Birthday Party!!

Sheesh.... Where to start? We had a great time. We decided to have a party at my parents house in Montana in order to facilitate more people being able to participate and to have more space for Des. His two favorite things right now seem to be balls and cats (animals in general, really). So we decided to decorate in balloons in order to keep it simple yet fun. That and balloons are much easier to decorate with - cats are just to squirmy when you tie a ribbon to them and tape them to a wall. (haha.) Anyway... Des loved the "balls" that materialized overnight at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We had family over, played a couple of games that let us recap Des's first year of life, opened presents, ate some dinner and had 'cake.' Marc didn't really want to introduce Des to the intense sugar quite yet and I agreed with the argument he made for that so... I made pumpkin cake, sans icing for Des, cream cheese icing for the rest of us that already have a mouth full of dental work. He liked it and just ate his piece like anything else... no crazy crumbs up nostrils or filled ear canals.... Although for some reason at dinner he thought he would use cantelope juice to get the "just out of bed" look that is so coveted lately - but that's not unusual for a one year old. We blew up about 40-50? balloons total and cascaded them down the stairs for a 'present' for Des. He was a little overwhelmed by that at first, but by the end of the party he was having a *grand* time with all the 'balls.'

A lesson to pass on to all of you: Don't try and save money on helium balloons. We got ten balloons blown up with helium at Wally World to augment the non-floaty type. We decorated the night before so that Des could wake up to a colorful world (a long standing tradition from my family, we always woke up to a 'birthday house' - something I always loved). The next morning we had one casualty and I thought "no big deal" I just taped it up. We literally watched hour by hour as the balloons drifted downward and by noon they were all obviously dead.... So there was a reason they were so much cheaper than other places in town. BUT Grandpa B saved the day and after his usual run to Barnes he surprised us with ten new balloons to replace the failures. Des liked seeing a whole bunch of floaty balls, it was fun.

After a full weekend we headed home. Des got really quiet before we were even ten miles down the road. We have quickly learned in Des's first year to check on quiet situations and sure enough... Somehow Des had gotten his hands on the bag of sugar cookies that we had brought to share and gotten the ziplock open and eaten half a cookie. I *promise* you that not 5 minutes earlier I had checked that nothing was within his grasp in the backseat. I still don't know how he did it but he did!

And now we are counting down to the musical. As the performances get closer Marc gets more busy and has more time constraints. So we are waiting for that to be over and then not too long after that... #2 arrives.... It will be interesting to see where "normal" ends up being after all this. We'll keep you posted - hope you enjoy the pictures.

Birthday decorations (with the non Wally balloons).

Decorating the cakes.

Finished product - 1 with "balloon" cupcakes.

The candle...

Walking like a pro amidst all his balls.

Party boy with his balloons.

Caught redhanded....sneaky, sneaky...

One last thing.... We had a snow storm two weekends ago and so we bundled up Des and took him outside for his first real encounter with snow... Here are a couple pics: