Updates galore!

Deacon's 11 month cupcakes...welcome the gorilla.

28 years old and 4 kids later I ran my first 5K! It felt AMAZING!! I'm gearing up for my second race in September.

This was the Suzan G. Koman Race for the Cure and this is what we had our shirts say this year.

My precious Bentley on Mother's Day.

Deacon's 12 month cupcakes...oh how sad that cupcake days are over (for a short season at least:o) I got a little desperate for jungle animals...hence the grand finale with a water buffalo. Crazy that this kiddo is already a year and this chunky monkey is only in the 50%!

I'm not sure but I think he ate the cupcake...it was too fast to tell

The smilely little boy that he is.

The day of his BIG TOP birthday party he woke up to this.

This is his FREE birthday cake from Alberston's. I ordered just a plain white cake and turned it into this myself. I also made this adorable party hat if I do say so myself.

Like I said I threw Deacon a carnival themed birthday party. I made these with an amazing friend (thanks Carrie). I hole punched half holes in the sides of the invites so it looked like a ticket and with the invitation I added self-adhesive wrist bands with all the guests names on them. They were super cute and I got tons of compliments. Thanks everybody!

I made this sign pointing to our back yard.

I had a rainbow colored tent with the food set up underneath. We served 84 hot dogs and tons of nachos along with ranch pretzels and of course animal crackers. We rented this bounce house and had a "WHALE of a good time!"

In the backyard I had the games set up. We had four carnival games and a photo booth on the end. I divided each game with some rope and balloons. I pretty much made everything myself which was really fun to do. I made signs saying what the games were, signs saying how many tickets you got and all the pennant banners. I had everyone try and get a picture with the birthday boy here at the "Photo Booth" I also made the Happy Birthday banner.

Next was the "Duck Pond" Where they chose a duck and whatever color dot was on the bottom determined how many tickets they got.

The "Dart Throw" Personally I thought it was amazing that we never once lost a dart over the fence. At the "Tumbler Toss" They tossed ping pong balls into tumblers and there was a colored circle in the bottom of each one and depending on the color depended on how many tickets they got.

And finally "Squirt Ball" where they tried to see how many ping pong balls they could knock off golf tees with a water gun.

After the kiddos had all their tickets they could redeem them at the prize table which was packed full of all sorts of goodies. We had licorice ropes, regular and swirl lollipops, gumballs, candy necklaces, old fashioned candy sticks, taffy, lemonheads, wrist whistles, clown noses and mini flashlights. All the goodies had a specified number of tickets that were required.

We were also able to get our hands on an old fashioned popcorn popper that was so much fun! For some entertainment we had jugglers... and clowns!

In the photo booth we had this sign "One of a kind photos taken with the world's largest one year old. The Great Deaconini" Later that night we played it up a little. Well Deacon, you probably will never remember this particular birthday party but everyone who was able to attend said it was the best birthday party ever! I love you Deaconini!

Love, Mommy

Thank you everyone who was able to celebrate Deacon's 1st year with us. It really was a one-of-a-kind party and a great success! However, for my crowning achievement: This lover of chocolate cupcakes is FULLY POTTY TRAINED!!