Gabriel's Party

Yesterday was a full day for Mr. Gabriel... Andy and I had a race in the morning (4M charity run), so the birthday boy and us were up pretty early. My parents came over to watch Gabriel while we raced and brought him out to the park briefly to see us race. He spotted "his" playground (hippo Park) and of course wanted to go in...that's where we were going to have his party later (or so we thought)... Andy set a PR, got 10th place out of nearly5,000 people and won an age group award...I practically jogged the race and my hamstring cramped at mile 3 (oh well). Yay for Andy, Boo for me:

After the race, we quickly made our way back home to start getting ready for Gabriel's party...meanwhile discussing Plan B for the festivities. Why? Well, Mother Nature decided she would bring 30 mph winds and mid 50's temperatures for Gabriel's party, which was scheduled to be at Hippo Park. Fabulous. I got in touch with the friends that had planned on coming and told them we had to "cancel" Gabriel's party due to weather, and we decided to have just family in our apartment instead...which ended up being quite a good time anyway! Andy and I made a caterpillar cake for Gabriel...it was pretty cute if I do say so myself:

We all had a lot of fun watching him play with his food and open his gifts. Of course he wanted to eat the food we had prepared for the adults too (chicken salad sandwiches, fruit and cheese), so I let him have bits of that too. He loved the strawberries and pumpernickel bread (go figure!). He was quite a mess after all of the eating, so we gave him a birthday bath (after he ran down the hall to show everyone his birthday suit!) Gabriel loves an audience, so he was really hamming it up in front of everyone all afternoon. Enjoy the birthday slide show: