Happy 1st Birthday Carter!!!

Wow! We can't even believe that a year has gone by! We wanted to include all of our family and friends on this special day so we sent out a ton of invites for food and fun at a church pavilion. We had a great turn out, despite the weather. When we first arrived it was extremely windy and rainy. Luckily 20 minutes later, after we got the keys to the church, it calmed down so we bustled to get everything set up outside as originally planned. We couldn't have pulled this off without everyone's help, so THANK YOU!! Everyone was so good to bring food and presents for our little boy.

Carter very much enjoyed his birthday lunch. We let him have it with the supervision of Grandma Jenson while we mingled a little bit and just kept things running. We had about 60 family and friends there, and hopefully everyone had a good time.

CAKE!!!

Of course this is the favorite part of every 1st birthday. We got the 2 cakes for everyone else, and we had just a little one for Carter.

As we sang Happy Birthday to him, he looked like he was going to cry since it was so loud and everyone was looking at him. Then he got a taste of the frosting and the stage fright disappeared!

We couldn't get enough of the cake eating pictures, especially since Carter didn't help us by looking at the camera. He was loving his cake way too much. He was just eating the frosting at first so Christina tried to help him get down to the cake. As soon as he saw the spoon that was his new favorite way to eat his cake. Although, it somehow seemed more messy.


Jared had just turned 1 a couple of weeks ago, so we thought that he should join Carter in the fun of eating, especially since his family was traveling and he didn't get to experience eating his own cake. So we stripped them both down to their diapers and let them have at it, but Jared wasn't so keen on the idea. Carter was willing to help him out though, and tried to give him a few bites.

Unfortunately the video of him eating the cake was actually too long to upload on the blog, but here is the aftermath.

Carter was doing just fine in the mess until he was done and wanted us to pick him up. That is when we had to take him and tried to clean him up. There is no easy way for it to happen unless you have a bathtub. We had a gallon of water, a wash cloth, and wipes. After the 10 minutes of screaming he was pretty happy again. :-)

PRESENTS!!!
Everyone was way to nice! Carter got way more presents than ever expected or needed! He was actually pretty cute with opening them and getting excited about what was inside. He got lots of new toys and clothes. We don't know where we'll put them, but we're excited for all the great stuff.

We love how Carter has his own line of clothes. It makes it fun, especially for the Just One Year line. ;-)

This spinning globe was a Walmart find, that Carter picked up on right away. He is always pointing at all the lights so we thought that this would be perfect, even though it says for ages 5 and up.

We were lucky to have Christina's cousin Andrea & Carl come. They have to get on a bus a few hours earlier than the party, so we're grateful that they made the effort to come.





This was a Kid to Kid find! It is a magnetic board with these cool gears that you can hook up in all different ways. Right now it might be a little old for Carter since he just likes to pull them off, but it kept a bunch of kids, and even a couple of adults entertained.

We are so so SO grateful for everyone's help in making the party a success. It was so fabulous to see everyone! Christina's old roomie, Kristen, even joined in the fun. We are just so lucky to have each of you as family and friends. We are also super lucky to be Carter's parents. He is just a joy to everyone he meets, and we're grateful that you could celebrate with us.

His Loot! :-)

After taking a nap we topped off Carter's birthday with a slurpee from 7-11. This will definitely be a birthday tradition, although we'll have to try and get there when they still have free slurpee cups. Either way, it was fun and Carter of course loved them. Happy Birthday sweet boy!!