Jax's First Birthday

We gathered at Carolyn and Brent's to celebrate Jax's 1st birthday. The birthday boy had been a little cranky during much of the day...or at least the part of the day when I was there. He had a cough and a runny nose, so he wasn't in tip-top form. The theme of the party was "baseball", so his personal little cake was in the shape of a baseball.  The cake intended for the rest of us was decorated to look like a baseball field.

After thoroughly plastering himself in cake (his first true adventure in big kids food), we moved to the living room for the gift opening.  He was surrounded by gift bags and boxes and one curiously wrapped large gift from the Garner family.  He didn't know what to do.  He went from gift to gift, pulling one thing out of a bag and then moving on to the next bag.  With a lot of help from his sisters, he managed to get everything out of the wrappings and onto the floor.

The hit of the evening, for all the kids, was the Elmo carpenter workbench (which was the curiously wrapped gift) that Wendy and Zane brought.  Gage and Kelly couldn't be there...they were at baseball practice.

At first, Jax didn't want to try his cake.  But after he got a 
little "forced" taste, he went to town on it!

Wendy and Robin got a laugh about something, while Carolyn directed a "look" at Carlee for some reason.

Pa, Pop, Kate, Jax and Carolyn...all doing their own thing.

Tyler, Carlee and Kate "helping" Jax with the Elmo carpenter bench

Sunday Lunch

The Little League barbeque chicken dinner was today, so Kelly took all the tickets and picked up the meals for us. Since Wendy's birthday was just a few days ago, we decided to make this her special celebration, too.

Here are a couple of videos, one of Jax doing nothing in particular, and the next of Carlee, performing, as usual. She was reciting nursery rhymes in her own special way. Sorry for the poor video quality of Carlee. It seems as if my photos and videos of her are often over-exposed looking.






After dinner, we sang Happy Birthday to Wendy...in several keys. She blew out our ceremonial two candles and then we dug into yummy brownies and ice cream.

Kelly and Brent then took the older four kids out with baseball gloves, tees, bats and balls and they had a little practice. Well, actually Carlee didn't participate in that...instead she morphed into her school marm persona and put her mom and Wendy through their paces.