The Kings: celebrating 1 year

"i'm how old?!"

despite my efforts to keep noah's birthday celebrations fairly low-key, somehow we ended up with a ton of plans and a very busy weekend. fortunately, i think everyone had a good time and we were able to enjoy the company of family and friends.

by some miracle, i was able to get off work from both jobs for the weekend, so the celebrations started on friday with matt's family, who came into town but were unable to attend the actual party on sunday. to accommodate their travel plans, we threw a mini-celebration at panera, where we enjoyed a yummy lunch before watching noah's first attempt to smash/eat a cupcake. he was *not* a fan. he wouldn't smash any of it until he had a fork in his hand, and even with that he wouldn't eat any of it. of course, it was still highly entertaining to watch -- which is really the point, right? we had gone to the watter's creek location, so we walked around a bit before heading home to relax some after an already busy day.

on saturday we spent time with matt's family and took noah for some 1 year pictures with our friend and photographer, leah luquette. by the end of the photo shoot noah was tired, so our efforts to capture yet another cake-smash moment were not so successful. i had purchased a small cake for the occasion, and after removing the candle and attempting to eat the frosting off of that, noah decided he was pretty much done. when i tried to show him there was more cake to play with and eat, he just got upset that there was now cake and frosting on his hands. this resulted in a full-blown meltdown. way to go, mom. :P we promptly put him in the bathtub and washed the blue frosting off of him (and out of his ear!) and after a speedy dinner he went to bed while daddy and the rest of the family went to dinner.

sunday we celebrated with the big party, complete with balloons, cupcakes and cousins. we had lasagna as a main course and bakery-made cupcakes for dessert. we enjoyed spending time with my family and matt's dad and his fiance and tried, yet again, to get noah to enjoy some birthday cupcake. again, he would only attack it with a fork, and again, he wanted no part of it for consumption. good boy :)

all in all, the weekend was a success and i think noah enjoyed the extra attention. and i'm sure that by next year he will be a little more excited about things like birthday parties and cupcakes :)

for lots more pics, click the image below: