Darek's 1st Birthday!

Tonight we celebrated Darek's 1st birthday. Darek will officially be 1 on Friday. Ryan has a CRAZY schedule this week and this was the only evening that he was going to be available. We had a great night.

Wasn't quite sure what to make of the bib.

We started with pizza for dinner (baby food for Darek). After dinner everyone watched while Darek and Alex opened Darek's presents. He loved every present he opened and didn't want to move on to the next one. He was a little overwhelmed when everything was opened. He could not decide what he wanted to play with first.

Alex loved helping Darek

After almost everything that he did, he had to clap :)

And why didn't we just get him wrapping paper for his birthday???

More clapping

We took him away from presents, stripped him down to his diaper and got him ready for his cake. I don't know what it is with me and cakes, but we had issues with one of the cakes. I had ordered and Pooh Bear cake from Walmart and they gave me a free 1st birthday cake for Darek. They made it really cute to match the big cake. But before we even got in the car it started falling apart. Turns out it wasn't made well and I had to go back in to pick up a second one. It all worked out in the end and I can't complain too much about a free cake! Darek did enjoy his cake. The second I put it on his high chair, he stuck his hands in. I gave him a little bite of the frosting and he enjoyed it but wasn't quite sure about it. He mostly enjoyed just playing in it. My favorite part was when he got his hands just covered in frosting and started clapping. He got frosting everywhere, but it was hilarious! He was so cute and so funny. Because it was green frosting, he kinda turned into the Hulk. After he was tired of playing in the cake, I took him upstairs for a couple baths. The water turned a beautiful lime green and even after the second bath and a lot of soap, he still smelled like cake.

Singing "Happy Birthday"

Alex blowing out the candle for Darek

Wasting no time

What is this stuff???

Perfect... He had so much frosting in that ear.

Ok. All done!

He was so happy to be in the bath. Although the water looks yellow, it was very green.

Naked boy playing with his Papa.

After cake and ice cream, we let him loose on his toys. He's getting so big now and tries to stand up on his own. He loves all his new toys and knows how to get them started. It's so fun watching him and his little mind at work. He learns new things every day and I am always amazed at how quickly he can pick things up.

When Ryan had to leave for work tonight, we got to see Darek do a sweet thing for the first (well, second) time. As his Daddy was saying goodbye to him, he waved goodbye to his Daddy. There was a unanimous "oooohhhh" from everyone in the room and I totally choked back tears. Ryan said he did this a little earlier today when he was alone with him.

It was a very fun evening. I was so glad that my parents, Chad, Beth, Tyson and Anna were all there to celebrate with us. I didn't get too emotional since he isn't quite 1 yet. But I'm so grateful for Darek. I'm grateful that his little life was spared and that he came out of an almost impossible situation almost completely unaffected. His life has brought so much joy into our lives and family. What a perfect, beautiful, little man he is. Happy Birthday sweet baby!

The Cake

So I've been thinking a little bit about what to write in this post just because of the fiasco it ended up being. But here it goes...

Before I had left to go to Oregon, I had done a practice cake, but wasn't able to do much of it due to lack of time. So I packed all my cake stuff up (or so I thought) and left. Well when I got ready to bake the cakes the Thursday before the wedding, I took all my stuff out of the car to get things started. My plan was to make a 3 tiered, square cake. The bride and groom wanted a chocolate cake with peanut butter filling that they had a specific recipe for and a butter cream icing. So after taking everything out, I realized that I was missing one of the cake pans. CRAP! So I looked up an address for a Michaels to see if I could find it. I knew it would be near impossible, because it was only sold in a package deal or at specialty stores. Well, the address I ended up with was for an old Michaels that was closed. But there was a Walmart right there. So I went into Walmart and ended up buying a whole brand new set of round pans. It was upsetting (and expensive) knowing I wouldn't be able to do what I had hoped to. But oh well. I got back to the house and baked the cakes. That went perfectly! The cakes came out just great and cooled well. After cooling, I made the filling and filled all 3 tiers. Again, that went really well. I was feeling really good about everything, because I had had nightmares about all the things that could go wrong during that process. After they were filled, I did a crumb coating of icing and put them in the fridge to await decorating the next day.

I knew that decorating would take a really long time but I wasn't terribly nervous about that part. I got the cakes covered in icing and got them all stacked. The plan was to do leaves as a border at the bottom, dots as a border on the top part and then a celtic design around the top sides of each layer. Then on the top they wanted to have the celtic trinity knot. It was pretty intense for a first cake, but I was going to do my best. I got all of the leaves done and they actually looked pretty cute. Then I did the dots and finally the celtic design. It did take almost the whole day, but I did it! I waited until Saturday morning to do the trinity knot, which turned out really well. The cake looked good. Not perfect and not spectacular, but pretty dang good for a first wedding cake.








