The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

A Birthday Party!

First, thank you for all the comments yesterday! I love hearing from so many of you and know Maxwell will get a kick out of reading them someday too.

Second, how about a birthday party?! To celebrate Maxwell’s birthday, we just had some of our immediate family over for lunch on Sunday…that didn’t stop me from doing a little decorating though!  🙂  My baby boy is only going to turn 1 once so I wanted to make it special, festive and fun for all!

Like all 1 year olds, Maxwell loves balloons.  He also loves his friend Little Al (seen in our monthly photo shoots).  So, when I saw this invitation…

it all just fell into place.  Lots of balloons and lots of happy colors!

I ordered the Happy Birthday banner off of Etsy, made the centerpieces with candy and cardstock, and blew up all the balloons myself with a helium tank from Party City.  easy!

I also made banners out of all of his monthly photos to display on our mantels.  I think everyone loved getting to compare all the photos side by side and see how much he’s grown in a year!

The brick mantel had my favorite individual photo from each month and the living room mantel had all the Little Al photo favorites.

Maxwell loved having the fam in “his house” and getting to play with (almost) everyone. We missed Aunt Mess and Holland and Keath, Jen, Delaney and Nate.

Maxwell especially loved getting lots of grandmother love!

grandmother love

Along with the banner, I also ordered this cute birthday crown off of Etsy for Maxwell to wear. Let’s just say it didn’t go over so well.

Crown attempt #1…

Fail.  The grandmothers sure got a kick out of it though!  🙂

Crown attempt #2…

Fail. Oh well.

We knew we couldn’t have a party without feeding our guests well so Robert and I cooked up quite a feast.  Luckily I got to prepare my portion of the meal inside in the kitchen. Poor Robert had to sweat it out at the grill.  It was worth it though!

You know what comes after the birthday lunch don’t you? Birthday cake!!

A smash cake for Maxwell and cupcakes for everyone else.  All from Olexa’s and all really good. Like, ridiculously good. Yum.

Obligatory pre-cake family photo…

Thanks Jenny!

I had no idea how Maxwell was going to be with the cake but he quickly showed us all that he’s got his momma’s sweet tooth!

I couldn’t help getting in a little lick of that icing myself!  🙂

I then cut the cake up a bit for him and that’s when he really dug in!

A very happy birthday boy!

And a very messy birthday boy!

He even played patty-cake with his cake…naturally.

Love him.

We then tried for crown attempt #3…

Fail.

Little Al ended up wearing the crown for most of the party…

little al

Success!

(please note how Little Al has a balloon around his trunk just like the elephant on the invitation. I was quite proud of that! It’s the little things.)

Maxwell might not have liked his crown but he loved his cake and that’s what matters!

The party continues tomorrow with presents, presents and more presents!  It’s good to be Maxwell these days!  🙂  See you tomorrow!

Birthday celebration

After our fun fry-eating Saturday, we drove down to Montgomery on Sunday to celebrate a couple of birthdays.

This little girl turned 4…

And this guy turned…more distinguished.  🙂

I only took my point and shoot camera so my apologies these aren’t the best photos.  Sometimes I think my iphone takes better pics than my point and shoot!

Back to the day…

It was great to have all of the Brown kids and their spouses together.

brown family

Maxwell got to practice wearing a party hat.  He’s all ready for his big upcoming birthday!

Jenny got in on the party hat wearing fun…

As did I…

Are we festive or what?!  🙂

Quality cousin time was had on the couch…and I still can’t believe we actually got this picture.

Candles were blown out, wishes were made, cake was eaten.

It was a fun day all around.  Can’t wait for the next birthday celebration!!  14 days and counting!

Storytime

Maxwell is really interested in looking at books lately.  He’ll actually sit still and let us read a whole (short) book to him.  We usually make it through the story once before he wants to pick up the book and eat it.  🙂

Nighttime storytime with Dad…

nighttime story

nighttime story

nighttime story

Maxwell sure is lucky to have such a great dad!

Know who else has a great dad?  Robert does!  Today also happens to be Robert’s Dad’s birthday!!  Happy birthday Granddad!

Maxwell wants to say Happy Birthday with a great big smile!

Hope you have a wonderful day!

4th Fun

Somehow Robert and I managed to not make any plans for the long holiday weekend and it sure was nice to be at home and get stuff done around the house.  Yes, we are old and boring and I like it that way.  🙂  We got Maxwell a new carseat (pictures to come!), cleaned out closets, did yardwork…exciting stuff.  It was a very low key weekend but we did manage to have a little celebration on the 4th.  LuLu and Granddad made the drive up from Montgomery and we cooked up an Independence Day feast.  I even got festive with my centerpiece…

american flag

You’re a grand ole flag!

Robert made a pork butt in the slow cooker that was fantastic and even made homemade cole slaw.  Funny…the cole slaw recipe he used is supposedly the same one that KFC uses.  Robert didn’t tell me that until after I ate it.  I didn’t care though because it was good!

I used the awesome locally grown tomatoes I had to make The Pioneer Woman’s caprese salad…

Pioneer Woman caprese salad

Although I think my balsamic reduction was reduced too much because it was definitely more like glue than glaze!  Oh well…it still tasted good.

For dessert we whipped out our fancy ice cream maker that we got as a wedding gift (still in the box! thanks Gordo!) and made homemade vanilla ice cream to go on top of our strawberry shortcake.  YUM!  If that’s not a July 4th feast, I don’t know what is!  While Maxwell didn’t get any shortcake, he did eat a strawberry….

He’s trying new foods all the time…and liking some of them.  Strawberries were mostly a hit.

Of course we all dressed in our red, white and blue!

Granddad and Maxwell had fun hanging out on the couch…

And then LuLu got in on the fun…

LuLu and Maxwell had fun playing with his toys…

and going for a little drive.

Then Maxwell and Robert got into a rousing game of peek-a-boo under the table…

Good times.

I’ll take low-key long weekends like this one any day.

ps – Remember in the 10 month post yesterday how I mentioned that Maxwell “loves to scrunch up his nose and snort in and out”?  Well, I caught it with the camera…

Told you it was funny.  If only you could hear him snort.

The rest of the weekend

The rest of our weekend was just as great as Friday night, especially because we had a quick visit from GJ…

and we got to celebrate Robert’s first Father’s Day!

I think he had a good one.  Considering it involved a new hat, new golf shoes and some personal training sessions, I sure hope he thought it was good!  He still did have to mow the lawn though…a dad’s work is never done.

Maxwell had an exciting weekend.  Besides watching 2 two-year olds run around his house, he got to try cantaloupe for the first time.  At first I put it in one of these things…

But then thought he’d like it a lot more if I just gave him a big piece of cantaloupe…

I was right.

But then he chewed off a chunk of the cantaloupe and I was afraid he was going to choke on it (having no teeth to chew it and all) so I had to stick my fingers in his mouth and pull the chunk out which made him very unhappy.  Sigh…I guess a mom’s work is never done either.