On Saturday, we celebrated Brady’s 1st birthday! When I realized that our October was becoming quite the busy month, we decided to celebrate his big milestone a week early rather than trying to squeeze it into our already jam-packed schedule in October. It turned out to be a really great day!
As I was brainstorming some birthday party options on Pinterest, I kept seeing apples and then it hit me….let’s go apple-picking for his birthday. I wanted to take the kids apple-picking anyway, so we were able to kill two birds with one stone. LOVE that!
We drove up to Carter’s Mountain Orchard in the morning so we could get a head start on the day before the kids got too tired. Our first stop once we arrived was to the bakery to get some of their apple cider donuts. Yummy!
After our donuts, we got in line for our hayride. It wasn’t fancy, but it was nice to sit and ride around the orchard. We scoped out the area where we could pick the apples and were very tempted to reach and grab a few Pink Ladies!
We didn’t go crazy with the apple-picking, but we had some fun eating picking some Golden Delicious and Jonagolds. I may have to see what I can bake with all the apples I brought home. We eat apples quite a bit for lunches, so they may not last long around here anyway.
After our fun morning at the orchard, we ate some packed lunches in the car and then got on the road back to Richmond. The kids napped on the way home, which provided just enough rest to prevent a complete meltdown by the afternoon.
When we arrived home, we had some fun apple-themed snacks. I have finally embraced the fact that I am not a perfect little party planner so there was no pristine food table or party decor, but I really wanted to try a couple of apple-themed ideas I saw on Pinterest. We had some sliced apples and caramel dip, rolls and apple butter, and then an apple-shaped cheese ball with crackers.
I was pretty excited with how the cheese ball turned out. It looked pretty cute and tasted good too!
We sang to Brady and then he dove into his birthday cupcake. I got the idea for the apple-shaped cupcakes from Pinterest as well and I thought they turned out nicely. They were really easy to make, but still cute.
Brady was so cute eating his birthday cupcake and gobbled it up pretty quickly. My sister’s dog also enjoyed some of the cupcakes as well. 🙂
After we washed him up after his cupcake, I opened up Brady’s presents since he was busy playing. He got some new clothes and money as presents, which was so nice and thoughtful. He’s one blessed kiddo!
Although we were all worn out, we had such a wonderful day together. It was nice to be able to celebrate and make memories doing something fun together as a family. We really enjoyed having some of my family members there with us and I know Kev’s family would have been there if it were possible.
Our little family will probably do something small to celebrate on his actual birthday because you can never have too much birthday cake, right?
Happy Birthday to sweet Brady! We look forward to making more memories at Carter’s Mountain!
