Caleb's first birthday party!

Oh hey there Tuesday! This weekend we were fortunate enough to have the husband home for a 4-day weekend, with the exception of Sunday where he had to come in for 24 hours for a shift. But I guess that doesn't make it a four day weekend then, huh? Haha.

Anyway, I'd like to say that we had a jam-packed weekend full of debauchery and good times, but I ended up feeling like I was on my deathbed all weekend and could barely get out of bed for the most part. But we had Caleb's first birthday party planned and I was not going to cancel celebrating our son's first year of life. So when I woke up Saturday morning feeling somewhat alive, I trudged out of bed and got to planning and cooking!

I'll admit that I am not one of those super crafty moms, and I didn't really go all out with Caleb's first birthday. I know their first birthdays are kind of a big deal, but we had just gotten back from Korea and the three of us were sick, so I was NOT going to be spending what little time I had making sure his party was "Pinterest perfect". I had ordered a few crafts off Etsy and purchased a few things at Party City before we left for Korea and the day of the party, I quickly scrambled to finish assembling everything and then spent a few hours slaving away in the kitchen.

I kept the menu simple with mini grilled cheese and tomato soup bites for the kids, bacon ranch cheese burgers for the adults, red velvet cupcakes, a funfetti cake, a fruit tray, spicy onion rings, and a corn, ham and jalapeno cream cheese dip. As it turns out, the food was all delicious and no one even noticed that I hadn't spent weeks preparing for the party. Big success in my book ;)

For simplicity sake, I kept the decorations minimal but wanted to make sure everything was colorful. I'm a huge fan of color and I know Caleb loves everything red AND Elmo. I originally wanted to craft a few Elmo related items but simply ran out of time.

I'm sure he didn't notice ;)

And clearly, decorating cupcakes is also not one of my fortes ;)

We ended up not even dressing Caleb up for his big day. We knew he'd make a mess anyway so we kept him in his little blue cloth diaper. And then stuck an Elmo birthday sticker on his back.

I know, we're awesome parents.

Want to know a secret? Caleb is actually a little over 32 and a half inches tall but I didn't have enough room on the canvas to include that little tidbit. My baby boy is a monster!

So that's pretty much it for the fun party details. Like I said, it wasn't anything too grand but all of that didn't matter to us. We were just happy to have most of our favorite people under one roof celebrating Caleb and us surviving one year of parenthood.

And speaking of surviving, here is a video of Caleb's cake smash.

And just a few notes about this video before I save my now one-year-old from destroying my husband's xbox, the comment about him surviving is courtesy of my hilarious friend, Christin. Also, I normally don't sound like a horse, but I was still sick that day. I also planned to say something dirty, but stopped myself when I realized a friend was filming him, haha. One last thing, don't let Caleb's bashfulness fool you. Caleb is actually a big ol' ham.

And yes, I cried like a baby when we sang happy birthday to him. It's been an amazing year, that's for sure.