The best birthday party ever!

Yesterday was Joshua's joint first birthday party with his nine-days-older buddy Caleb.  And oh, wow, did we all have a blast!!

Andréa (Caleb's mom) and I decided that we wanted to do a Canaan theme, because our sons' names are Joshua and Caleb, and because we've joked about the confluence in names for the whole year that they've been alive.  :)  (See Numbers 13-14, Joshua 1-2, and Joshua 5-6.)  So in keeping with the theme, we sent out these invitations:


Front (with address info removed) and back
Caleb had just learned how to point the week before we took these photos, so I was THRILLED when he held up his one finger -- how perfect for a first birthday party invitation?  :)  And just to explain all the cheesy little Canaan-themed elements: a map of Canaan as divided by the 12 tribes on the front, and the walls of Jericho along the bottom of the back, complete with Rabab's red rope.

Also -- look at how tiny our boys were!

We continued the theme in our party decorations.  One of the things the spies brought back from their exploration of Canaan was a cluster of grapes so large that it took two men to carry it.  So we used artificial ivy and purple balloons to create giant grape clusters.  :)



And our cake was made in the shape of a castle, to represent the walls of Jericho.  Before singing "Happy Birthday" to the boys, we passed out party horns and noisemakers (our "trumpets"), especially to the little kids, but most of the grown-ups got into it, too.  And the sound of trumpets and shouts caused the walls of Jericho to fall down.  Into nice, chocolatey pieces.  :)




And oh, my, did Joshua love his piece of cake!  I'm going to write up a whole post devoted to Joshua's reaction to his first taste of chocolate and refined sugar, but for now, here's one of my favorite photos of our little guy double-fisting it in an attempt to get it all in his mouth as quickly as possible (taken by Jason -- thanks!!):


SO many dear friends came to celebrate with us.  I think we had something like 37 adults and 15 kids?  It was so wonderful celebrating our boys with all of these friends.  And our boys really enjoyed it, too!  Both Caleb and Joshua did really, really well the entire time, despite the crowd and noise and new faces.  Caleb was a master at crawling in and through different groups, sharing his toys, and charming all of the guests.  And Joshua was such a sweet host, toddling up to each new arrival with a big excited grin, flapping his arms in welcome, and charming all of the guests.  :)






And just a few cute ones of the boys playing together after all of the guests had left:




How incredibly fun it was to celebrate Joshua and Caleb's birthdays together!  We're so thankful to have such wonderful friends standing alongside us in this journey of parenthood.  Thank you all for loving our sons so!