John's Birthday Party!

Well, I think I am finally recovered from John's party. Too bad it is now just over a week away from Christmas and I am sooooooo far from being ready for that!

John's birthday was a very long but special day. I was so glad to be able to take the day off of work to celebrate the big day! We started out the day with some presents and then when I happened to look out the window, it was SNOWING! What a great first birthday present for John! After breakfast (egg-free!) at IHOP and a check-up with the doctor (John is doing great!!), we had a party for the mom's group. This was a blast! We had a total of 13 babies and 16 adults at the party which made for a crowded living room! I don't think the babies minded one bit.












Saturday's family party was so fun too! We had lots of yummy food, had an airplane-making contest (Grandma's was the funniest...especially when Dad said there was no way it was going to fly), and great cake. John LOVED his egg-free cake, although he mostly ate the icing. John had tons of gifts- he is so spoiled by his family! Between the two parties, we still have toys sitting in their boxes. Hmmm...maybe they will reappear under the tree next week. :)









Only two more days of school! I can't wait for a two week break!!!

Birthday Set Up!

I can't believe that tomorrow is John's FIRST birthday!! Just one year ago he was just a teeny tiny baby and now he is my big boy. I am so excited to celebrate the big day tomorrow!

I have been working for a while on John's birthday. This is mostly due to the fact that I had a student teacher for the past 11 weeks and had time to kill! I am very glad I spent my time wisely (lots of lesson plans done and lots of party decorations done!) so now I am not stressed out and am almost ready for tomorrow.

I have shown a couple sneak peaks, so here are some more full detailed decorations for John's airplane themed party.

**John's Party Invitation**
I got the idea from a similar one I saw online. I spent about an hour or so creating it on the computer and just printed it out and mailed it. Very cheap! I got lots of compliments on it and it really helped to set the theme for the party.



**Month by Month**
I had thought of making a long banner with pictures of all of John's 'firsts'. Yes I was going to totally copy Kinsey's idea! :) But I figured that would take forever considering I took pictures of EVERY first. I mean, do people really want to see a picture of the first time John had juice? So I modified and made a decorated page of a favorite picture from each month. Then I 'helped' Brad hang them up in a grid on the wall in the kitchen. It actually turned out pretty nicely! I used the tons of scrapbook stuff I already had as well as a gift card that I had to Michael's. So this turned out to be about a $40 project, but I had TONS of stickers left over from what I bought at Michael's so I could have done this for much cheaper. {Notice in the pictures that my table of food isn't set up yet, so ignore that!}





**Mantel Decor**
I joked with Brad that my biggest problem was I didn't know where to put all the decorations that I was making! So a banner and paper airplane 'burst' adorn the mantel, along with a book and toys that my mom got John. Brad so kindly let me use one of his model airplanes as well. The airplane 'burst' was the most frustrating thing to make! I found the idea online but mine kept looking like crap. I finally made different sized planes and that seemed to make it look nicer. I am still not in love with it, but I think it is a cool little twist to the decorations!






**Party Favors**
I really wanted to make cute little favor bags that looked like suitcases. But I am not that artsy so I just made a luggage tag for each guest and attached that to the paper bag. Each kid will get a pilot rubber ducky, a personalized sippy cup, and a little baggie of puffs and raisens. I set them up in our suitcase, even though I would have loved to have used an old bright blue hard-sided suitcase! I am too cheap to buy one from the thrift store though. :)





I also made little employee ID badges for each kid. It was super easy to make and it has John's birthdate for all the employee numbers. Thanks to my dad, Brad and I have been proud owners of a wing tip, but up until now I have banned that ugly thing to the backyard. However, it was perfect for our party! So, I put it on the dining room table so people could see it as soon as they walked in the door. I attached ribbon to it and hung the badges across it for the kids to get when they arrive and can wear them. Probably a little cheesy, but still cute. I figure that we can also put the presents on this table so they are out of the way!






So, these are some of the things I have been working on for the past couple weeks (or months!). Once I set up the rest tomorrow and have 'action' shots, I will post those too. Hopefully the babies have a blast tomorrow!

