This past week has been full of birthdays and parties and celebrations!

Chris turned 31 on Tuesday.  I’m so happy that he was born and wanted to make sure that his day was still separate and special despite it being only 2 days ahead of Joe’s birthday.

We celebrated with one of the desserts that my mom has made for years (and introduced Chris to when we were just dating): Chocolate Death.  I made a big bowl of it for him, had one helping, and then sent the rest of it with him to work the following day.  No way was I going to let it sit around the kitchen, tempting me!

Joe’s 1st birthday was on Thursday.  It was so fun to celebrate with him and to make some new traditions.  I really wasn’t sure how we were going to do things, but they seemed to progress on their own.  We opened gifts in the morning.  Chris was so excited about giving Joe his presents that when I woke up, it was one of the first things that he asked me about.

Both sets of grandparents sent gifts and it was so fun to watch Joe open them and enjoy them.  My parents sent some of the Hairy Maclary books and Chris’ parents sent a baby tracksuit and a toy kitty cat.

Joe wasn’t sure what to think of the toy kitty cat.

Joe was suspicious, and we were a bit surprised by his reaction!

Chris quickly hid the kitty, but Joe remained suspicious…

He eventually grew bolder.  Having the toy in his dad’s arms seemed to help matters.

He eventually got used to the kitty cat and it’s become one of his new favorite toys (now that he’s realized it’s not going to eat him 🙂 )

It was a fun family celebration, and nice to be able to have one before the “big” party on Saturday.  I went back and forth as to whether or not I would throw a party, but then realized I needed to either cut bait or fish.  Besides, it’s always fun to have friends together to celebrate with good food.  It’s also nice to have something to do when it’s so cold out!

I meant to take more photos, but as is often the case with parties, I got caught up in what I was doing and forgot!  I did remember to take a picture of the cake:

I made the cake banner and was pleased with how it turned out.  The cake recipe was one that I’d made before, for Queen’s Birthday.  The frosting… well, the frosting… I followed a recipe that said you could make it in advance, provided that it was kept in an airtight container.  I thought that I was doing so well, keeping on top of things and getting stuff done ahead of time.  Turns out that the frosting did not keep well – it was too hard to spread without tearing up the entire cake, and not savable (except for eating with a spoon – something that Chris wasn’t sad about at all, I’ll tell you!).  I ended up whipping together an entirely new batch at the last minute and thankfully, this one was just fine.

The party wasn’t anything fancy – I did a “make your own sandwich” station and some of the guests brought snacks and drinks to share.  All told, there were about 20 adults there and 5 children.  Definitely a full house, but a lot of fun!  I was so happy to have so many friends with us to celebrate, and I know that I’ll remember it.

The week ended with another fun celebration, although we weren’t able to be in Indiana to share in it.  One of my younger sisters, C, married her fiance, R.  We were sad that we weren’t be able to be there, but also really happy for the two of them!

A fun week, but I’m also just a smidgen glad that it’s over and we can settle back down (or at least try to settle down as much as is possible with a 1 year old!).