Caleb's First Birthday Party!!!

Our "Little Engine That Could" party!!!
On Saturday, we celebrated Caleb's first birthday. It was so much fun and I had a lot of fun planning for it. First, a few pics of the decorations...

The Train.
The front car was the cake, which had a smoke stack "smash" cupcake for Caleb. It was a chocolate cake with vanilla icing, and was decorated with oreos for the wheels, hershey bars for the windows, an ice cream cone for the front, and chocolate chips and sprinkles for fun. I am NOT a cake maker or decorator, but it was still fun and easy to do.

The rest of the train cars.
I decorated the table with a wooden train track and had a few little trains around it. Then in the train cars, I had the rest of the snacks...chcolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies, candy and suckers, Grandmother's fruit salad recipe, and crackers, goldfish and cheese. There was one decoration car too...more on that later...

The little red caboose...

Another view.

Everyone knows in the book, the Little Engine that could gets up the hill by believing in himself and repeatedly saying "I think I can, I think I can!" So, I taped these thought clouds on the suckers to stick with the theme. All the train cars were covered with scrapbook paper which I will reuse when I scrapbook his party so everything will coordinate.
Notice the clouds on the table...
All the guests chose a cloud and wrote a message to Caleb, or a wish for him, since he's too young to make one on his own. When done, they placed it in the decoration train car in a yellow block. I will scrapbook each one. (I did this for Emma's first birthday and it was my favorite part...I enjoy going back in her baby book and reading the handwritten messages they wrote to her as well as having a memory of everyone who was at her party). Emma even wrote on a cloud...she wrote "Caleb." :) precious!!

And now for the birthday boy...

He kept trying to grab the candle when we sang to him. :)

The first thing he did was grab the cake with his right hand (notice all the icing on it). He didn't like that and didn't know what to make of the sticky mess, so that forced him to eat with his left hand (which he never does). He dove right in. LOVED the cupcake.


Adam said, "He's you and Emma is me!" because he scarfed down his cake, just like I'd do. We definitely have a big sweet tooth. Emma, on the other hand WOULD NOT EAT HER CAKE, and tried to spit out her bite. I told her to not spit it out, and that if she swallowed that one bite, she would not have to eat any more of it. Just like her Daddy, she'd just as soon have fruit salad instead.

With the birthday boy!

Miss Nosy-Rosy Ava...
Carsen brought Emma a gift to the party (how sweet!) and Ava decided to look in the bag. She got her head stuck in the handle. Hilarious!!!

What's going on in this picture...
Caleb is standing!!! (he did take 3-4 steps on his own shortly after this). Also, Emma was writing a "note" for Caleb. The boys in the background were full from cake, and Mallie could have cared less about the whole party....she was asleep on the back of the couch the whole time.

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to!"
He was tired of us all trying to encourage him to walk....and just tired I think. :) Yep, the clock says 2:00...that's his naptime!

His conductor outfit...





All in all, it was a great party! Everyone seemed to have a great time and we just still can't believe that the past year has flown by.

Below, a video of us singing and Caleb getting his first bite of cake!!!