Wow, did the year ever fly by. How and when did my newborn suddenly turn 1? I can't believe how quickly the year shot by, and to imagine at the same time that Kira is now 3... but more on her later.
Here's my wrinkly newborn Calvin. This photo was taken 10 days after birth, by photographer extraordinaire, Tanya Zaleski (yes, please ask me about her, because I will totally recommend her to you for preggie, baby, and family photos!).
Celebrations officially began on the Friday, when we took a little cake to Mums & Tots of Brossard (the playgroup that my kids belong to) to celebrate with the kids there. Unfortunately, there was BARELY enough cake to fill the many, many kids who were there on Friday! Here's a photo of the gang. Oops! Should have taken a much bigger cake, huh?
We hosted over 50 people over the weekend to celebrate Calvin's 1st birthday. Well, keeping with tradition we had to have a family bash, and if you haven't followed up on my past posts, this is an ever-growing family! All attending Takedas counted, there were just over 30 family including several babies and kids. With tremendous help from my sister in-laws Val & Gayle, there was a fantastic cake (see top photo - this cake was made by Val and decorated by her and her dad) and cupcakes (they're the colourful ones to the above right). I had ordered cupcakes as well, before I knew that Val had prepared her own - oops! Here's a photo of the cupcakes made by my Antonietta, who is a mom at Kira's preschool. She recently started her own pastry business - check out Les Sucreries Antonietta. Desserts galore! I didn't manage to snag a photo of all the hors d'oeuvres, mostly because as soon as they came out of the oven they disappeared. Val & Gayle had prepared spanakopita, meat pies, egg rolls, veggie rolls, and sausage rolls. In addition to that, we served salmon and chicken teriyaki, crabmeat tortilla rolls, munchies, gosh, I can't remember what else!We were quite exhausted after this party, but there was one more to follow on Sunday. We invited some friends (mostly with kids of their own), and once again it was a full house. It was nice to be able to meet with friends who we seem to have so little time to see these days! Unfortunately, Calvin was quite tired and so he napped away half of th party, but it was great having so many people celebrating with us. We changed around the menu a bit and had make-your-own temaki sushi. It was a hit, needless to say.
For both of Calvin's parties, we had asked our guests not to bring gifts or if they did, to bring second-hand or creative gifts. We were pleased to have received some very thoughtful gifts for Calvin, including:
- drawings and cards that were hand-made by children
- a second-hand Brio train set
- a craft book (crafts to do with your kids) that was never used because my cousin has a house with 3 "non-crafty" boys
- a Little People set that my cousins had wrapped up for their own boy, but he got the same thing from someone else, so they kept and passed it forward to us!
- second-hand clothes
Comments
Happy belated birthday to you Calvin!!!
Awesome cake! And what a great idea for the gifts.