First Summer BBQ

My dad and his wife, J. (technically my step-mom, but I don’t think of her as that, since they got married after I was already on my own), have a beautiful back-yard, and are very gracious and generous about hosting parties, BBQ’s, family dinners, engagement parties, baby showers, baby welcoming parties, and so on. 

Yesterday they hosted the first BBQ of the summer for our family, which included my siblings, cousins, uncle, step-sister, and her husband.  We had a lot of fun, and the weather was perfect.  Their yard faces west, so sometimes when the sun is shining, it can get really hot, but yesterday there were clouds all afternoon and evening. 

Ryan and Cole did great- Ryan was so busy running around and playing ball, frisbee and soccer, with his uncle and second cousins, that he barely even ate.  He developed a “crush” on my cousin, E., who just turned 12.  He was at her side all night, holding her hand, and basically looking at her with puppy dog eyes.  Cole did very well too.  He is comfortable with my dad, so he let him hold him for a while, and they played.  Joe held Cole too, and he also sat in the grass and entertained himself with rocks in J.’s garden.  This was the first bigger family event since Cole has been born, where if I didn’t hold him the entire time, he cried.  So that was a nice change!  

Even though this was a BBQ, I brought along a cake for Cole, so we could have an informal celebration of his first birthday that will be this week. 

It was a chocolate Oreo Cookie cake.  I cut a slice for him, and he was a little hesitant to eat it, but once he got started, there was no stopping him.  He wasn’t content with just eating the cake that was in his bowl, he had to reach out, and start scooping hand-fulls of cake from the entire cake.  He did his first cake proud. 

Unfortunately, our camera ran out of memory, but we got some shots of him covered in cake, and icing, on my sister’s camera, and I’ll post them as soon as I get them from her. Joe taped him on our camcorder though, so I am glad we’ll have that to look back on.    However, here are some other pictures of the BBQ. 

 Cole enjoying his dinner

 Having fun playing with his foot

 Me, with my darling boys 🙂

 The B-Day Boy, checking out his cake (in the background, you can see my step-mom holding Maelin)

We all had a wonderful time, and a big thank you to my dad, J., and my sister for organizing the whole thing.  Can’t wait for the next bash.