We had a party!

 On Saturday our awesome family members and friends came from near and far celebrate Nikolai's birthday! 

(by the way, a HUGE thank-you to all of you who drove hours and hours to come see us--we were SO glad you were able to make it!!!)

We tried to keep the party simple--minimal decorations and homemade snacks that were basically just an excuse to see our loved ones. 

I baked possibly a million cookies for the party--four different kinds (chocolate chip, peanut butter chocolate chip, mint chocolate and lemon!).  I was going to make a fifth kind but then stepped back and realized just how many cookies I was making...and decided we probably had enough ;)

For decorations we stuck with blowing up tons and tons of balloons, which was pretty fun for everyone. 

Thankfully, our birthday boy was in a good mood for his party! 

All of our immediate family came and even some extended family! 

And here's the cake I made for Nikolai--the cake itself was from a box but the frosting is homemade buttercream and the Up! house is made of fondant! 

(don't ask me how long that house took to make! Ok ok, I'll tell you--like 5 hours.  Thank goodness Nikolai takes lots of naps!)

Nikolai got to have his first cupcake (well, to be honest, he's had cake already, but we gave him his own for his birthday!) but was a little confused about it at first. 

So he ate some of the frosting, just to see.

And, well, it turned out he really liked the frosting!

So then he tried some of the cake!

But then he became very concerned that his hand was so messy and wouldn't eat any more cake unless we fed it to him on a fork! What a silly buddy :)

All in all, it was a really fun little party and we were so happy to see so many people we love and care about!

And so I leave you with Nikolai's joy upon seeing the livingroom full of balloons: