Party on!

The cakes...
The "shrine to Jack"-- all his albums. I also printed out the first year of the blog!
The whole present table..
Poor sick baby, relaxing in the hammock...The yard getting all set up...

The balloon tent!


Cake time! We were WAY more into this than Jack was!

Hanging out with a buddy and the ever-popular red car..

The "haul". It's so sad this baby has no toys...

The much anticipated birthday party has come and gone and I must say everything went perfectly-- as long as you don't count the one small hitch that the birthday boy was sick with a cold. :( Poor munchkin woke up the morning of his party all snuffly and sneezy and got drippier as the day went on. To prove what a trouper he is, he was the best baby in the world for his party-- no breakdowns, no fussing even. He was just a little out of it, and as you can see above, he had the charming "I can't breathe through my nose" expression on the whole time. Sigh. No good pictures... Seriously though, we couldn't have asked for a better day. I had been worried about our ever expanding guest count all week-- wonderful that Jack has so many friends! But I could not imagine having all of them inside our house. So it was a huge relief that the day dawned sunny and warm. We were very prepared, I thought, and Nat's mom and niece Lauren were a huge help in our prep work (Lauren even did the honors of the cake decorating, which kept me from obsessing over doing it myself). The food was great, the guests were great, and it made me so very happy to see everyone relaxing and conversing in our yard. Jack's favorite events of the party were:
* Hanging out in his (very cold) baby pool. He was the only intrepid swimmer of the day, but as that was the case, he did go skinny dipping. (Actually the kiddo never got dressed for the party. He was so snotty and miserable I didn't want to put him through the trouble...)
* Playing in the "balloon tent." He was there for quite a while, with a rotating stream of visitors.
* Being pushed around in his red car.
* Sitting in his green booster chair to open presents. He seemed to feel like quite the big boy in it.
* Opening presents. He actually got into this, really looking at his cards, getting excited about the contents of the packages. He got a ton of great toys...

Overall the party was lovely and went very fast! There were so many guests I wanted more time to talk with... We'll have to do it again sometime...!