Sam's First Birthday!

Saturday, when we'd gotten home from our camping trip, I tried to go on a run for the first time since my marathon. I ran a little over a quarter mile before I felt like it was pointless to keep causing myself pain. I ended up walking another mile and trying to run again, but alas, it was too uncomfortable. It wasn't that I was injured; I just feel like my knees were so tired and achy that they were about to give out at any moment. So, I walked.

As I was walking, I realized that exactly a year before, I was walking on the same path with Don trying to put myself into labor because Don was going to miss his prelim for his PhD because I could have the baby any minute! It was just after we'd gotten home from this long walk that my water broke.

It was interested to juxtapose these two walks. During the first, I was having a hard time walking because I was contracting and hugely pregnant. During the second, I was having a hard time walking because I'd just run a marathon. It was kind of a cool dichotomy of experiences, just one year apart.

Sunday was Sam's first birthday. I was surprised at how emotional I was about it. I didn't cry, but I felt like I was on the verge all day. It was a good day to think about all the joy Sam has brought into our lives and reflect about how I've changed as I've grown into my role as a mother.

We hadn't planned a party for Sam's birthday because of how busy I'd been with my job during May. I just changed positions; I'm now the Program Coordinator rather than a Resident Manager and all last week, me and Steph (the outgoing PC) trained all of the new RMs. It was really intense and Don stayed home with Sam nearly all day the whole week. It went well but I'm glad it is over for this year. I'm also glad that I won't be working 40+ hours/week like I have been the past couple weeks.

I found out at church that the student couples were getting together for our bi-weekly dessert potluck, so I figured I could turn it in to an impromptu birthday party for Sam. I made him a cake and had grand visions of how cute it was going to be. After the cake was done baking, I made some frosting. I don't like frosting, so I have only made it a couple times.

And... the frosting was an absolute disaster. Also, we were running late, so I had to frost the cake while it was still hot and by the time I'd try to recreate my vision of this cute little polka-dotted cake with a 1 on top, the 1, all the polka dots, and most of the frosting had run down the side of the round cake and pooled at the bottom. It was hideous but kind of funny. It ended up looking like a volcano. I laughed and laughed at how terrible it looked.

When we got to the potluck, we put Sam in his high chair and sang him "Happy Birthday" and gave him his ugly volcano cake. He just looked concerned at first and would poke it over and over, trying to figure out what was going on. Finally, he took a taste and slowly started digging in.

Here we are singing Sam "Happy Birthday." Yes, this is the ugly volcano cake.

He started getting excited about the cake about 10 minutes after we'd give it to him and then he was making a mess, so we took him outside.

Here is what occurred then. I still get sore abs watching this before it makes me laugh so hard.

Here are some more pictures of the fun with the cake.

On Monday, we went on a hike up Eldorado Canyon. We are now committed to going to as many state parks in CO as possible because we bought an annual pass. When we were driving in to the campground last weekend, we had to pay to enter the state park. The guy at the window asked Don if he wanted to pay $12 for the two day fee or $16 for an annual pass. No brainer, right? So, Don bought the annual pass. He then looked at the pass he had been handed and saw that it said $60, not $16! Talk about a miscommunication. I was in shock when Don showed me the $60 pass! What?!

So, now we are going to as many state parks as we can! Don is making sure we get our money's worth!

We took Sam in the hiking backpack for the first time and you can see from the pictures below, he thought it was pretty exciting.

Two people asked me if I was teenager during the day before the hike. One guy asked me if I was 19 while I was pushing Sam in the shopping cart at the grocery store. Another girl thought I was teenager during Music Movement, the music class I teach for kids in Family Housing. Do I seriously look like a teenager? A teenage mother?

You can see the walls of the canyon in this picture. This is a premiere rock climbing area and we saw dozens of climbers in nooks and crannies all over the rock walls. It was amazing how high up these people climb!

Sam also did something funny during my grocery shopping trip on Monday I wanted to document. We were stuck in a narrow aisle in the produce section. Sam was hungry, so I had pulled out the cheerios from my bag and had given him some. I then gave him the baggy of cheerios to play with while I got some fruit.

I looked over and saw that a young guy, probably a college student, had come to a dead stop next to us and was staring down into his cart, perplexed. I then noticed that Sam had dropped his bag of cheerios into the guys cart. I think the guy was walking by and Sam slyly slipped the cheerio bag into his cart and the guy had just looked down and seen then. I took them back and apologized. Sam was just being a nice boy and sharing! It made me laugh. The guy was not amused, but I was.