Clark’s Birthday Slideshow

For your viewing pleasure:

Clark’s SUPER Party!

It is still sinking in that Clark is already ONE!!

We have had such a wonderful year with our boy.  He is sweet and friendly and just so stinkin’ cute!!  We could not be more proud!  So to celebrate, we knew that we wanted to throw him a birthday party.

With a name like his, it’s hard not to think of Clark Kent.  Even Clark thought of himself as Superman. (Remember his 4 month photo?)  So I really wanted his party to have a Superhero theme.  (Which you may have guessed from my hint a couple weeks ago)

Bob found really cute invitations on Vistaprint that totally fit our theme and featured a little boy that we both thought sort of resembled Clark.

I went with yellow, blue and red as the main colors when I set the table with our party food.The red table cloth is just one of those plastic ones you can get at any party store (they are pretty cheap and I like to use them when we have parties because you can just throw them away after if any big spills/messes happen).  The blue and yellow “runner” is made out of fabric napkins that I already had.

You can see from the picture that we had a lot of food.  We chose to go with several choices of heavy hors d’oeuvres instead of a meal.  Here’s a menu breakdown:

• mini pigs in a blanket
• sausage wontons
• homemade mac n’ cheese
• deviled eggs
• italian pinwheels
• baked brie
• cocktail meatballs
• homemade salsa and chips
• veggie tray
• fruit salad
• potato chips/pretzels

We hung a few balloons over the table and I made some tissue poms to hang above the bay window where we put the gifts.

We sort of have two doors that lead into our house.  The front door that opens to a small vestibule with a coat closet and then a door that leads into the living room.  I decorated the living room door to look like a telephone booth.  Ya know, so everyone could change into their alter-egos before coming in to the party.

I hung Clark’s monthly pictures from the mantel by stapling them to a couple pieces of thick ribbon.  I also had a lot of fun making comic book speech bubbles to hang around the house.  (BANG!)

See that last picture of Clark on the mantel?  On Friday, my mom and I dressed him up as Clark Kent for a little photo shoot.  I made the blue onesie and he wore it on Saturday for the party.What a cutie!  This picture cracks me up!

On one of the walls in our living room, I wanted a comic book-esque city scape for people to use as a photo backdrop to take silly pictures.

My mom and brother-in-law Kevin did an awesome job executing the project!  It came out exactly how I had envisioned it!I made a few props (a cape, couple masks and some speech bubbles to hold) and a few people were brave enough to take some pictures at the beginning of the party.

Bob’s mom, Bob’s sister-Leslie, my sister-Ellen
(Hope my mother-in-law forgives me for posting this picture)

Christine and Dave
Seriously…save the date photo? 🙂

Clark with Christine and Brittany (appropriately in her Clark Kent glasses)

My dad with Clark

And of course I wanted a family photo.  This was the best one we got because Clark thought my mask was hilarious.The speech bubbles got used for regular photos too, since some people felt “too cool” for the backdrop.

Kara, Rusty

My Mom and her dog, Jake

Most of the guests were adults.  But Clark got to play/flirt with Izzy (20 months) while we all oohed and aahed at how cute they were.Oh yeah, and see the TV in the background?  I made a slideshow of pictures from Clark’s first year that we played on mute in the background throughout the party.  (I’ll post the slideshow later this week or next)

Of course, no birthday is complete without cake!  Clarky got his own cupcake when we sang him Happy Birthday. He kind of liked it, but by this point, he was pretty tired so he didn’t eat very much.

I had big plans to decorate the cake in some really cool way, but when it came down to it, I ran out of time and ended up with this.It’s a double layer yellow cake with chocolate icing.  My mom made it, and the tray that it’s on is the one she always used for our birthday cakes growing up.  Gotta love that 70’s yellow paisley! 🙂

Shortly after cake, Clark went down for a nap, so most guests started leaving.  I made sure guests didn’t leave empty handed.  Everyone got a little bag of sugar cookies that I decorated with a number 1 in the Superman symbol.  This was after the party, when most of the favors were gone.

When Clark woke up, we opened his gifts.  (Clark is so very loved by friends and family!!)  Our mantel still looks like this from all the cards he got.It was a great day of celebrating our little guy and a full year of being parents!  Thanks so much to friends and family who helped make it so special!!  (And a special thanks to my mom, Leslie, Kevin, and Ellen who REALLY helped with cooking and setting up the decorations!)

Just Keep Swimming…

(Name that movie…)

Clark and I had our first Mommy & Me swim class last night!  He has been a water baby since his first time in a pool back in May.  Since then, he has swam in pools, a lake in Texas, and even dipped his toes in the ocean while we were in Florida over the holidays.

Bob’s cousin, Dave won 6 free weeks of Mommy and Me swim classes at a silent auction back in December.  It was one of the coolest Christmas gifts we got this year!  I called them immediately and signed up for their next available session.

But first, a hilarious story from my childhood:  When we were little, my mom put my siblings and I on the swim team at our country club.  We were never any good and always just swam the exhibition races.  But it was kind of fun to go to the away meets and play cards and eat FunDip while we weren’t swimming.  Well…when I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, one meet I was placed in an exhibition 25 meter (one length of the pool) back stroke race.

I really didn’t care about winning (because I was terrible and it didn’t count anyway) and I always hated the back stroke.  For some reason, I closed my eyes during the race even though I was on my back AND had goggles on.  This meant I didn’t realize that halfway down the lane, I somehow managed to turn myself around and started swimming in the opposite direction!!  My mom said everyone was yelling, “TURN AROUND!”, but my ears were also submerged under water and I obviously only heard muffled cheering!  I reached the wall, opened my eyes to see what place I got and only then did I finally see that I was right back at the start!!  They even made me turn around again and finish!  HOW EMBARRASSING!!

Here’s hoping Clark doesn’t get MY swimming skills!

Anyway, my sister came up from Bethesda for the night last night, so she was able to come observe the lesson and (BONUS!!) take some pictures and videos!He looks like such a big boy!!!  Baywatch hunk?Ready for our lessons!!!

And a little video…

If you ask me, I think he’s a natural!  Watch out Michael Phelps!!  Can’t wait to see how much he learns in the next 5 weeks!

P.S.  We are 95% finished with the Craigslist buffet.  Hopefully I can get the finished product posted by the end of this week.

P.P.S.  How is it possible that my baby will be ONE YEAR OLD on Friday?!?!?!

 

Party Prep: Sneak Peek

Clark turns ONE on the 15th (next Friday)!!!  WHAT?!?!  Crazy.  His party is that weekend, and I’ve been trying to get a head start on the decorations since we’ll be out of town this weekend.  Here’s a little peek at some of the things I’ve done so far.  Can you tell what the theme is?

I’m beyond excited to celebrate this little guy’s first year!!

Clark the Builder

Clark has these great blocks from Land of Nod.  We play with them in his room a lot.  When he was a little younger (like crawling age), Bob would stack the blocks really tall and Clark thought it was hilarious to knock them over and hear them crash to the floor.  Last night, he impressed us with his own stacking skills.

His tallest tower was probably about 5 – 6 blocks high.  I’m so proud of our baby boy!  I can’t believe how much he is growing and learning every day.