Celebrating Our Samuel, Part I: Starting off

Sam's first birthday party was soooooo fun!  So much fun, in fact, that I don't think I'm going to be able to get it all in one post!  So be prepared for a few post on this... we'll see how long it takes, but for now I'm just going to jump in!  (By the way, special thanks to my parents and my sister for their help in setting up the party and taking care of the boys while Dave and I were occupied with details, and to Ang for helping me sort through my gazillion pics of Sam and picking favorites for the decorations!  Also, thanks to my cousin Joel, Ang and my mom and brother for their help in both taking lots of pics to send to me and in handling both my main and my backup cameras so that I could be in 4 places at once and not miss a second of my baby's first birthday party!)

Since Sam obviously loves animals, Dave came up with the idea to have either a petting zoo or a pony ride at his birthday party.  He gave me the choice of either a Noah's Ark theme and do a petting zoo or a Barnyard theme and do a pony ride.  Well, since Sam's room is a barnyard theme and since I already had some great barnyard theme graphics, I chose Barnyard!  And, after further thought, we decided to also do both a pony ride and a petting zoo, and add a donkey ride since it wasn't that much more and we were going to have a lot of kids there.  I made the invitations and had so much fun planning the party and we couldn't wait to celebrate our sweet little man!

The Invitation.  Making the invite is usually one of my two favorite parts of party planning! (Okay, I guess one of my second-favorite parts... my favorite part is celebrating the guest of honor!)

We decided to have the party at my parents' church, and we were so thrilled that we did... especially since it ended up being less-than-ideal weather.  I had planned the party while we were having our 80 degree January, and when it came to the week of the party the forecast ended up calling for loads of buckets of rain!  We moved the party in the fellowship hall and put the petting zoo on the patio under the awning and the pony route on the covered walkway and prayed that the torrents would stay away and that we'd get sprinkles at most... we had all of our friends praying for no rain!  And it worked!  It sprinkled on and off and we had a great time!

The setup in the hall

I hung pictures of Sam throughout his first year.  On one side was the photo in color and the other side I had the same photo in black and white. There were about 29 of them since I couldn't narrow it down any further... I initially had only narrowed it down to 50!

My other favorite part of party planning is planning and making the cake(s)!  I decided to go delicious this time rather than my usual Funfetti cake... I found some great cake recipes and I made a giant snickerdoodle cake (the dirt field cake), a delicious chocolate/chocolate chip cake (the fun barn cake), and Sam's smash cake (the tractor) was just funfetti, since he wasn't actually going to eat much of it.

This was my favorite cake I had ever made (until Jack's 4th birthday cake... which I probably won't get to posting for a while), and I had so much fun making it!  It was my first time using fondant, which I used to cover the cake and to cover the barn and for the letters and as the brown "field".  The details, animals and everything else were all icing.

Sam was a great help in the kitchen before the party started...


And Jack was a great help in making sure the bunny didn't escape its cage during petting zoo setup!


But before we could start our farm activities, we all had to eat!  The babies needed sustenance to keep up their energy for all the petting and riding they would be doing... it's hard work!

And then, it was on to the petting zoo!  This is a good segue moment, so I'll end part one here... stay tuned for more party, cuteness, and... 4 day old baby goats!!!

Note: It ended up taking five posts to finish the party!  
For part two with the petting zoo, go here.
For part three and the pony rides, go here.
For part four and the cake, go here.
For part five and the pinata, go here.

Two Out Of Three, Sam's First Valentine's Day

Four days before Sam's first birthday was Sam's first Valentine's day!  Unfortunately (but not surprisingly, right?) Dave had to work so I couldn't spend the day with my main squeeze.  I had a great consolation prize, though, in that I got my other two Valentines all to myself!  We had a lot of fun that morning, starting off the day by snuggling together in my bed... just like we do every morning!  I also made sure to take pictures of the Valentine Jack made for me in Sunday School!

We played and talked about what Valentine's Day means, and we talked about ways to show people that we love them.  After our nice morning, we headed to the grocery store for exactly 4 items... 3 things I needed immediately in order to make Sam's birthday cake, and 1 very special item for a very special person.  After the grocery store (Jack's memory is absolutely amazing... he remembered every item on my list without me having to remind him!) we headed out to make a very special delivery.

