Charlie’s first birthday

How is it possible that my sweet little boy is one year old?! The time has just passed so, so quickly. Anyway, I’ll do a longer, sappy post later, but first, here are the pictures from his birthday party.

Since it’s still ridiculously hot here, we decided that a pool party was the way to go. So on Charlie’s birthday, we had about 17 adults and 15 kids over for lunch and a swim. That’s right – 32 people! It was (somewhat) controlled chaos, but oh so much fun. And Charlie loved all of the activity! Unfortunately, in the madness, we did a terrible job of taking pictures of our guests – I’m hoping I can get pictures from some of the other moms at the party.

Our good friend, JR, stopped by on his way to the airport…before heading back to Abu Dhabi! Now, that’s a good friend!

Charlie wasn’t too sure about him though. ;-)

Here’s the madness in the pool! On the far side of the pool is the inflatable slide that we got for the party. The kids loved it – including Charlie. I don’t have a picture of it, but the kids also loved some blocks of ice that we froze little toys in. We dumped them in the pool (in a fruitless attempt to cool the 98 degree water) and the kids had a blast trying to get them to melt so they could get to the little toys inside.

Here’s Amy, baby Parker, Rileigh, Meredith (I think – it’s hard to tell with the mask) and Jaclyn:

For the kiddos who wanted a break from swimming, we had sidewalk chalk, the plasma car, etc. Here’s Cain and Jessica decorating our driveway, and Jackson (always concerned with water safety – I think he’s wearing goggles and a ring) and Jay getting out the plasma car. Unfortunately, Hillary couldn't come to the party because she had a training session for our MOMS group (she's a co-chair this year!). :-(

After eating lunch (we did wraps, chips, fruit, etc.), it was cake time!

Here’s Charlie’s cake – it’s a carrot cake (no sugar, of course) with cream cheese frosting (again, no sugar – but quite delicious…if I do say so myself) and “sand” made from crushed Cheerios.

And the cupcakes for the rest of the kiddos:

Charlie was so sweet while we sang “happy birthday” – he just looked around the room like “why are all of these people looking at me and singing?”

He was a bit timid about digging into the cake, but Big Sister Ellie was happy to show him the way!

Meredith considered helping out too, but decided to wait for her own cupcake.

In the end, the cake was a hit. Charlie ate quite a bit yesterday and a huge piece today!

Ellie was SO careful with her cupcake. It was hilarious to see her slowly make her way through the crowd, totally focused on not dropping her treasure. I’m pretty sure that she’s doing the Gigi tongue-of-concentration here.

I wanted to get a whole family shot, but there was no way that we were going to get Ellie away from her cupcake! I guess 3 out of 4 isn’t bad, right?

We also didn’t have much luck getting Charlie to wear the birthday hat that I made for him (you’re welcome, Charlie).Of course Ellie is always extremely interested in anything that belongs to Charlie, so she was happy to model it for us.

Big Boy Jackson enjoying his cupcake. He said “Adrienne, this is sort of like a muffin, isn’t it?” Can’t get anything past this kiddo!

Ellie didn’t waste time time removing the flag from her cupcake before diving in.

In an effort to make up for the fact that we don’t have a single framed picture of Charlie in the house, I made some garland for the party. This combined with the cupcake flags (showing a newborn picture on one side and a current picture on the other), and a slideshow that we had going on the TV (with all of the pictures of Charlie from the last year), made it a whole house-o-Charlie.

We asked everyone to bring a gift or clothes to be given to children in foster care, in lieu of a gift for Charlie. But Charlie still got a few goodies (and some generous contributions to his college savings accounts!) – including these great cars from Shiny Grandpa and Meme. They’re soft, easy to grab, and self-propelled – everything a kiddo could want in a toy!

Charlie and Ellie have already played with them a ton – they’re particularly fond of turning them into bumper cars!

I know this picture is out of focus, but I just love Charlie’s expression!

Today, we finally gave Charlie his present. And it’s also a big hit. He and Ellie did a good job of taking turns riding and pushing. And now we have another mode of transportation for walks around the neighborhood!

In the end, I think it was a perfect birthday weekend for Charlie. He got lots of love and attention…and cake.