First Birthday Bash

We celebrated Elijah’s First Birthday in Kansas City on May 8th at my parents house.  Here is the birthday boy with his Great Grandma Carol at the party.

The gift table.

With Great Grandma Gladys

Time to open presents.  Baby’s first cell phone from Grandma Rene (who works for Sprint 🙂

Helping to open the presents.

A puppy puppet knitted by Grandma Janet.

This is the birthday pillow I made for him it came with a matching blankie.

This is just a funny picture.

And here is the party cake I made.  It was a labor of love.  Top tier was banana cake with vanilla buttercream. Bottom tier chocolate with strawberry buttercream.

This was Elijah’s very own birthday cake in the shape of a piano.  He loves to play the piano!  His was vegan banana with vegan vanilla buttercream

I had to blow the candle out quickly before he touched it.  Those fingers are quick!

Trying to play the piano, unfortunately it didn’t make any sounds.

The fondant was so thick he couldn’t really make a dent, so we flipped the cake.

After a little help he had a nice mess to play in.

He never really tried to eat it.  He just picked up pieces and squeezed them really hard.

This is about as messy as he got.

Here is the family by Elijah’s tree we planted last summer.  We actually thought it had died but sure enough there were leaves sprouting!!

Birthday boy and Grandma Janet

Me and my big boy.

Me and my big boy on Mother’s Day!

Me, and my mom and Elijah on Monther’s Day.  Love you Mama!

I can’t believe it has been a year.  But what an incredible year it has been.  I’ve enjoyed every minute watching him grow and learn.  I remember meeting him for the first time like it was yesterday.  My teeny baby boy in my arms.  Here we are on our first night together a year ago.

Oak Park

I’ve been promising a post on our new neighborhood and here it is, finally.  This is in front of our townhome.  We are the door on the right and the gate is to our little porch/patio area.  The door on our left is our awesome new neighbors. More about them later in the post.

It is a huge complex of townhomes like ours. This is a view looking down the sidewalk in front of our home.

This is a view around the corner where the dogs get to “go”.

This is our view of Lake street, a main district in Oak Park.  I’m standing directly in front of our complex looking down Lake street.  There is a movie theatre, every kind of restaurant you can imagine and lots of fun shops.

A few blocks down is the Oak Park public library.  It is fantastic!  Elijah and I have been to a few story times at the library.  He loves them!

This is another district in Oak Park called The Avenue just a few blocks down from our complex.  It is great too!  There is a fantastic children’s toy store called Gepetto’s Toy Box.

Here we are in the park pretending Plato is a horse.

Remember the other green door? Well it turns out we have really cool neighbors.  We have so much in common.  They have a dog and 9 month old.  They use cloth diapers and had a home birth too!  Crazy huh?  We all went to the park one day to play.  Here is their adorable son Jackson playing with Elijah.  Apparently he is quite the ham and loves to have his picture taken.