Maksim's First Birthday Party

I'm home from work today with an incredibly painful sore throat accompanied by a minor cold that has been lingering for a couple of days.  On the bright side, here I am, catching up on blogging.  Lots of fun things happened that got me sick, but I'll get into that in other blog posts.  But for today's post...

Maksim's First Birthday Party Blog Post has been long overdue.  The party was at Grandma and Grandpa's house on the 16th of December (four days shy of his actual birthday).  Close family and friends attended.  There were lots of food, fellowship, and fun.  It was the first birthday party that I have ever planned.  It was fun running around town like a mommy on steroids buying decorations, designing the birthday cake to give to the baker, getting food catered (my parents cooked a lot too), creating party favors, thank you favors, and getting ideas for fun and games.  In the end, it all turned out fine and dandy.

Here's Maksim with his SMASH cake.  At first he just looked at it, then he touched it,
then he just squeezed the icing in his hands to feel the texture.  He finally tasted it but
he hardly ate anything.  He just wanted to observe it.  He's so dang cute.

For activites, we had a snowman building contest and a "design-your-own-mug" using
permanent markers.  For the snowman building contest, the kids were separated into two teams
to build the best looking toilet paper snowman.  In the end, everyone got a trophy. :-) 
The craft was the "design-your-own-mug" - each kid got a white mug to customize the way
the wanted to.  Thank God for craft stores that gave me a lot of fun choices.

We forgot to open presents during his birthday party, so we saved gift opening day on his actual Birthdate on the 20th.  It was pretty nice since his Auntie Marina (Dre's sister) and her husband, Uncle Alex were there to share his special day.  They visited us from Seattle - which I'll blog sometime this week.  But Maksim got so many cool presents ranging from toys, clothes, and lots and lots of books that he loves.  The only thing left I have to do is send out thank you cards.  But thanks to everyone who came and showed our dear big boy lots of love. :-) xoxo