Sam's First Birthday

I can't believe our little baby, excuse me -- BOY, is one year old. It seems like just yesterday that I held him for the first time and looked at that pretty red hair.

We actually decided to go have some professional portraits made of Sam for his first birthday. We took a few days off work for his birthday and we didn't want to spend all of our time setting up for and taking pictures. We went to Portrait Innovations. I would really recommend them for your everyday portraits. I don't think they are as good as someone like Lamb Photography though. It was a 30 minute sitting, followed by 30 minutes of picking out photos, and then 20 minutes to print them, so we had our photos that day. Here is a photo montage of some of our favorites.



Friday was Sam's first birthday!!! We went to the Heard Wildlife Sanctuary which is only a few miles from our house. There is also a nature museum there, but we only had a few hours before we were going to go pick my mom up from the airport. Sam really liked being in the backpack, which isn't surprising considering how much he loved the front carrier. It was an absolutely beautiful day! We've been getting a lot of rain lately and the temperatures have mostly been in the 70's and 80's. It's hard to believe that it was 104 degrees when we brought Sam home last year.



We opened presents from family on Friday and had chocolate cupcakes with blue frosting. Sam liked the cupcake a lot better than the cake we got for his portraits. I think the main reason he had more fun was because Cleo was there to help him out.



Saturday was Sam's birthday party. It was an Elmo themed party with red, yellow, and blue balloons and streamers.



I even made an Elmo cake.



Here's a video of Sam "blowing out his candle" and "eating his cake."



We had a great time at Sam's party. I was very glad that he didn't get scared with all the excitement around singing Happy Birthday. I think he was a little used to hearing it since I started singing it to him as soon as he woke up on Friday.



Sam and the fam.



Go to http://share.adoramapix.com/connerfamily/sam-first-birthday for more pictures of Sam's birthday party.



Here's Grandma Mary Lou helping Sam learn how to walk.



Sunday was Hagen's birthday party. It was a construction theme and Hagen had a t-shirt that said "I dig being 1." He had a blast eating meatballs and digging into his cake. He was really excited that he got a big Tonka truck to push around the house. Sam was in a really bad mood that morning so we were late to the party and we were scared that we might have to leave early. But he had a blast as soon as we got there. There was so much excitement and so many toys that there was no way he could stay in a bad mood. We were also concerned that Sam might think it was another party for him after three straight days of parties and cakes. There was a 10 month old boy there named Sam who took his first steps at the party. Our Sam must have viewed that as a challenge because he started walking -- on his own -- no walker!!!



He's been scootin' around the house ever since. I think I even caught him trying to run this evening.

Sam loved all the toys he got for his birthday, but the biggest was a tent full of stuffed animals from Ian and Roya. He loves to crawl in there and hug all of them.



Here's Sam getting a big hug from Aunt Andrea. My two favorite red heads!



This is a photo of my Mother's Day mom's-night-out with my mom's group. We had a blast and it was nice to get away for an evening. It was the first time in a long time that Chris got to feed Sam his dinner. It was definitely the first time that he had to do the whole bedtime routine on his own. He did a great job and even got to spend a quiet evening at home alone.