Jack went into grandma's office and declared "Surprise! Your surprise is flowers, and ME!"  She was very happy to see us, and Jack was very excited to give her the flowers and his hugs and kisses!

And Sam was so excited that he even ventured out of a 3 foot radius of me and/or grandma!

We happened to get to grandma's work right before she was leaving on her lunchbreak, so of course we invited her to have lunch with us at the mall as a very special Valentine's treat!  We had a great time at lunch even though grandma had to rush back to work...

And after lunch, we had even more fun!  Or rather, Jack did!  One of the reasons we went to lunch at the mall was so that Jack would ride the train!  Sam is too small, unfortunately, but he does enjoy watching his big brother ride on the train around the "jungle"!

Later that night my mom and dad stopped by to give the boys their Valentine's gifts.  I had mentioned how lately Jack had been enjoying pretending to be a superhero, and that he would say "I changed my name to Super Jackson- I'm a super hero!  I will save you: Super Jackson to the rescue!!!" and that it made me want to make him a cape... so she made him one for Valentine's Day!  He LOVED it!

No Trophies On The Beach!

I know, it's been a month since I've posted!  There is a good reason for that, though, and I will get to that in a later post.  In the meantime, I'm going to jump right back in where I left off... in February!

In February a friend emailed and said that she was planning a day of whale watching and invited us along!  I was stoked, as I had been wanting to take Jack and Dave and I had actually been planning on taking him that week.  Since our friends were going, though, we decided to skip our trip and Jack and I would join up with our friends.  My mom offered to watch Sam for me, and Jack and I were so excited to have a "Special mommy and Jack Jack day" with our friends!  We love having daddy and Sammy with us but we definitely need to do that more often!

The day started off with great hilarity.  Jack is really into reading signs and interpreting what a sign is trying to depict... I didn't take a picture of the "Pier Rules" sign (must have forgotten as I was laughing so hard), but it was a typical red-circle-with-a-line-through-it-over-forbidden-item type sign, similar to this one (except, you know, in English).

When Jack saw it, he excitedly started interpreting the sign aloud... "No dogs, no skateboards, no guns..."  And when he came to the symbol on the sign that looked like this:

He only paused for a split second before continuing with "...no trophies".  I died laughing, as did our friends and the people in line behind us.  Then I told Jack that he was absolutely correct, and it was a trophy!!!

Jack also was fixated on the name of the boat we were on... The Voyager.  If he said the name once, he must have said it a hundred times!  Of course, I always want to remember everything my kids say and do, so I took a picture of the logo on the boat to help me remember!

When it was time to get on the boat, the three boys were thrilled!  Jack had never been whale watching, Austin had been once about 6 months earlier, and E was an old pro as his mommy is a little whale-crazy (I love that about her!)... when we got on the boat Jack and Austin immediately sat down on the bench while E immediately hopped up and looked out over the water.

Ang and I quickly set our boys straight, though, and stood them up to look out over the water.  

Jack was soooo excited when the boat started moving and he was pointing things out left and right and up and down!  "Look mom!  Seaweed!" "Look mom! A kayak!" "Look mom! Trash!"

He was super excited when we got outside the breakwater and started going faster.  He declared that going fast was his favorite part (which, after observing him encourage his pedal-to-the-metal father to drive our boat even faster, surprised no one), and he was really excited when we finally came to The Buoy that is home to many California Sea Lions. 

And he was stoked when one waved his fin to us in a "Hello!"

As we made our way out to where we were hoping to find whales, the boys were entertained by Austin's monster trucks...

And pretty soon, we saw the telltale water spout!

Jack surprised me by how earnestly he watched for the next spout... I thought for sure he'd lose interest in the excitement in between spouts.  Instead, he spotted some before I did and was entranced by them.  I was really thrilled by how excited he was and how he was so focused on the whales.  He watched them and studied them, and he even stared out over the water waiting for them to surface next, even when they were down for a while!

And after the boat turned around to go back to the dock, he was still excited!

E was tired (and a little camera shy)

Austin was just as excited as Jack

And, just to prove that I was there I stole this from Ang's camera!!!

We had such a great day, and I was so thrilled to be able to have such a great "special mommy and Jack Jack day" with my handsome little man!