2011 was a wonderful year. And I fully expect 2012 to kick it’s butt. Here’s a quick look back at what made 2011 such a great year…

1) Enjoying the 1st snow of the year with my chunky little fella. It just so happened to be his 1st snow EVER. He loved every moment of the cold stuff.

2) Seeing my husband fall head over heals in love with someone other than me.

3) Taking Gray to the zoo for the 1st time with my good friend Rachel. (or as Gray knows her as…Stinky Rachel) I promise the name has nothing to do with the way she smells.

4) Taking the 6 month photos that perfectly captured Grayson’s personality.

5) Going skiing with some wonderful friends in Park City, UT.

6) Knowing that my sweet girl, Wrigley, was going to be okay after her emergency surgery. This may have been the most terrifying month of my life. However, knowing that we could have lost her and now getting to see her sweet puppy face everyday made everyday of 2011 a favorite. You can read more about the squeaky toy that almost killed our dog here, here, here, and here. HUG YOUR PUPPIES EVERYDAY!

7) Grayson was born at the end of the summer, and never got the chance to go swimming during 2010. I wait patiently all winter/spring long for summer to arrive. Let me just tell you, Grayson was meant to be in the water. He loves big pools, baby pools, lakes, bathtub, and dog water bowls (ewww!). If it’s got water my boy is happy. So #6 would have to be spending the summer in the pool and at the lake with Squishy. We are planning to take a beach trip this summer, and I can’t wait to see his face when he sees the ocean for the first time.

Seeing my baby turn ONE! I still can’t believe it.

9) If this kid wasn’t cute enough already I had to go and throw a puffy shark costume on him for Halloween. Trick-or-Treating with this baby shark was hilarious.

10) Watching Gray fall into his 1st pile of leaves.

11) Enjoying a busy but amazing Christmas with my two favorite boys.

In the color of my holiday decor that is. In previous years I went with a more neutral/natural color palette, but this year I wanted tons of RED, WHITE, and GREEN. I wanted the house to be colorful and whimsical since we now have a kid running around the joint.

I told Derek that this year I was changing our christmas tree colors, but to be kind I would attempt to do it on the cheap. In an effort to save money I decided to make a large majority of the new ornaments, and thanks to Pinterest I did just that. And thanks to a 50% off coupon at Michael’s and previous training from my MIL I also made the bow that tops the tree. It looks a bit droopy because the wire in my wired ribbon is pitiful. It barely holds shape. As you can see.

I wanted to add big colorful ribbon to the tree, but I couldn’t find any that I just loved at a reasonable price. And since I’m trying not to spend to much on xmas decor this year I decided to nix the idea this year. Maybe I’ll find something during the after xmas sales.

I decided to go with some basic present wrapping since the tree was full of color. I wrapped all my gifts in craft paper (Actually it’s contractor’s paper I picked up at HD for like $10 to use when Gray wants to color or paint.) I tied a simple ribbon around the package and stamped each person’s first name using some lowercase rubber stamps I already owned and white paint. I got the basic idea here.

Guess who got to help decorate the tree this year. He mainly just shoved things inside the branches, but he sure looked cute doing it. I still find random items from time to time that he has shoved into the tree. I guess he thinks the tree is still looking a bit sparce.

He even threw on a festive outfit to add to the fun.

So, that’s our fun whimsical tree! Did anyone else make any ornaments this year, or even MOST of your ornaments? I wanna see.

I need your help. What color/type of ribbon should I add to the tree next year? Should it have a pattern, or should I just stay on the solid color train?

I’ll be back soon to give you a close up of all my handmade ornaments.

When it’s time for turkey people around here start gettin’ a little crazy like.

This year was Grayson’s 2nd Thanksgiving, but his 1st one to chow down on some turkey. Last year he was still on the boob. After his 1st taste of turkey the boy was hooked.

Before we sat down to eat Gray and my dad had way too much fun with the video camera. I think my parents now have 2+ hrs of just my son’s face on video.

And in typical 15 month old fashion, he thew a fit when we wouldn’t let him grab food from the table. The day isn’t complete without a lovely screaming throwyourselfonthefloor fit.

When we finally sat down to eat that frown turned into an ear to ear grin. My little turkey loves his turkey.

This year the turkey table was smallish. Since my brother had to work that morning my sister-in-law took the boys to Arkansas the 1st half of the day to eat with her family. And my sister’s boyfriend at with his family.

A few hours later my two other favorite boys arrived.

I mean really, how cute are the kids in this family? Now just imagine if one of us popped out a little girl. She would be a knock out.

STUD MUFFIN.

Game on!!!!!

The photo below explains why women are usually the ones who help children change clothes. Men just don’t have the coordination.

After a lot of turkey, a lot of laughs, and a bit of ping pong we headed home. But not without making the kids be cute one more time. We kept making Grayson give John kisses. It was too cute. We entertained ourselves with this adorable trick for 5-10 minutes. I have a feeling Christmas this year will be even cuter.

