Weekend

Yeah, I know -- it's Tuesday, but I felt like this was a cool enough weekend to write about. Sunday night I was busy writing the PBN post (at the last minute, as usual), and yesterday I didn't have time to write a well-thought-out post, so I just put up the meme. Sorry folks, my life outside this blog is pretty busy.

Anyway, Friday was my son's actual birth-day. As a special birthday treat, my husband brought him to the center just before lunch, where we we were having a school assembly for Shabbat with Marc, the musician who performs every Friday. This week, parents were invited to come for the assembly as well, so I thought it might be fun for my son to come. Not to mention, Clifford the Big Red Dog was the special guest. That night, we went over to my mom's house for pizza, cake, and presents from her, my dad, and my sister. Oh, and my sister taught the baby to say, "Ho, ho, ho!"

Saturday dawned bright and snowy. I was running late, but I was even more so because of the weather. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one. I got ready for the day, picked up the cake, and headed over to my parents' church. We had the party in the basement, where the kids have Sunday school every week. My mom bought some mylar balloons and I put up crepe paper. My dad helped me move the tables and chairs and set up tablecloths, the food table, and the gift table.

Almost everyone was late. But things slowly got moving, and we had a pretty typical party: food, cake and ice cream, gifts, mingling. We went to Giant Eagle for the cake, and it was a pretty decent price, and fantastic white cake (I like theirs better than others, and better than their chocolate: the white cake is almond-flavored). Plus, when you purchase a birthday cake for a child's first birthday there, they give you a free "smash cake", a 5-inch confection just for sinking a baby's face into. I have to say though (and this may be typical of any place you purchase birthday cakes from), we didn't get the plastic Winnie the Pooh toy. They wanted an additional $8 for it, but at least they told us about it when we ordered it, and gave us the option of not buying it.

Adam didn't seem to care for the cake too much -- but he loved the icing. Ice cream too, although I don't know which he liked better, since my mom was feeding him while I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. My sister and I then cleaned him off, which took some doing, since we weren't at home where we could just plop him in the tub.

Then we opened gifts, which I think may have frustrated him. We helped him out to move it along, and every time he got a good look at a toy and decided to try to play with it through the packaging, my husband would whisk it away. He got a few clothing items, but mostly toys, which was actually a good thing. We had kind of a lack of age-appropriate toys here at home, even though Grandma's house was stocked with a toy basket full of goodies.

A little conversation later, and most all the guests started helping to clean up and leaving. My in-laws came back to our place to hang out just a little longer since they spent about 3 1/2 hours driving here and about 2 hours actually at the party. Shortly after they left I fell asleep on the living room floor, watching Adam play with his new toys.

Sunday my parents cut down their Christmas tree and we went over to help them decorate it. The baby really liked the ornaments, and got mad when we wouldn't let him touch the glass ones. We spent the rest of the day relaxing.

Anyone else have a good weekend? Bad weekend? Any feelings about the weekend at all?