Last night Vero and I headed over to Rob and Janice’s place to celebrate Jenna’s first birthday. A torrential downpour started as soon as we were going to head out so we waited a few minutes and decided to brave it. This reminded me of the Tulip Festival Joe, Mike, Vero and I went to a few years ago. SOAKED to the bone!
We did manage to get to the house virtually unscathed and the party was in full force with Mallory, Scotia and Ryley terrorizing the house and everyone munching on some burgers and sausage. There were balloons everywhere, party hats (watch out for those party hats, you never know if someone may kick you out for wearing one), and noisemakers. It was quite the event.
I settled in with a burger, salad and some corn. Speaking of corn, Jenna loved the stuff. She was mowing down her second piece of corn of the night. I think it may have to do with the fact that the cob may act as a good teething ring. Either way, it was all over the place and I had a good laugh watching her eat it.
They got her all dressed up to unwrap some gifts. As I thought, one year olds seem a little distracted to focus their energies into unwrapping a gift and tend to enjoy the wrapping paper just as much as the gift. She ended up with a ton of toy kitchen stuff…frying pans with fake bacon, eggs, etc. Then there was this Subway Sandwich set which had everything from the restaurant (other than my favourite cold cut trio!). It was quite hilarious to see that Jenna would not focus on the camera for anyone so I’m sure most of the pictures have her looking elsewhere in the room. I’m glad to see that the kitchen stuff we randomly picked out fit in with her theme of gifts.
After the gifts, the cake came out. They had one solely for Jenna to play in with was fun times. She sure enjoyed that icing and at one point Ryley’s uncle planted his face into the cake which was quite funny. Once Jenna had her fun with her own cake, the other cake came out which was for Rob as his birthday is the next day (as I write this, Today! Happy Birthday buddy.) As we were munching on the cake, Ryley and Scotia came over and whispered to me that Rob should get some cake in his face. I said ‘Fine’ but not realizing that they needed me to accomplish this task. A smile crept up on my face at the thought of being able to plant a nice birthday cake in his face on his birthday. A few minutes later Ryley comes back and says it’s time. I tell him I don’t think it’s the right time but he’s insistent and yells out “Dad, I think you should stay seated down for a minute.”. I had a good laugh and mentioned to Ryley that I had to teach him the finer points of sublety! It was quite hilarious after that point as Rob clearly knew what was coming for him and he had to sit there and take so I hammed it up and said “Ryley, I’m out of cake, is there any cake on the table I can go get? Oh yes, there is. Excellent. Wait, I’ll just take this cake past Rob to the counter so I can cut a piece. Oh wait, someone may want to get a camera ready for this event.” It was over the top as Rob eyed the cake coming his way. I did manage to surprise Ryley as I got him with the cake first and then went for the double hit with his Dad as well.
After the cake, Vero and I helped clean up, played with Jenna and then Rob, Ryley and I went down to play some Nintendo Wii. I ended up playing Fantastic Four which was a decent game and then we hammered through five songs on Rock Band to unlock a new tune. I ended up playing drums and singing at one point as Rob isn’t much for the singing part. It was quite challenging but the EASY level is quite forgiving on mistakes. I’m enjoying seeing Ryley like playing the game and hope that he will use that dedication to the game to one day be dedicated to playing the guitar. I have shown him the ultimate rock star moves including the playing the guitar vertically and the power slide. He has mastered them well.
It was a great night and Vero and I headed home to watch another episode of Veronica Mars.
Happy birthday to both Jenna and Rob!
Special birthday note goes out to Carleigh whose birthday was a few days ago as well!