I needed to get to the wedding early for set up, so my cousin Megan agreed to come with me to help with transport. Alex stayed with my Aunts and I brought Darek along. Megan got in the car and I handed the cake to her. It looked good and sturdy, so I was feeling that transport wouldn't be a problem. We started down from my Aunts house. The road leading to her house was very curvy (well, a lot of the roads in Eugene are), so I took it very slow. I was talking to my cousin, not really worrying about the cake. But I looked down and saw the bottom layer shifting where the filling was. It wasn't terrible, but with every curve we hit, it shifted more and more. By the time we were down the hill and pulled the car over, it was looking really bad. I was thinking I could probably still fix it, although it wouldn't look nearly as good. We decided to try it on the floor of the car instead to see if that would help. Megan sat right next to it. We got another mile down the road and it had slid so much that one side of the bottom layer was completely off. I was devastated. I wanted to scream and cry and hit something. But I just wanted to get what I could of the cake there. So we took the top 2 layers off and put them on another platform. They held up pretty well, but had shifted a little when the bottom layer was falling apart. When I got there, I had not brought enough green frosting to do a whole other border of leaves, so I just put a simple layer of gold frosting around the bottom. We ended up figuring out that the reason for the shifting was because of the peanut butter filling. It had so much oil, that even with dowels holding it together, the oil from the peanut butter made it impossible to stay together.

Notice a tier missing?

Anyway, it was awful and made me want to never make a cake again. I cried all the way home from the wedding, but my sweet husband and adorable son helped me feel much better. In fact, on the way back Alex said, "Mom, don't cry. You make the best cakes ever. You could even work on Ace of Cakes because they're so good." Nothing like a sweet boy to make things all better. So it was a bit of an ordeal, but I'm really glad to have had the experience. I'll just go forward from here... right???

Cute Pictures

I will have more to post about Oregon, but I had to post some cute pictures that were taken of the boys while we were there. I have some pretty photogenic kids!










Sadly I'm starting to get more and more silly kid faces when I take pictures of Alex. That, and his face is ALWAYS dirty! But he's still cute. And at this point all faces that Darek makes are pretty dang cute!

The Coast

One of the first things we did when I got to Oregon was heading out to the coast. I went with my Grandparents, Aunt Karen and Uncle Don, and of course I brought the boys. We drove from Eugene straight out to Florence and up as far as Newport. On our way to Newport, we stopped at the Sea Lion caves. My Grandma and Aunt came with me and the boys down to the caves. It was beautiful looking out on the ocean and watching the Sea Lions in the water. We took the elevator down to where you can see a whole bunch of Sea Lions on a rock. Alex enjoyed being down in the caves and once we were out of the caves, it was fun to show him from outside how far down we were. Darek was a trooper and really enjoyed it as well.

Alex getting acquainted with the Sea Lions

My Grandma, Alex, Me and Darek inside the caves

A Sea Lion sunbathing on a rock

Several Sea Lions in the water

From the Sea Lion caves, we could see a lighthouse across the way. So our next trip was over to the lighthouse. We took the 1/2 mile hike up to the lighthouse. The scenery was just gorgeous and Alex found a fun little tree to play around. We didn't get to tour the lighthouse, but it was still fun hiking to it. After we came back down, I took Alex and Darek along the beach shore. We walked around and looked for some shells to take home. Well Alex decided he didn't want any shells. Instead, he found remains of a crab that he wanted instead. So we picked those up and took them with us :)

The view from the Sea Lion caves looking over to the lighthouse

Alex having fun exploring on our hike up to the lighthouse

Darek and I standing in front of the lighthouse

Looking down the coast from the lighthouse

We ate some lunch in the car while looking out at the ocean (BEAUTIFUL!!) and headed up to Newport. We stopped at a glass blowing shop. There were some amazing glass balls there and we were able to watch them make a few balls. Alex thought it was pretty amazing. We went to a few other shops and there were a few things Alex could play on. After that we decided to head over to a little science museum/aquarium. It was a really neat little place and we were able to see an octopus very close. We were able to pet some rays and starfish. And the best part... it was FREE!

At the aquarium... Is this not the cutest boy in the world?

Alex touching some of the sea creatures. He was VERY hesitant about it.

"Shooting" a cannon. He loved all the play things.

Alex getting to know a local walrus.

From there we went to one more lighthouse. By then it was a little cold and very windy, so we didn't stay long. We had gotten there just minutes after it closed, so we weren't able to tour that one either. Oh well. But after such a long day, we were all tired and headed back through Corvallis to Eugene. What a beautiful drive!

The second lighthouse we visited.

Getting a picture with Great Grandpa and Great Grandma. Although, I don't think my Grandpa knew I was taking the picture.

A cold little Alex in front of the lighthouse.

Alex, Darek, Me, Aunt Karen and Uncle Don

It was a very fun day and took the whole next day to recover from. :) I enjoyed seeing just a few of the many gorgeous places in Oregon.