James is One!

Elsa's buddy, James, officially turned the big ONE yesterday, and Kate did such a fantastic job pulling together a very creative birthday party on Saturday. The little guy loves -- and I mean loves -- to put anything and everything into his mouth... especially sticks and leaves and such. So it was a brilliant idea to have the theme of this birthday party be just that. Fall leaves adorned the doorways; the kids got to make bird feeders out of pinecones, peanut butter, and bird seed; and much fun was had decorating little "hills" with "mud," "sticks," "rocks," "woodchips," and "dirt." Elsa sadly didn't take one bite of her cupcake, but she did quite enjoy eating many a marshmallow (the "rocks") and carried around as many pretzel "sticks" as she could handle.

As all of the children in attendance of Elsa's party did for Elsa when she turned one, Elsa coached James in opening all of his presents. And then proceeded to ask to open the packaging of every toy. "Elsa want to play with it! Elsa want to play with it!" Kate and Tim were gracious enough to actually open most of the toys and allow all the little ones to test them out. Some of us moms were joking that it was like a preview for what they might want Santa to bring them for Christmas.

Can he really be a year old already? Happy birthday to you, big guy!