Happy First Birthday Buddy!

For Owen's first birthday we were in Virginia visiting my family. It was a blast. Ryan and I really cannot believe our little guy is a little man now. He is so grown up! He is clapping, waving, playing pat-a-cake and so big, cruising wherever possible, and will make a monkey noise when asked. But, his best trait is his quick smile and friendly attitude. He tries to get peoples attention wherever we go and when they look at him, he flashes one of his big smiles. He is very persistent as well and if they don't look at him he makes noises until they do. What a funny little guy!

Anyway, for his birthday we did lots of fun things and took way too many pictures. Embarrasingly, this is less than half of the pictures we took. We are sorry if you get bored but we had to document this momentous occasion.




Owen loved the balloons and couldn't get enough of them. He would just crawl over to them and giggle.


His absolute favorite thing is animals, in particular doggies. I believe this is another trait he picked up from me, well I don't believe, I know. For those of you who don't know, I LOVE animals and always have, I think it is in my genes. Both the Odiorne and VanDenBerghe sides have this love of pets as well. Anyway, Ryan doesn't quite have the same obsession for animals, really he has no obsession at all;) but, he still likes them which is good because I don't know what I would have done if after a week of marriage he had said he didn't like them at all. He probably would have had to sleep outside while I slept inside with all the pets. Haha, anyway on to what I was blogging about in the first place. So, Owen likes doggies so while breakfast was cooking Owen got a visit from Chase.


And then Owen got to try his first pancakes! They were even spelling his name.

Although, Owen liked playing with the syrup bottle more, I think.

Then, Owen had a birthday nap. After, his nap Owen's Mimi and PopPop took him to a petting zoo as his birthday present. There will be a separate post on that soon. Then he took another birthday nap and woke up to friends and family coming for visits to wish him a Happy Birthday. Then, his first cousins once removed came for a little party in honor of Owen. He started off by opening some presents.





Then, we had some cake. I have to plug for myself here for a second. I made this cake with a little help from Ryan and I am very proud of it. I also made Owen's little birthday hat, very proud of that as you can tell.

As you can see Chase even came up to sing to Owen as well. Sadie couldn't be there because well, she had a grudge against Owen:) Owen is a little threatening since he is her same size and her same eye level.



Apparently, Owen doesn't like getting messy. Here is his first handful.

And now he is wiping it on his bib.

First Bite

Now we are getting messy:)


And the first bite of ice cream. This was such a classic shot. I can't believe we got it on camera. Although, we felt real bad he actually started crying. What bad parents are we, we made our son cry on his birthday. But then again I guess that is what he did on his REAL birthday, too.






Owen had had it by the end. He really didn't like being so messy and sticky.

Here Daddy is taking Owen for a bath. Bathtime always makes things a lot better.


Happy Birthday Owen!