It's My Party I'll Smile If I Want To!

Is it already the end of October?  It’s been a busy and wonderful month! 

First, at the end of September on the 29^th was Ryan’s 1^st birthday!  Ryan got to celebrate his birthday with loads of new and old friends in Virginia City NV.  This special trip is one of my favorite car club events.  Virginia City is a neat old gold mining town and is so pretty.  The car club hosts a few dinners after each day of “playing” with cars.  On Saturday the 29^th, Grandma Cec and Grandpa John had arranged for a beautiful birthday cake to celebrate Ryan’s big day!  The car club sang him Happy Birthday and he tried some cake … he’s getting the hang of finger food – especially when the food laid out in front of him is chocolate!   

Hanging out and playing with cars:

A nice view from the restaurant where we celebrated Ryan's birthday ... it's such a beautiful place!

Happy family:

Ryan's Birthday cake:

Make a wish!

We were pretty tired, but still made room for some cake!

We started October by celebrating Ryan’s first birthday with a big party – celebrating Ryan’s first year and our first year as parents!  We went “big” since we felt that the three of us deserved a good celebration.  It was an eventful year – but one worth celebrating as we wouldn't change a thing!  And in addition to celebrating his birthday, we loved that it was also Dwarfism Awareness Month!  Hooray!

  

Ryan’s party was such a great day.  We held the party at a park in our area.  We reserved a fantastic picnic spot and set it up with our awesome race car theme!  From checkered flags to a Cars themed cake to race car “rubber ducky” favors – we had a blast creating this party.  Ryan is a lucky boy – he had tons of friends and family come by to celebrate his special day!  We caught up with friends, enjoyed loads of food and drinks and just enjoyed ourselves outside in the perfect weather!  And Ryan got more cake – he made a rather large chunk of cake disappear so looks like he’s getting the hang of finger food … and chocolate! 

Here are some nice views of the party ...

Cake time!  

Yummy!

What a lucky boy!!!

Last Halloween was Ryan’s first Halloween technically, but since he was just a month old we didn't do much to celebrate.  This year, we decided that Ryan would appreciate the pumpkin patch!  We found one in our area that wasn't overwhelmed by the blow-up slides and jump houses – it is just a classic pumpkin patch full of pumpkins, hay and scarecrows!  We let Ryan explore some of the pumpkins … though it seems he liked the hay most of all!  I think that Ryan could literally find a needle in a hay stack!  He just loves piecing through bits of paper, dirt, etc.  Such a critical thinker already!

Here we are at the pumpkin patch ..

After enjoying the sites, we picked a few pumpkins and brought them home for our porch!  Looks so cute! 

In addition to chocolate cake, we have been working on Ryan’s finger food skills … here are a few recent experiences …

Yum Yum avocado!

Tofu just like mommy!

The last few weeks of this month were big weeks for Ryan!  

He is able to to sit himself up from crawling!  This brought on a wonderful sense of freedom that he had been wanting so badly!  

He is also pulling himself up and cruising!  Time for me to learn how to hem pants!  Walking will be here before we know it!

And in addition to these big motor skills, we have at least SIX teeth coming in!  Whew!! 

 And with all of these big events, we couldn't miss rooting for the Giants and their big World Series win!  Every time the crowd cheered, Ryan would clap along with!  ... we still have to work on differentiating between our team and the team we're playing!  

More to come soon … on to the next adventure …