Since my SIL and nephews came later in the day; Thanksgiving kind of became the “Grayson Show”. No…seriously. Watch this video my dad made from Thanksgiving this year. It is literally 90% Grayson’s face. His cousins make an appearance towards the end of the video.

My apologies to those of you who are not interested in random videos of a toddler laughing into a video camera. He was just too funny in this video, not to post it.

Down here in the south the leaves have finally begun to change, and due to the past few extremly W-I-N-D-Y days many of those beautiful leaves have sadly made their way down to the ground. But just as much as I love looking a the colorful leaves on the trees; Grayson loves playing in the leaves once they hit the ground. We took him to play in the leaves in a public lot on our street that houses some strange green electrical box…let’s hope it doesn’t give of cancerous waves. *fingers crossed*  Our yard is filled with dog poop in the back (cuz we don’t pick that stuff up), and the front yard simply didn’t have many leaves in it yet.

He loves the bubble mower he got for his birthday and really hasn’t had the opportunity to push it around outdoors much. Indoors, he is constantly pushing it around, and terrorizing the dogs with it. Hehe. I mean, poor puppies.

He can’t quite get the speed up yet to make the bubbles come out on his own, so in steps Daddy. The child loves bubbles so much that as soon as he saw them pop out of the mower he left in hot pursuit of those soapy little floating orbs.

Then he pretty much left the mower all together to go roll around in a giant pile of leaves.

I love how he looks like a tiny lumberjack in that red plaid shirt. Thank you, Target.

It’s like a ball pit, but with leaves.

This one is going in a frame. I love how you can barely see him. He had a blast rolling around in the leaves.

By the way, he has on a cloth diaper in these pics. They tend to bulge out a bit more than sposies. I swear that’s not  3 days worth of poo & pee in his dipe. Although the pic below might look like it.

Have you played in the leaves yet this fall?

Just look at this baby. You think he can’t get any cuter, and then…..BAM! I go and throw a bow tie and Tom’s on the kid.

This post is dedicated to friends, family, and fun had at the party.

Here’s the Papa Bear excited and waiting for the par-tay to start. See that t-shirt he’s wearing? It’s his favorite. You will come to know this shirt if you read this blog often. Sorry. Want proof? Read Grayson’s birth story. I guarantee you will see him wearing it in the delivery room. I love how he is beginning to make this his “special occasion” outfit. I mean, I love Robert Randolph and all, but…

Once again I found myself in the dollar section at Target picking up a few sets of these foam blocks. We wanted all the kiddos to have something to play with while the ‘rents were busy socializing. Boy oh boy did I pick a winner. Grayson wouldn’t stop playing with the things. I swear, about 60% of the party you found him on the floor doing this…

The ever so gracious host took a break from playing blocks to greet arriving guests and accept gifts in exchange for admittance.

Let’s just say that there were kids EVERYWHERE. Remember in Part 1 when I said there were 500 kids at the party? Well I may have over estimated a smidge, but I was close. Check this out…

Me and the birthday boy. Don’t you just love that bib? I found it on Etsy, but it was already sold. So, I convoed the seller and she just happen to have one piece of fabric just big enough to make one last bib. I just checked her shop and she currently has another one for sale. I guess she picked up/found more of that fabric.

Proud and just a tiny bit nutty grandpas.

And for Brody, his favorite part of the party were the balloons. This kid is so classy that he matches the balloons he plays with to his outfit. Now that’s style!

I love this shot of him sitting with the balloon, and inspecting the string. Presh.

Don’t mind us. We’re just to cool dudes maxin’ and relaxin’ with our sleeves rolled up checkin’ out some totally hot babes.

And then Brody tried to make a run for it. He would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for that whole not-quite-tall-enough-to-reach-the-handle thing.

Up next, smash cake and presents! Stay tuned.

Missed Part 1 of the party madness? Check it out here.

Even though his actual b-day wasn’t for another 5 days, on Saturday August 13th, Gray invited over about 500 of his closest friends under the age of 2 and partied RoBoT style.

This photo is just a glimpse of Gray’s 1 year photo shoot. There are more super cute photos to come. I just need to find the time to edit them.

Since the three of us can barely fit in our house on a day to day basis we thought it best NOT to have his party at our home. Plus, I don’t really care for cleaning. My parents have the perfect house for parties. They have a nice open floor plan that flows, and a dining room that is HUGE, so you can shove a ton of people and wild 1 year olds in there with out people running into to many things.

When I decided on a robot party I found invites that I really liked, but just couldn’t justify paying $50 for something I was going to print out myself. So I drew some inspiration from those pricey invites and designed some myself. What do you think? It was a blast designing them. I have a ton on geeky type fonts now. Looks like I’ll have to find something else to design so I can use them all.

