Some Birthday Fun! (at least we hope so!)

Birthday fun at our house came a bit early for Austin this year. Being that kid with a birthday so close to Christmas, we want to be sure he doesn't lose his birthday special-ness amongst all the holiday noise that is happening the same time of year. So we celebrated the weekend before his actual birthday. We had a traditional family birthday party with Austin's aunts/uncles, cousins, grandparents, and us... and that comes to about 45 people!!! Dave and I both come from big families, so our immediate family get-togethers start to feel like one big party no matter the occasion! With a full house and lots of little kids running around there was plenty of fun to be found in almost every section of our home. Jaxon loves this commotion and craziness! Austin...well we found he isn't the biggest fan of lots of action and loud noise. About half way through, we felt kind of bad for the baby... he hardly smiled the first half of the night and spent a lot of the time staring at people comfortably from his high chair or mom or dad's lap. It's so funny how different our kid's personalities are. Jaxon loves a crowd. Austin is content rarely leaving the comfort of his house or the people that reguraly sleep there :) Austin got to have some birthday cake, open some fun presents (with help from his ever so helpful cousins- thanks girls!), and enjoyed a little singing from all of us. He was happy to get into his bath that night, into pajamas, and cuddled to sleep... I don't know if he was over stimulated, overly tired, or what, but he spent about every half hour until 2am waking up and crying :( Needless to say, we may rethink how this boy wants to celebrate his big day in the future!! Of course, he may grow into loving the big party like big borther Jaxon...but we will definately pay attention to his personality next year and see what he may enjoy! Hope you had a fun birthday party baby boy! Thanks to all of you who came to celebrate with our big 1 year old!

Birthday Boy!

Cousins...Maddy, Elsie, Austin...all within 7 months of each other!

Some help from dad...

Hmmm, can I really eat this?


Our special baby boy... 1 year ago. I understand the saying "blink of an eye" so much more these days... :)