Let us eat cake!

On Tuesday Jasper followed a big birthday dinner — what else would you expect? — with birthday cake. He found it in his heart to share one piece each with his mom and dad, but did his best to make the rest disappear.

Here are a few cake photos.

By the way, if you'd like to see Jasper's 1-year photos, taken by Kelly Kesling who has a studio in the basement of her Altoona home, go online to www.keslingphotography.com. Click the 'Client link'; the password is 'Jasper.'

More ...

... from The Playground.

He's got an odd way of going down the slide, but it works. (Even if it scares Nat a little.)

An indoor playground!!!

We celebrated Jasper's first birthday by spending a couple of hours at The Playground for Kids in Ankeny. It's raining out, so The Playground is a perfect place since it's exactly what it says it is ... only indoors.

It took him a few minutes to figure everything out, and he was easily distracted because of his people watching, but he ended up having a great time.

His favorites: the slides and the doors. Just like at home, he spent much of his time opening and closing the big doors (photo), little doors and flipping the table top up and down inside one of the little plastic play-things.

He hasn't had much experience with slides, but took to them quickly, especially the big yellow one inside one of the bounce houses (photo).

This post and the next are photos from The Playground. Enjoy ... we sure did!

1st birthday gifts

After breakfast — oatmeal with blueberries for J, cereal for us — Jasper opened his birthday gifts. He got a kid-sized soccer ball, some Little People on the farm to go with his farmer/tractor he got for Christmas, and a Little Tikes car.

He had fun getting pushed around the garage (it's raining outside) in his new Cozy Coupe, but he liked pushing it around himself more.

Nat and I are both home all day there will be more posts, I'm sure, as we celebrate J's big day.

BIRTHDAY BOY!!!

Jasper woke up around 8 this morning and quickly had a crib full of balloons to play with.  We gave one to Cozmo, too, which he promptly popped.

We sang 'Happy Birthday' and Nat videotaped J playing in his balloons.

Check the next post for gift photos.

We'll probably post more as his big day continues ...

He's gonna get you!

Every once in a while Jasper gets a look on his face — THE look — and you know he's coming for you. Most of the time it's when we have various items in our hands that he wants — remote, cell phone, camera .. or food! — but sometimes he decides it's just go time.

 I had the camera this time and snapped a pic before he got ahold of the shoulder strap, nearly pulling it to the ground.

I caught it just in time, thank goodness.

364 days old

One day before his first birthday and I was taking random photos of Jasper. He was tired at dinner time and was in bed by about 7:30, but not before playing in — yes, in — Cozmo's kennel.

He should be up bright and early on his big day!

Olive Garden and b-day shopping

We headed to WDM on Saturday for an early dinner at Olive Garden (we had a $25 gift certificate and our bill was $24.65 ... sweet!) and some birthday and Easter shopping.

We found some very fun gifts for Jasper's first birthday — Tuesday, March 24 — and only had to wait about 15 minutes to get into Olive Garden (just enough time to enjoy the nice, sunny weather), where J ate some of Nat's cheese ravioli and a very small bite of the Italian sausage that came in my spaghetti. 

There's a pic in here of J riding the bulldozer at Toys 'R Us, but it was out of order so not as much fun as it could've been.

By the way, if you've noticed that I just wrote more blog posts in the last 30 minutes than I have in the last three months, it's because I began my weeklong unpaid vacation (read: furlough) today and it's rainy and wet outside so I had to postpone my yard cleanup plans until things dry out.

Grandpa's blocks

Grandpa Paul made Jasper and Sydney a bunch of homemade blocks for Christmas and Jasper is starting to really like them. Actually, he likes it when we build something tall with them so he can be Godzilla and destroy it.

By the way, anyone know how to teach a 1-year-old not to throw wooden blocks? Just wondering.

Funny face

Hey mom, look how much fun I'm having with my door, trucks, crab toy and cow!!! You better take a picture ...

Swimming

At Adventureland Inn with Nat's side of the family, Jasper took advantage of the pools now that he's a big-boy swimmer. We don't know which he liked better, throwing around the soft balls in the kiddie pool with dad, riding in the blowup car with cousin Noah or floating lazily around with mom (shown in this post).

Nice hair!

Cheese balls!!!

The container might have been bigger than him, but that didn't stop Jasper from attacking it full-force March 14 with Nat's family at Adventureland Inn for swimming and fun. I missed this part, so I might be going a bit overboard with the word 'attacking' but if it's food, J will attack!

Little Helper

Jasper has been incredibly helpful with laundry lately. He's very good at taking the clothes out of the bin and putting them on the floor for Cozmo to step on and get dirty! He also likes to open and close the closet door on me when I'm putting them away - so, as you can tell, he's been VERY helpful! In these pictures, he is being my little helper and throwing - I mean organizing - the clothes on the floor for me...yeah, right!

Sleepover with Sydney

Cousin Sydney came to stay with us a couple weekends ago and we had a great time! We went to see Jasper's other cousin, Payton, cheer at the Iowa Energy Basketball game, watched High School Musical, made some crafts, and Syd even took a bath with J-Man!

Jasper, mommy, and daddy all were excited to have Sydney sleep over!

Mail Man Jasper

One of Jasper's favorite toys is his "mail cart." Whenever he plays with it, Adam and I are always like "Jasper's on his mail route today!" He is so funny because he actually takes the little 'fake' mail out of the three slots on the side and dumps it in the cart - I know that's what he's supposed to do with the toy, but it's so cute to see him do that! He also likes to chase Cozmo with the cart now that he's pushing it, and pushing it quite fast sometimes! Last night, he pushed it into the wall and could not figure out why it wouldn't keep going when he kept pushing it (that's one of the pictures on here).

Maybe we've got a mail carrier in our future! USPS here we come :)