Rian's first birthday party

We celebrated Rian's first birthday party at Las Palmas Park in Sunnyvale, on Saturday 11 July '09 with a lunch party. We booked the recreation building in the park. This park holds a special place in my heart: this is the park where Rian gave us his widest grins and smiles for the first time. A lot of our guests mentioned to us that the loved the venue. Little kids could roam around in the park and many had their food outside.

We catered food from Turmeric restaurant. They delivered it to the park in big black insulated boxes. This avoided the need for "burners" and stands for the food trays, and no "burnt" spots in the food. Personally I loved the food and was drooling for it from the day we had the menu decided. We had spinach and aloo tikki (green) and veg manchurian balls (pink) for starters. The chef threw together this excellent salad with sprouted moong beans, cherry tomatoes and strawberry pieces, with sweet chutney thrown around. Everyone was crazy about it. There was some raita and chutneys too. The main dishes were koftas in chutney gravy, spinach and corn, panchratna daal, naan, pulav with peas and almond slices.

The cake was ordered from Amia Bakery. We got a quarter sheet of Tres Leche cake with mango pieces in it. For our special friends, we also had a 6" eggless cake of the same flavor.

The evite stated 11:30am to 2:30pm but surprisingly people came in much later than we expected. We were hoping to cut the cake at 12:30pm but I think that's when we got started with appetizers. The cake was next as we wanted to finish it before Rian got cranky or sleepy. He was pretty much a happy baby except for all the crying he did just when the cake was being cut and that's how all his pictures are :-) Cely helped us a lot, mainly taking care of Rian and then later in the cleanup phase as well. Aaji Ajoba helped feed Rian. Sometimes I wonder: what exactly was I doing in the birthday party?? Daddy helped setup the place, along with our close friends who helped decorate: thanks a lot guys...

Thank you all for the wonderful wishes and the thoughtful gifts. Rian will be getting them one at a time, to avoid gift overload. FYI Rian loved pulling the wrappers off of his gifts :-)