Sweet 16 Birthday Party-Part 1

Sweet 16 Birthday party for our oldest daughter Kalena. Photoshoot and invitations.

Sixteen years ago we became parents for the first time. It was beautiful and scary and life changing. When we saw her for the first time our hearts grew and our souls changed. We brought home our bouncing baby girl to a beautiful new nursery and talked in whispers while she slept. Let’s just say that is not what happened when we had our fifth daughter. It’s much noisier now and she may or may not still sleep in our room.

We learned how to be parents to a baby and a toddler, a preschooler, a pre-teen and now a teenager. Life has changed since Kalena has came into our lives. She has made it better, she makes us all better. She is amazing and I don’t know how we got so lucky to be her parents.

For her 16th birthday she wanted to have a dance with her friends and family. Because the weather here in Utah is usually pretty awful in November we decided to have it at a venue. We chose to have it at a Thanksgiving Point golf course because she loves the game and the clubhouse is a great place to hold events. We have had several family functions in their great room and highly recommend going there if you need a big room for an event. The staff is amazing there and we are so grateful for our friend Mark for always taking care of our family when we are there.

Before the whole party day we started off with invitations and photos done by my talented sister Kassie. If you need her services contact her at Sodapop Photography. She the best and don’t worry, if you’re not in Utah she can travel as well. She did an amazing wedding in Greece last year, give her a call now for family photos.

Kassie decided to take photos in a little community called Daybreak here in Utah. I just listen to where she tells us to go and what to do because her photographer eye knows more than I do. It was a fun shoot but it was absolutely freezing that day.

We found Kalena’s dress at Forever 21 and her fun sequin jacket at JC Penney’s. Grabbed some balloons and glitter from Zurcher’s party store and we were ready for an easy Sweet 16 photoshoot.

Daybreak is such a cute community. There is a little bakery where we were at so of course we had to get a treat.

That would be me in the back of her in the grass holding the balloons to get a good shot. Best assistant ever…

Kassie took a quick photo of us together. She said she always likes to take a photo of whoever came to help at the photoshoot. Obviously I was not in hair or makeup or even real clothes (I had just gotten home from the gym). But it is kind of fun having this photo of us together.

The photos all turned out so beautiful and I admit that I did shed a few tears at the photoshoot and when we got them back. Our beautiful baby girl is turning into a gorgeous young woman. My sister created the invitation and I just print them at Sam’s Club, easy to create and inexpensive.

We got invitations out which meant that it was time to start planning. I was kind of freaking out because I had three parties to plan in three weeks. We had Maliana’s 3rd birthday on October 30th, Halloween, Myron’s 40th on the 6th of November and then Kalena’s on the 17th. Yay for birthday parties.