Monkey Man had a birthday, shout Hooray!

First, let’s get the pesky party details out of the way, so we can focus on how cute Leo is.

We made a triple chocolate monkey cake. Recipe here at Best Bites. Then we decorated the cake with vanilla wafer ears and eyes, and Cocoa Krispies for texture.

The yellow plate monkey one is 6 inches, for Leo to smash! Or in his case, it was more like POKE! You’ll see in a minute.

 

I made a little birthday sign with my Cricut.

And made a felt crown (which is pretty much the easiest thing to sew- ever. And I whipped up some party hats.

Ok, so he’s only 1, so a cute hat and a cake, that’s all he gets. Tried to reign myself in here, keep it simple. We had a BBQ at the park with our cousins for a celebration.

But first I took some shots. I borrowed a friend’s 50mm lens, so I wanted to see what kind of dreamy artsy shots I could get.

A 50 mm is pretty good if you want your kid to look like a Claritin commercial. Especially if you are using automatic focus. Once I went to manual focus, I got some good shots

Well, good for a little baby who doesn’t sit still for long. Leo didn’t seem too excited to look at me, he was more interested in the soccer practice going on next to the pavilion.

Here’s a side by side of the same shot with 50 mm vs. zoom lens, 1.8 vs. 5.6 f stop. More exposure on the second- I like the first dreamy Evie better.

Ok, so enough camera talk. Here’s the Par-TAY!

I love these giggly girls, especially together. Their conversations are hilarious. Don’t they look like a commercial for summertime?

Superhero Ninjas Unite!

 

Here’s the cake pictures. Leo told us all about the cake, he ate more when we gave him a spoon, I think he was distracted by the cocoa krispies.

At home we opened presents. Well, the girls did, and baby boo-bah looked more like this- a deer in the headlights. Looking at this picture with his puppy dog eyes makes me miss him, and he’s only been asleep napping for an hour. I’m going to be a wreck when I look at this picture in 5 years. Or 18 years when he goes on a mission.  Man. I Love you Leo!

Happy Birthday!