1st Birthday Party!

Sorry Erin, I meant to post the pictures from Grant's 1st birthday party before we left for our trip to Kimberling City, MO, but we got too busy packing for our 6am flight Monday morning (what were we thinking booking a 6am flight?!). Hopefully I can post the pictures from his actual birthday sometime early this week.

Since we were going to be out of town the week of Grant's birthday and this weekend is July 4th, we decided to have some people over to celebrate the big event, last weekend. It was somewhat stressful planning a party right before going out of town, but it was definitely worth it. Shannon and I went back and forth on what exactly we wanted to serve at the party. We both thought that it would be good to fire up the grill (brats, sliders and sweet potato fries), but couldn't decide on what kind of dessert to have. I wanted homemade ice cream with different toppings and Shannon wanted to make a special cake for his birthday... so we compromised and had both! It was a great decision in my opinion. Shannon made a fantastic looking monkey cake and I prepared a ridiculous amount of ice cream toppings (but the best topping by far was the Reese's syrup!).

A delicious layered chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, donut ears, sprinkles for hair and peppermint patty eyes.

Grant with his girls, Mich, Casey, and Erica

Party people

Singing 'Happy Birthday'

Grant staring at his cake (he did not dig right in)

Shannon offering him some (he did not want any part of it)

Grant finally trying a little bit (he still didn't really want it)

Still doesn't want to eat the cake, but he's having fun anyway

...it sure was fun to play with at least

Grant with his buddy Andrew and his dad, Chris

Even though we've already shown quite a few pictures in this post, we wanted to share some from Grant's last swimming lesson. He is now a graduate of his first parent-tot swimming class!

Grant playing on the swimming mat

Before going under water

Just after coming out of the water (he usually does pretty good with that)

For the finale, Shannon and Grant had to go down the slide

P.S. Happy 4th of July from our family to yours!