too much on her dress or on me) 

After the cupcakes the kids continued to play in the park for a long time - all in all, a relaxing and fun little party.