Jonah Turns One!

It is hard to believe that Jonah is now a 1-year old.  Time certainly did fly by! Parenthood has been an amazing experience and we can no longer imagine life without this sweet, happy, wonderful little boy.  As his birthday was on a Tuesday, we held his party last Saturday to allow more out-of-town family members to join in the festivities.

We decided to go for a whale-theme as neither of us had any fabulous ideas and we figured he won't choose a whale theme on his own as he gets older.  Ben and I made the invitations with our Silhouette, which proved to take a bit of patience as we learned to use the machine and to work with paper crafts in general.  In the end, we were pretty pleased with how they turned out:

We also got ambitious and made a banner to go across the garage:

Grandma and Grandpa Gregg arrived on Wednesday night, Grammy Sweetser arrived on Friday morning, and the entourage of aunts, uncles, and cousins arrived on Friday night.  It was a full house and Jonah seemed to do well with the commotion that comes with a lot of people in the house and party preparations going on around him.

What are you doing with all of my toys?

Alex, Jonah, and Grant at the front door.

Grandpa and Alex have some fun with party hats.

We opened presents fairly early on, in the hopes that Jonah would still be in a good mood.  He was less interested in the wrapping paper than he had been at Christmas, but we assume that's because he really wants to be on the go at all times.  He did conveniently pose himself in front of the stack of gifts just as we were getting ready for the opening:

All of this is for me?  Oh boy!!!

After presents came time for cake and ice cream. Rather than making our own cake this year, we opted to purchase one from Le Cakery, using a Groupon I purchased earlier this year.  Here's the cake:

Jonah's first birthday cake (though he got his own cupcake).

Jonah wasn't quite sure what to do with his cupcake and ice cream, but in the end, he seemed to enjoy playing with his food.  Look at that gleam in his eye and that smile: he enjoys making messes!

For those of you who were unable to make the trip (including, unfortunately, Grandpa Sweetser, Russ, and Shannon), and those who are interested, check out the following video of Jonah with his cake (we apologize that it's a bit on the long side).

What an afternoon!  Jonah definitely slept well that night!  Many more pictures are available on our photo site. And one final photo to leave you with, from our session earlier in June with Amy McManigal:

We love you, Jonah! To many, many more happy birthdays!