Caiden's 1st Birthday

(Man - this entry is WAY overdue. I've been procrastinating in a very bad way!)

I am SO glad we decided to travel to Chicago for Caiden's 1st birthday! The party was a smashing success, and more importantly, it was so wonderful to have family and close friends gathered together to celebrate Caiden's big day!

The little guy did indeed command quite the turn out! Including B and me, Caiden had 27 guests! The guest list included grandma and all of the aunts, uncles and cousins from the Misura side (minus a couple of sig others and, of course, our AZ counterparts), great-grandparents (Everding), grandparents and aunt from the Duchek side, Godmother Summer and her parents, and our good friend Jim. We hosted the shindig at mom's house out in Huntley, and boy was the house PACKED! We decided to carry thru our theme from the WA party and outfitted the place with tons of streamers and balloons. Patrick and B did an excellent job decorating and the place looked very festive thanks to their efforts. In the meantime, Summer, mom and I were furiously busy in the kitchen prepping all the food food for the feast.

I need to take a moment here and give Summer a huge shout out and massive THANK YOU for all of the incredible work she put in. Not only did she make a special trip from MN to come and celebrate, she also arrived early to help us out. Lemme tell ya, we wasted no time putting her right to work. :) Without all of her help, there is no way we would've gotten everything ready. And she continued to help keep things on track throughout the entire party. So thank you Summer - we couldn't have done this without you!!!

I still can't believe how much *more* food we were able to put out compared to the WA party. I did some quick math and discovered that we were able to feed twice as many people twice as much food for almost half the cost of what we did in WA. Is that insane or what? *sigh* How I miss Woodman's. At this party, we served up homemade broccoli cheese soup (thanks mom!), Italian beef sandwiches, fruit and veggies, some yummy appetizers (thanks Rusti!), chocolate chip cookies, and of course home baked cupcakes. We also made the super yummy sherbet punch which went over very well!

Photo courtesy of Summer

Caiden was the perfect little gentleman during the party. He graciously allowed himself to be passed from person to person and didn't put up a fuss over anyone holding him. When it came time to sing Happy Birthday and blow out his candle, he could barely wait to dig right into that cupcake! My favorite moment of the whole party was when I took a few seconds to look around the room. Everyone in the room was focused on avidly watching our little guy indulge in his special treat. That one moment alone made the whole trip so worth it to me. I can't quite put it into words, but it meant so much to me to have everyone there celebrating this big day with us.



After Caiden demolished his cupcake, we got him cleaned up and moved on to opening up all of his fabulous gifts! This was one spoiled kid! There was no shortage of cool and exciting gifts. He got plenty of books, toys and clothes to last him quite a while! He had a lot of fun diving right into the present bags and participated pretty well in opening up his gifts.

Party at Large

Diving In!

Gift from Aunt Cathy & Uncle Brian

Loves the Shopping Cart from the Ptaks

Special Hugs for his Penguin from Rob

Once the presents were all opened, we announced the winner of our little contest that had been going on all afternoon. Whoever put forth the best guess for Caiden's weight won a prize! We had a pretty wide range of guesses from under 20lbs all the way to +30lbs! The winner of the game was Great-Grandma Ruth! She's had a lot of practice over the years. :) His actual weight was 20.3lbs, and her guess was 21lbs.

Great Grandma with her Photo Prize

All in all, I think we had a fantastic party. :) Special thanks to mom for letting us take over her home and also to Karla for loaning us some kitchen items and for helping out in a major way with the clean-up. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing everybody and appreciated everyone's effort to join us for this special occasion. We can't wait for more future celebrations together!!

For tons more photos - click here to go to the Shutterfly album.