See the binary on the invite? Guess what. If you decode it, it says “Happy Birthday Grayson”. How geeky am I? After the party was over I realized that I should have made a binary banner. How cute would that be? A banner made of zeros and ones that actually means Happy Birthday Grayson. If anyone out there is throwing a robot party please try this banner idea and send me a pic of how it comes out.

I did make a banner using real words.

I’m kinda in love with chevron right now. Trust me, you will notice a trend.

If you put a camera in my hands I take way too many photos. It’s an illness I tell ya. To prevent me from missing special moments during my son’s very 1st birthday party I asked my friend Scott to step in as camera man. He was already going to be there with his little girl and wife. It really helped not trying to be in two places at once.

Since it has been a million plus degrees with a humidity level of 110% here in the south; we decided to keep the food and main party happenings indoors.

We set the food and cake up on the dining room table. Note to self, setting up a food/desert table on a round table is much harder to layout than one would think.

Those two empty silver plates held some of the most delicious bread you will ever lay taste buds on. It’s called Cheddar Bacon Ranch Pulls, but it’s appropriately nicknamed Crack Bread. T-rust me, you’ve got to try this stuff. I will post the recipe soon. Here’s a pic of the bread that I took with my phone.

Did you see that cake? Um yeah. My baby sister, Stephanie, made it for me. She’s been dabbeling in the cake/goodies making game for a few years now so I thought who better to make Gray’s birthday cake than his Aunt Toof. Didn’t she do amazing? She mocked it after a cute little felt robot I found on Etsy. I used paper straws for antennas. As for the tiny banner I used the free printable from TomKat Studio. I changed the font and color of the bunting to match the robot theme a little better.

The head of the robot was Grayson’s smash cake. Just wait until you see the size of this thing next to my kid.

The cupcakes were out-of-the-box chocolate with homemade buttercream icing. YUM! I designed the cupcake toppers and wrappers myself. I kept changing my mind about how I wanted them to look. Up until the week before the party I was tweaking the design constantly. When it comes to graphic design I am never 100% happy with my final product. But what artist is happy with there designs 100% of the time?

See those silver bolts and nuts scattered throughout the table? I picked those up in the dollar section at Target and then spray painted them to look metallic.

I thought about ordering cookies from Etsy, but I was afraid that with this super hot summer the icing would melt and screw all the cookies up while in route to me. I wanted just a few cute cookies with royal icing so I gave it a stab. Thanks to YouTube I learned how to make royal icing and how to ice a cookie with it. Not horrible for my first attempt, but I’m certainly not going into business anytime soon.

In addition to the G’s and gears I also made 1′s, but I just don’t have an up close photo of them.

These little guys were super yummy, but the coloring didn’t come out quite right. I think the cooking spray I used mixed with the blue coloring and turned them a tad green.

I also made some little food labels and table tents.

Originally, we were going to have robot cake pops, but my sweet sister not only was making the most awesome robot cake for the party, she was also working full time, and moving that week. When she finally found time to make the cake pops the cake wouldn’t stay together so she had to scrap them. No big deal though. We had left over sucker sticks and some marshmallows, dipping chocolate, and sprinkles…so we improvised.

I kept going back and forth on the whole party hat thing. I just couldn’t find anything out there that I loved, and ended putting the decision off so long that I ran out of time to order anything. So, about 2 days before the party I decided to make him one from paper I had around the house. It came out pretty cute if I do say so myself.

Derek wanted to contribute to the robot party fun and built a robot from boxes and various things we had laying around the house.

Isn’t that precious? He gave the robot a heart.

When I saw Sarah do this for Manny’s 1st birthday I knew I had to do it for Gray’s. I took different faces of Grayson’s and put party hats on them and used them as added decoration and entertainment for the guests.

During Grayson’s 1st year, I took weekly and monthly photos of him. I decided to display the monthly portraits at the party, but was having trouble deciding how. Derek came up with the idea of displaying them on the piano by the gifts. Perfect.

I don’t really have any up close pics of the drink station, but here are a few I cropped in on to show you what we had.

I made Paula Deen’s Homemade Lemonade and it was delish!  I just loooooove homemade lemonade. Unfortunatly, it was the first time I used that drink dispenser and the lemonade poured sooooooo sloooooooowww. Sorry drinkers of lemonade at the party. My bad.

Here’s what the water bottles looked like…

I made some goodie pails for the kiddos to take home. I found the pails in the dollar section at Target, imagine that. I also made a photo book of random happenings from Gray’s 1st year. We asked the guests to write him a little message on a page in the book. I love that everyone signed it. Some of the messages made get a little teary eyed.

It was an amazing day. Our little boy is so loved. Thank you to everyone that came, and thank you for loving our little man. I’ll be back soon with more pics from the party. So stay tuned.

P.S. – Here’s a little video of the party just getting started…