Christmas before Thanksgiving?...and sneak peak #2!!!

Brad and I took John John to the Shops at Legacy in Plano for a Holiday Kick-Off Festival Extravaganza. (probably not the real name!) Brad wasn't too happy about celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving was days away, but it was a nice afternoon out. The weather was gorgeous so it was great to walk John around and see the beginnings of the holiday season.

trying to take pictures by the pond


trying out some musical instruments



petting a horse for the first time...he wasn't afraid at all!!



loving the fountain show!


We are just over a week away until John's first birthday party! I am just working away to get everything done but my to-do list seems to be getting longer instead of shorter! So, here are two more sneak peaks. (Al- Don't tell Bella about her party goody!)

Sneak Peak

Here is a sneak peak of what I have been working on for John's 1st birthday. Thankfully my friend Rebecca invited me to 'crop night' at a scrapbook store and I got the majority of these pages done as part of the party decorations. I can't wait to put it all together for the big day!

Shutterfly

I am slowly but surely adding pics to shutterfly. As I type, I am uploading over 200 pictures of my precious little baby into the 7 months folder. You can understand it will take me FOREVER to sort through which pictures to add so I am adding them all and you lovely viewers can see for yourself why I simply MUST take over 200 photos per month of John. Because he. is. awesome.

www.sweetbabyjohn.shutterfly.com
Don't have time to look at thousands of pictures of JAB (what?!?!?), then here is just one to tease you...

Good and bad news though...our camera is breaking on us. (overuse maybe?! hehe!) We have repaired it about a year ago when Mr. Clutz dropped it (in possibly a drunken stupor on the same night the moniker 'Mop Top' was created). Mr. Clutz reappeared with Mrs. Clutz on Halloween night and the camera was dropped again. Said camera works when it feels good and ready to take a picture. Therefore we are probably in the market for a new camera...and ASAP since John's birthday is quickly approaching and the last thing I need is the stress of not having a working camera on December 2ND!! Tears (and heads) will rolls for sure. Anyone have suggestions for a new camera?

sweetbabyjohn

This weekend we took John to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch along with Al, Tyler, Bella, mom, dad, and Diana. We had so much fun! For TONS of cute pictures, go to www.sweetbabyjohn.shutterfly.com. I will be hopefully adding more pictures from the last couple months soon. :)

Where to begin...

Well, I haven't posted in a couple week so I don't even know where to begin.

The biggest news around here is that John is officially walking. Can't beleive it! Today he has even mastered standing up on his own without pulling up on anything. He just stands up and walks! So cute!

Two weekends ago Jenny was in town so I took the day off to visit with her. I took John to meet her in Dallas where we had a last breakfast (John LOVED the eggs and potatos!) and then hung out at the pool. John had a blast in the pool with Jenny and was such a happy baby the whole visit. Then Brad and I went to the A&M game at the new Cowboy stadium with Jenny, Jeff and other friends which was really fun as well.















Last weekend was 'family weekend' and we had high hopes of taking John out somewhere fun. Unfortunately he got some kind of stomach virus and was sick the whole weekend. But I am taking him to the dr tomorrow (on a non-related ear infection check-up) so I am taking him to story time at the library and going to playgroup! I am so excited to take the day off with him!

Today Brad found four baby bunnies in the backyard right outside their rabbit hole. (and I didn't run them over with the lawn mower this time!) We took John outside to look at them, although the bunnies weren't doing too much. So we saw a whole of bunnies sitting, breathing, and licking each other. They were TINY and sweet. John was interested in them, but we obviously didn't let him touch the rabbits. We took a pic of John's hand in comparison to show how small the bunnies were. So cute!









The next couple weekends will be filled with visits to the pumpkin patch, football games, birthday parties and Halloween parties. Almost every weekend is planned until the middle of December! John is just quite the social butterfly! So I will be posting more pictures of all our fun adventures soon. Until then, here are some cute random pics...