Birthday Fun

Life has been crazy busy lately, and I haven't had time to finish Merrick's 12 month update yet.
We celebrated Merrick's first birthday a few days before the actual day, and I thought I would do a separate post about the party since there are a lot of pictures. I'll save my reflection about Merrick's first year for his monthly update.

Due to family schedules, we had a dinner party so that everyone could make it. For the sake of simplicity, we decided on pizza and salad, and of course, cake and ice cream for dessert! We were really fortunate that Mark's parents were able to join us, along with my immediate family, one of my uncles, and the family friends who introduced me to Mark nearly 13 years ago...

We enjoyed catching up with each other over dinner, and took a quick break to open presents and snap a family picture.  

I think we took about 10 pictures in an attempt to get one good one of all five of us, and as luck would have it, the best one happened to be the first one we took; it was all downhill from there...At least we're all looking at the camera in this one:

Then we moved on to the main event: the cake smash!

I love how excited the girls were to see Merrick with his cake. It turned out not to be too dramatic or humorous, aside from the fact that Merrick grimaced when he tasted the frosting. It was also very endearing to see him wanting to share with his sisters.

We all had a ball, especially the birthday boy! It was truly a blessing to be together to celebrate this little man and the joy he has brought to our lives this past year.