Nathan's Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party

I loaded these pictures a few days ago, knowing I'd have more time to do the typing during Spring Break. Right now Katy is playing outside, David & Ryan are playing Monopoly, and Nathan is eating a cookie in his high chair. Life at Grandma & Grandpa's house is good!

So, birthday parties are a constant source of disagreement in the Morrill household. Pretty much I always want to have them, Dan always thinks they shouldn't. Sorry, Honey, I'm not ready to back down. Probably as the kids get older, but for now it's so fun!

I had seen some Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party stuff around Pinterest, and since we love that book I thought it would be fun for Nathan's first birthday party! Since first birthday parties are more for everybody else than the birthday child I decided to invite 3 families that have little ones. It was fun to have the entire families involved! I made invitations using this idea:

I made the leaves a bit bigger and glued the caterpillar on them instead of putting them in jars. They were really cute! I wish I'd taken a picture.

I printed out some VHC coloring pages, and they were a big hit! I thought about doing more involved crafts, but didn't get around to doing the prep work. It was easier without them anyway, and the kids loved just playing.
Here's the guest of honor! Yes, he has a whole apple. He takes them out of the fridge if he can get over there fast enough when someone else has it open. I've been buying baby apples so he doesn't waste so much, but clearly he didn't get one that time.

Who knew a paper plate could be so fun!

Here's our low class VHC cake. If I was a better person I would have displayed it on something prettier than 2 upside down cookie sheets, made the frosting before people got there (thanks for taking over on that Danny love!), split the frosting better so we had enough green, taken more time decorating so the cupcakes looked prettier, and done a better job on the face. Oh well, they sure tasted delicious!
I tried to tell people that Nathan really, really didn't need anything. It didn't work. But they did do a good job of not just adding to the clutter! The Slaters gave him these super cute short overalls. I can't wait for it to be shorts weather so he can wear them!
The Hamsleys gave Nathan this adorable duckling. It quacks and sings the abcs, and is remarkably non-annoying! I love seeing him hug it and carry it around. :-)
After everyone left I finally thought to take pictures of the food. I was really happy with how it turned out! I downloaded some clip art and made these cute signs. On Monday he ate through 1 apple, and so forth. It was nice to not have to think about what to serve, and everyone ate a lot of healthy stuff in addition to the usual cake & candy!
These are not jelly beans, gummy worms, and gummy butterflies, they are eggs, caterpillars, and butterflies. On the far right are some watermelon taffies for the slide of watermelon the VHC ate on Saturday. On the far left of the other picture is some cheese for Saturday, although we did cheddar instead of swiss. We had chocolate cupcakes, so that took care of both chocolate cake and cupcakes, and the kids got lollipops in their goodie bags. That was enough of the Saturday stuff, it did give the caterpillar a stomach ache, after all! Katy insisted on having "nice green leaves," so that's what is in the upper right of the picture. My kids actually like spinach pretty well, but with all the other yummy stuff the leaves didn't get eaten. :-P
Here's my attempt at nice picture of a leftover cupcake. Yum! I got a bigger tip to pipe the frosting on. I'm excited to make cupcakes again sometime without the rush of "all the kids are anxious for cake, hurry, hurry!" so I can make them look prettier.
Remember how I said I should've divided the frosting better? I ran out of green, but we had quite a bit of red left. This is what happens when you add red to the bag that already has green. Pretty cool!
Here's Nathan's other present - some cute Cars jammies! He actually really needed some, so it was a great gift! I tried for a while to get a good picture of him in them. I got lots of blurry ones while he walked around. He finally sat down, but of course wouldn't smile before he was up and about again.
I also got a couple like this. Sigh. Getting a good picture of this 1 year old is hard. He sure is busy!

I was really pleased with how the day turned out. The food was good, the cake was yummy, the kids all had fun, and the husbands even seemed to have a good time! :-) Oh yeah, and I had fun, too! I'd say it was a success.