Watch Out, LeBron

Tyler has become very interested in the basketball in our garage.  Finally, one day I suggested we get it out and shoot some hoops.

I think we may have a basketball fan on our hands.

Stacking

Sometimes when I'm cooking, Tyler wants to be in the kitchen with me.  One of his favorite things to do is sneaking into the pantry and pulling stuff out.  No, it's not the best thing for him to do, but it keeps him occupied and we've moved all the "he shouldn't mess with that" stuff up to higher shelves.

Besides, if I kept him from playing in the pantry, I wouldn't have captured this moment from a few weeks back:

stacking Mama's soda cans

Hmm, that's a little ambitious...

sad...

Birthday Party, for real this time

Six weeks after his party, and I'm just now getting around to this...

Tyler loves dinosaurs, so picking the theme for his first birthday was pretty straightforward.  Thanks to Jason for being so great taking pictures that day.  As usual, I was in my get-things-done mania, so my camera was left pretty much untouched the whole time.

The Decorations:

Oriental Trading Company had some really cute dinosaur decorations, so I bought invitations, plates, napkins, and a few balloons from them and supplemented with solids from other/cheaper locations.  As for dinosaurs, I used Tyler's toys, a few things I picked up at the Dollar Tree, and a giant bag of borrowed dinosaurs from my friend Kristen.

Jill and Jodi were nice enough to come a few hours early and help out with last-minute details.  Jill did the majority of the decorating.  She did a phenomenal job, especially since my directions were "Here's the stuff... decorate."  Yep, that was my artistic vision for the party. :)

tee hee

The Food:

The party was at 1:00 to ensure little man would get a nap beforehand, so I had a difficult time trying to figure out what food to make (lunch? snacks?).  This is what I ended up with:

Cupcakes

Meatballs

Buffalo chicken dip and tortilla chips

Potato chips

Veggie platter and dip

Fruit platter (more on this later)

Cheese and crackers

Peanuts

I got the cupcakes and Tyler's smash cake from Whole Foods, who not only make delicious (reasonably cheap) cakes, but also decorated them with dinosaurs matching Tyler's decorations!

I chose foods that could be prepared ahead of time and (aside from the buffalo dip) I had made a million and a half times.  My ONE ambitious venture into the land of Pinterest party ideas was the watermelon dinosaur:

I'm pretty proud of how he turned out.  The added bonus was if it had been a massive failure, I could have just made a bowl of fruit and no one would have been the wiser.  No risk, lot of reward!

The Birthday Boy:
Tyler was napping during most of the party prep.  When we brought him into the dining room, he kept reaching out and saying "Diiiiiiii!"  I think I did ok picking out a dinosaur theme for the party. :)

This picture makes me laugh.  What is he doing?  

Also, a word about his shirt.  I looked all around for birthday shirts and couldn't find one anywhere that I liked.  So we just bought him a new dinosaur shirt for the event.  It's a T-Rex with reaching tools (you know, for people to grab things out of their reach) and the bottom says Unstoppable Rex.  Yes, we're dorks, but you already know that, don't you?

The Cake:
We did get him a smash cake.  We tried to feed it to him at the beginning of the party, but he wasn't too excited.  I think it was all the hubbub and the fact that he hadn't had lunch.  We tried again after he had some food and he was all about it!

"ooh, what's this thing?"

munching on the candle

mmm!

"that stuff is goooooooood!"

Um, so quick story about the next picture.  A long time ago, Tyler started requesting the Map Song from Dora when he was eating.  Jason and I would sing it and sway back and forth.  Now, when he requests it, he does this...

Our lil weirdo...

A little side note:  Jason and I were horrible about capturing everyone else that was at the party (Davenports and Selfs).  I guess we were a little Tyler-centric that day (...and every day).  We are very thankful they came.  Sorry we didn't document it.

Anyway, last category,
Presents:

reading his cards

tearing off the paper

The party was pretty cut and dry -- eat some food, watch him open presents, hang out.  Jason and his folks went outside to set up Tyler's swing set, and that's about it.  That was our main gift to him.  We also got him a dinosaur sweatshirt (he picked it out on our buy-a-dino-shirt shopping trip, but it wasn't exactly weather-appropriate for August) and two books (a Peppa book and Peek a Moo, which is basically baby crack and has to be hidden from Tyler when we don't feel like reading it 20 times in a row).

Thanks for reading!