Oliver really enjoyed his first birthday party. Held Saturday, we invited close family to attend. The boy was all smiles, all day long. Here, he's enjoying his favorite activity (banging $5.99 rings on our coffee table) as he stands in front of the massive pile of gifts:



He got a lot of really awesome gifts, including some cars, lots of summer clothes, a wading pool, an interactive refrigerator magnet set, this ball-popper-upper (can't think of another way to describe it) toy, some LIttle People stuff and a Radio Flyer wagon.

Though we didn't have a theme (with apologies to one of my most loyal readers, Julie S.), we has a color scheme -- blue and green. Our "cake" was in line with this scheme. With thanks to our good friend Katie, we used a cake pan shaped like a giant cupcake to make the cake. Sarah did a nice job on it. Here's a picture of Oliver as we were singing "Happy Birthday":



In addition to the giant cupcake, we had little ones. We gave Oliver one, but he didn't mash into it like most 1 year olds. He just sort of picked at it for a few minutes and then gave us a look like "What's going on here?" Instead, we spoon-fed him some ice cream. Here's a picture right before he gave up on the cupcake:



We goofed around inside and out for the next couple hours. Here, I was holding him and jumping up and down to make him smile and laugh:



Then we got the Radio Flyer wagon out and took Oliver for a walk up and down our court a few times. He really enjoyed it, as you can tell:



All in all, it was a good first birthday. Sarah and I have been truly blessed over the past year, and we are just so happy to have our little boy with us. Year number two should be another memorable one.