Grant's 1st Birthday Party

Yes, I'm FINALLY posting about the party.

This should really be called "Grant's 1st Birthday Weekend". Since his actualy birthday was on Friday, August 26th. So even though I had a ton of stuff to do to get ready for the party, Grant could not go to daycare on his birthday. I couldn't let it happen. And we had a great day together, even though we didn't leave the house (Grant didn't seem to mind). He even got to have his first scrambled egg with toast (egg was a first, toast was not).

So the "birthday weekend" comes in because of the hurricane. I've probably been planning Grant's birthday party for his whole first year (I say "planning" but I mean "thinking about"). It's kind of a long story - short version: I'd waited a long time to do this. So of course, on the most planned day of my year...hurricane Irene decided to party too. Which meant that our  monster themed party in the park moved to our not-so-spacious house. However, I sort of think that was a blessing in disguise. It allowed me (and a very patient friend) to decorate the night before which saved me a boat load of time on Saturday. Some of the decorations:


Kitchen table with some decorations



Some monster silverware holders I made (idea came from Pinterest.com)



A picture board of Grant's 1st year



The pom-pom garland which wouldn't have happened without
my Mother-in-law's help in making the pom-poms.



The birthday banner I made (that I may recycle for birthday's to come)

I am sure that Husband is super annoyed that, over a week later, almost all those decorations (and some I don't have pictures of) are still up. But, as my friend Elizabeth who took time out of her very busy Friday to come help decorate, pointed out: my house is decorated for fun - why take it down?

The party turned out to be lots of fun (at least I hope everyone had fun!). We were able to celebrate Grant's 1st birthday with a lot of family friends who were able to make it even though the hurricane tried her best to keep people away. We did have some that couldn't make it due to more severe weather in their area than ours but thankfully everyone made it through the storm.

We had a cookout lunch (after moving the grill from the deck to the garage - poor Husband trying to please to high-strung wife) which Grant got eat too. He loved my pasta salad and mac & cheese. And then he got to open his presents (pictures courtesy of my Mother-in-law).






(A separate post about this sandbox coming soon)





That is a giant stuffed dog (a.k.a. a new wrestling partner)



We got Grant the little tikes cozy truck. Thank goodness he
loves it because that thing was super annoying to put together.

We did cake after presents. Grant got his smash cake: 



As soon as I blew out the candle and before I could stop him
Grant grabbed the top of the candle and burned his little hand.



But he got over the burn real quick.

And everyone else got to eat this:



I'm pretty excited how it turned out - and it only took me about 10 hours :)

 Immediately after the party-goers left, Grant crashed. Hard. He must have slept for two hours only waking up because we woke him up for dinner. And then, because of the storm, he had more visitors on Sunday and some during the week. My spoiled man!

I wasn't able to get any good pictures of Grant wearing the shirt I made him (that matched his invitation and his cake). But I managed to get one at some point that weekend.