Road Trip

We took a last minute road trip to Florida this weekend!  I love feeling like we're never too old to decide on a Wednesday that we're going to the beach for the weekend and then just doing it! I also love the beach. I love looking at the ocean and hearing the waves crash. Going to the beach was always such a special treat of us when I was growing up. We'd go maybe once or twice a year and I will never forget how we longed to get our first glimpse of the ocean as we drove closer and closer to our destination. I had many family vacations - with grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. - to the very beach we went to this weekend. That place holds so many wonderful memories for me, and now I've added some more memories that I will cherish forever. Here are just a couple of pics of what I can now close my eyes and remember with love:

Family photos

I love photos.  I don't think I always have - I never thought I looked good in pictures and really I didn't during the awkward years of middle school and some of high school.  At some point right after college, though, when I got my first digital camera and could freely take photos and get the instant gratification of seeing what they looked like and retaking the picture until I was happy with it, I began to love them.  I saw photos as a way of capturing memories that otherwise I may one day forget.  Now that I have a son I take a million potos because I know that each moment and each stage in his life is so fleeting... I want to hang onto just a little part of it.

Last month we had some more family photos taken to celebrate Brady's first birthday.  I've posted most of them on Facebook already, but here are a few of my favorites:

Thank to Jody Lynn Photography for such wonderful photos!  Now if only I had enough wall space to display all of them!

Love

I was looking through some pictures that I took last weekend and realized (again) how much I love seeing my husband with my son.  That man loves his baby boy like nothing I've ever seen.  I think I fall in love with him all over again when I see a moment like this:

MrKLB was reading a story to Brady before bed and after the story finished he turned him around to rock him and pat him on the back like he always does.  Almost always, Brady immediately lays his head down on MrKLB's shoulder and wraps his arm around like he is giving him a hug.  I've noticed, though, that even after Brady is clearly falling asleep MrKLB doesn't want to let go.  He just sits there, holding his son, at peace.

Now that Brady is getting older, MrKLB is having even more fun playing with him.  Brady has started to enjoy throwing balls, and this weekend MrKLB got out a baseball and they were playing with it.  Throwing the baseball with his son is one of those moments MrKLB has dreamed about since before Brady existed.

The love MrKLB feels for his son is definitely returned...

And in other news, our little man took his first steps last night!  He has been walking around pushing toys or chairs or whatever he can find for a while now, but this is the first time he has decided to let go and actually take a few steps on his own!  He took one step towards his Daddy and then later 2 steps towards his Mommy.  We are so excited!  There will be no stopping him soon!

Brady's Blog Book

As I've mentioned on here before, I've been keeping a blog for Brady that chronicles his developments and activities.  We post lots of photos there to share with family and friends and make posts when he first rolls over, first crawls, etc.  Well, now that we've had one year of blogging, I decided to create a book for him so that he can have it in the future.  Since I've been such a slacker at keeping his "baby book" updated, I figure this will do since it's got tons of photos and all of the important dates and other information.

Here's what I did:  I used Blog2Print to create a PDF from the blog.  This is a very straightforward website that will allow you to select which entries to include and automatically populates the book with the entires. The good news is that it is simple.  The bad news is that it doesn't provide a lot of editing options.  The other alternatives seemed like they would take too much time, so I decided to accept Blog2Print's limitations.  Anyway, instead of printing it through Blog2Print I decided to purchase the PDF and then used Lulu to print out the book.  I updated the index a little, created my own cover, and then printed it out.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out!

First, here is a screen capture of Brady's blog:

And now here is the book.  You can see I tried to make the cover look like the blog:

The binding:

The back cover.  I made it look like a real book with an "author bio" and quotes from critics - who happen to be Brady's Mommy and Daddy!

Here is a look inside the book.  The photos aren't quite as big as I would like them to be, but again, not a lot of formatting options with Blog2Print.  This book is over 270 pages, though, so I guess if the photos were bigger it would be even more pages!

There you go!  Brady's first year all wrapped up in a hardback book.  Now on to Year 2!

Brady's 1st Birthday Party!

We had Brady's 1st birthday party on Saturday.  They say that the first birthday is really for the parents, and if so, I just have to say that is was MY favorite birthday party ever!  It really was everything I had envisioned - lots of family and friends eating, drinking, and talking; kids running around in the yard playing in the sprinklers; a smash cake being totally demolished; oooohs and aaaahs over the food, decorations, and cupcakes!

Here is the cake table the night before the party:

I made the banner using some white cardstock I had leftover from making our wedding invitations!  I just printed out the letters, cut them, and then used blue ribbon from Michael's to string them together.

Here are some of the details of the decorations.  Let's start with the cupcake stand and cake topper:

For the cake stand I bought the Petite Square Cupcake Tree from http://www.cupcaketree.com/.  I decorated it by spraypainting it blue and then glueing the red and white ribbon on (spraypaint and ribbon from Michael's).

I got the cake topper from Etsy seller SpiritMama.  When it first arrived it was more of an aqua color and I wanted it to be baby blue, so I contacted SpiritMama and she was extremely gracious and offered to repaint it if I sent it back to her.  She made a quick turnaround and I had it back in a few days and it was perfect!  I love Etsy!

Next are the pinwheel displays:

The red containers are from Blumebox and they are the 8" blumebox in red burst.  I also bought some 4" white cubes from there that I decorated with argyle and put the plasticware in.

I made the pinwheels with the help of MrKLB using a combination of instructions I found here and here.  Basically I used all of the supplies listed in the first one, but didn't use the pattern to cut the paper and instead used single sheets of paper as described in the second link.  I bought 2 12x12 pieces of cardstock to make the large red and blue pinwheels and then printed the argyle on white cardstock to make the smaller ones.  I also used wooden dowels, wooden tie pegs, wooden spools, and grommets that I purchased at Michael's.  MrKLB helped me drill the holes in the wooden dowels and put the grommets in the center.  It was actually much easier than I expected it to be and I thought they really added a nice touch.

The blue tablecloths were from Publix and the white and red paper lanterns were from Asian Ideas.  (I also hung the lanterns on our deck and used them as centerpieces on the dining room table, but I don't think I have photos of that.)  Then I threw the birthday invitation into a frame we already had and used Brady's sock monkey to complete the table.

We've taken a photo of Brady with his big Mickey Mouse each month so that we can see how he has grown and changed.  I printed all 12 photos and taped them to ribbon and hung them in one of our doorways:

The cake and cupcakes were delivered by The Cake Lady herself (aka Eileen Carter) on the day of the party and they were sooo cute and delicious!  Here is the table all setup before the party:

I made this sign for the front yard:

The kids had a great time playing in the yard with Brady's new pirate ship water table and turtle sprinkler:

Brady's new wagon was also put to good use:

My beautiful niece:

Then of course we had to sing Happy Birthday and watch Brady smash his cake:

He started slow...

Then he dug in a little more...

Now he's getting the hang of it!

Everyone cheered for him and he was very proud of the mess he was making:

What did I do?

The end: total cake destruction!

As I've said, we really had the best time and I'm so thankful that we could celebrate this day with so many family and friends around us.  There were so many kids and adults running around that it was a hectic party, but we had a great time and managed to get one quick family photo, which I will cherish: