The Giesen Family: Caleb's First Birthday

This past Saturday, we hosted Caleb's first birthday party at our house. The weeks (who am I kidding - MONTHS) of preparation finally came to fruition and it turned out to be the perfect day. The high was 84 - unheard of in Alabama in August - with a slight breeze, but as weather.com described it: "abundant sunshine". We had a great turnout and its easy to tell Caleb is loved by so many.

Without further ado, here are some pictures from the event. I'll probably have to divide it into a couple posts to get the abundance of pictures I want to have on here as a keepsake ...

The theme of the party was sock monkeys, and I decided I wanted Caleb to have a custom outfit, topped off with a sock monkey on his butt (I guess I need to come up with a more kid-friendly version of that word soon). My Nana made the shorts and my Aunt Donna embroidered the shirt and shorts. I am so lucky to have such talented relatives, and he looked pretty darn cute in his birthday outfit, if I do say so myself.

We decided to leave a couple of Caleb's toys unwrapped so that the kids could enjoy them at the party, and Noah loved Caleb's new Lightning McQueen motorized car. This next series of photographs is so funny to me: Noah enjoying the car, Caleb deciding he wanted to push Noah in the car, Caleb getting in the car and Noah giving a disapproving look, and finally both Caleb and Noah happy because they had their own separate riding toys. Those boys are going to have so much fun (and probably fights) growing up together.

Here are some of Caleb's daycare buddies that were able to make it to the party. It was so much fun watching them interact outside of daycare.

Nana and Pop made the trip up from Opp, and I'm sure it was worth it playing with their great-grandbabies all day.

Sweet Abigail had a matching dress for Caleb's party - she is always dressed to a "t" and always beautiful!

A shot of some of the crowd at the party.

Mom making sure he stayed hydrated.

We had the pools set up for the kids to play in - they had a blast.

And now the much awaited Cake Smash - here, Caleb is listening to everyone sing him Happy Birthday...

Making sure it is OK for him to be doing this...

Digging in...

He LOVED the cake, and ate so much of it that everyone was afraid he would be sick. He wouldn't stop, so finally we had to take it away from him. Mom said that she never saw a baby enjoy his cake that much, and that if she wouldn't have been there, she would never have believed it. Thankfully, he never got sick and it didn't affect his sleeping.

And finally, present time. Abigail was a big help with opening all of the presents. Every time we got done with one, she said "I open another one", and anytime I tried to help her she would say "No I help you". It was too cute!