"Oooooh, eight carousels! We're in for a real treat!"

We celebrated the boys’ birthday yesterday. They’re one year old, or at least 353 days old as of the party. The party was in the afternoon right after the boys ate lunch, which seemed a little silly in retrospect considering the lunch spread we served. Anyway, I snapped several pictures of the festivities, and here are the best ones. You’ll have to imagine what the worst ones looked like.


Here are their cakes. Those three are all homemade. In case the boys ever need proof that their mother loves them, they can just look at the birthday cakes that she spent hours decorating, or at least about an hour.


Here’s the lunch spread. We served chips, fruit salad, cake, and taverns for 50 with buns for 80. We have a lot of buns left in the freezer. What’s a tavern? It’s a loose meat sandwich similar to a sloppy joe that’s suitable for serving at parties when we want to impress people with a dish native to northwest Iowa.


We didn’t bring any toys, so the boys amused themselves by grabbing the bag of ice and slamming the cooler lid on each other’s fingers. Ian is having a whee of a time here, possibly because he just slammed his brother’s fingers in the lid, forcing us to weight it down with the bag of ice.


Abbie amused herself by snitching food from inattentive people’s plates. Note that the plate is on its way to the floor, pushing my father into action to save the rest of his Cheetos. By the way, the Cheetos were not my idea. I know better than to give a toddler the means for spreading orange powder throughout the room and onto people’s clothes.


The boys are starting on their cake. I think Tory was hoping to shove the whole thing in his mouth.


The boys are starting to get the idea of eating cake.


The boys definitely have the idea here. This was a pleasant experience after Abbie’s cake aversion at her first birthday. We set the cake in front of her, poked it for a second, and stared at us. We had to feed it to the princess with a fork. The boys had no such aversion. In case you’re wondering, I have no idea where Ian got that scrape on his head.


Ian is maybe showing a little remorse after eating so much cake.


Tory is showing no such remorse. Considering the neon blue spit-up he produced later in the afternoon, perhaps we should have stopped him earlier.


The boys are reigning over their carnage.