Saturday, August 20, 2011

Erik's Big Day

My baby boy turns four on Monday and since school starts this week I thought it best to throw his birthday party before school started rather than wait. Having an end of August birthday presents some challenges, but I seem to always go in the same direction, water! I can usually count on it being hot enough to swim, even when renting a place 6 weeks early. So I took a risk, since we had never had a birthday party thrown here, but rented a wading pool for a morning at a local park. The beauty is that I could invite as many people as I wanted and there was a park and wading pool for constant entertainment so we were set.

When deciding on the cake I was a little surprised by Erik's choice, he went for the rainbow, then I realized it was because he loves the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" because I sing it to him a lot. So the theme was pretty simple, we stuck with "somewhere over the rainbow". This is my first park party so I didn't go crazy and knew there was only so much I could do theme wise. I had multi-colored decorations and made a rainbow themed fruit platter and that's about it. There really wasn't much I could do with the location and what we had planned.

I could only include so many pictures on my blog, click here for all the of the pictures if you are curious.

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The wading pools went really well. It seems like the kids really enjoyed themselves inside and outside of the water and were constantly entertained. I saw lots of smiles and didn't witness many tantrum and no random families tried to come over and swim in the pool. We started at 10:30 and the morning was a bit overcast, but by 11:15 it was a gorgeous sunny 80 degree day and perfect for our party.

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The birthday boy seemed to enjoy himself, he spent some moments playing tag and spending times with some of his friends.

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Elliot had a good time too and really enjoyed the company of a few friends of his that were there. He did need to take a moment to regroup and step away from the party because he did get overwhelmed.

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Then there is the big birthday cake, the main attraction of any party. Silly me actually forgot a lighter! My friend Jen went to one of the neighboring parties who were throwing a bbq and borrowed one for us. Thanks a million Jen, so Erik was able to blow out the candles on his birthday cake.

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Latetly, here are a few pictures of some of our friends who made this day really special for us. Thank you everyone you come out and celebrated with us.

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Oh and I thought we could get away with not opening the presents at the party and Erik was obsessed with them so it was unavoidable. I had packed most of them in our car... A special thanks to Annie who sat there and kept track of everything for me so I could get my thank you cards straight.

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2 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Erik! We are sorry we missed your big day. Looks like you had a blast!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome job on the photos Heather!!! :-) You got so many amazing shots. Love it!!!!!

    xoxo

    Thanks for such a great party!!
    Cass

    ReplyDelete

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About Heather

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I am a Los Angles based photographer and mom of 2 wonderful boys. Photography has been a passion of mine over 15 years now, ever since I picked up my first camera in journalism school and started developing my black and whites in a darkroom. The instant an affordable DSLR came out on the market in 2002, I had to have one and have been shooting digital since. Once I became a mom I realized how much I enjoy photographing children and how much better I could understand their nuances so it became a passion of mine. Their is such innocence and beauty in their pictures and I feel privileged to be a part of that. I am constantly trying new approaches and tuning my skills to create the art that is in my head, not just the art that I can create right now. I am very interested in off camera flash, and the depth and clarity it adds to my photographs. Sometimes I take breaks from my blog and photography, but it seems to never leave me completely. I always come back.