Birthday Party

On Sunday the 15th, we had a birthday party for Daniel. Sasha rented out a European restaurant and we invited family and friends to celebrate with us. My parents came over from Louisiana, Sasha's grandparents came over from Alabama, and we had friends come over from various places. Sasha bought Daniel a really cool birthday outfit. Here he is looking like one of the Sopranos.


Sasha and her mother made a poster full of photos of Daniel throughout his first year. It really turned out nice. Everybody loved it. (Click on the picture to see the pictures and captions on each of them)

Daniel is really coming along with his walking. Actually, it's all he wants to do anymore. Lately he has been holding onto only one hand and is getting his balance really well. He loves to dance too.

That smile gets me every time. You can't hear it, but he usually squeaks when he does it.

Finally, a picture with the three of us together. One of us is usually holding the camera.

This is a collage of our family and friends. We ordered about three times as much food as we needed, so everyone had plenty. I think we still have some leftovers in the refrigerator. The food was delicious.

We hired a clown named Tater to entertain the kids. She did some magic tricks and made hats and animals with balloons. At first, things were a little odd, but the kids quickly warmed up to her and ended up having a great time. Daniel was most interested in her suitcase which was decorated with all kinds of trinkets. He pulled a few off, but I don't think that she noticed. She made balloon hats for all the kids, but Daniel was not having any of it. So other people were made to wear it, like Sasha's Grandmother, cousin David and Sasha.


Just about the time we decided to give Daniel his cake, he started getting sleepy. We had a full-body bib to protect Daniel, but it was probably unnecessary. He didn't give us the show we expected, but it was funny anyway. I ended up getting more icing on me than Daniel did on himself, but Sasha took my clothes to the cleaners yesterday.

Happy Birthday, Baby Boy! We love you so-so much!

Written by Stephen

Auburn Reunion

I am so behind on my posting! Again! We were so busy this past weekend. Daniel turned one on Thursday, we had lots of visitors, parties and fun. But about this later...

First, I want to write about a wonderful party we went to a little over a week ago. When we moved to Atlanta, Stephen reconnected with his friends from Auburn. On March 7th Candice and Eric had a party at their house for the Auburn friends and their families. There were so many nice pictures from the party, that I decided to create collages. (You can click on each collage to enlarge it and see the pictures in more detail.)

Candice and Eric have a beautiful house with an UNBELIEVABLE deck. If they ever want to sell their house, I would buy it right away just for the deck! The deck has many different levels with recessed hot tub, fire pit area, dining area, hammock, play area, etc. It is huge! And perfect for parties.


Eric built a zip-line for his children, Stephen and I wanted to play around on it too :
Here are we around the fire pit table making s'mores, drinking beer and hanging out. Daniel was a perfect baby the whole day. He got tired, so he took a little nap on his dad's chest. He woke up after a little while and was so cuddly and warm. He does not usually let us cuddle him for a long time, but during that evening he was content with just sitting on our laps and flirting with all the ladies (of course ;) ).
Candice set up a Chocolate Fountain for all to enjoy. Kids definitely went to town on it. I am not sure if any of them slept that night :)

Atlanta Aquarium

WARNING! Way too many pictures!

OK, I am finally coming to the end of my posts about my Birthday Weekend. As my friend Lera was staying through Tuesday, I decided to take her to downtown Atlanta and show her some of the local sights.

After taking a quick tour of CNN and walking through the Beautiful Olympic Park, we went to the Atlanta Aquarium. And everybody if you are ever in Atlanta, make it a point to go to the Aquarium. It is HUGE and so beautiful. And Daniel really liked it. He was smiling and pointing at all the different fish the whole time.

These first couple pictures are dear to me because they are the first I have of Daniel standing all by himself (leaning on the glass)

These jelly fish were magnificent!

These were some type of eels, they grow to be 16-18 inches long and live like this:

Daniel was not sure about this giant fish at first, but warmed up pretty quickly:

This tank is either the largest or one of the largest in the world, it holds 6.3 MILLION gallons of water. Visitors can take scuba diving or snorkeling excursions in it. I want to do it so bad! A group was taking a tour of the tank when we were there. This is one of the instructors, I guess he was taking a rest ;-)

This tank was huge too, I liked this picture because there are reflections of two of the beluga whales on the surface:

They had a few petting pools, here is the one with sea anemones. They felt rubbery:

The piranhas looked suspended in the air:

This was a small tank with some of the most beautiful plants and a few small fish:

Daniel was fascinated with these alligators:

There seemed to be a million of multi-colored small fish in there:

I like the reflection of the rocks in the surface

Baby Shower

I am still trying to catch up with all the things we did during my Birthday weekend. I think it will take couple more posts after this one to talk about all we did.

On Sunday, we went to a Baby Shower for our old friends Kelly and Tom. I've never been to a coed Baby Shower and it was a lot of fun. Kelly is due to have their firstborn son Bodi on March 23 and she looks too cute with the 8 Months big belly. Three of Kelly's best friends organized the shower and they did a very good job.

Here is Kelly (and Baby Bodi) and me:

Daniel, of course, could not miss a meal :) Stephen was trying to tease Daniel, but he was not paying attention, he had to eat. Did any of you, ladies, notice that you open your mouth when you feed your babies? Apparently, I do, my friend Lera caught it on film :)
They had a baby bottle drinking competition for the guys only. I tried to tell them to give a bottle to Daniel, but they did not, I guess they thought he is over-qualified. (The bottle was filled with water, by the way) Kelly and Tom had lots of baby-related gifts. We brought a baby grooming and emergency kit. I decided to bring a gag gift too. I brought a pink translucent negligee with feathers. Kelly and especially Tom loved it! And yes, Tom did wear Kelly's Mother-to-be tiara :)

I think Tom was more than excited, just look at his face - I think he is

thinking about starting on the second baby :)

Lera shot this beautiful picture of Stephen, I think it is awesome:

We had a blast:

And Daniel had to walk around constantly, being his precious self and flirting with all the ladies:

I was tagged

My bloggy friend Candice tagged all of her readers to play along and go to their Picture folder and open the fourth folder and post the fourth picture. I went to the fourth folder and it holds the pictures from Stephen's and mine Graduation from University of Alabama at Birmingham almost 5 years ago. So I decided to play along and post about it.

As fate would have it, Stephen and I graduated from UAB at the same time in May of 2004. His parents, grandmother and brother decided to come out and visit, and all of our friends were happy to come celebrate with us, so we decided to have a party. After the graduation ceremony everybody came over to a club-house at the apartment complex where Stephen lived. There were about 60 people at the party. It was such a special time for us, seeing our friends, family, some of the teachers, and co-workers all together.

Here is the fourth picture, my friend Olga made this beautiful cake for us:

And here is some more of the food we served:

Stephen and I in our robes at the ceremony:
Can you find us? ;-)

Stephen and one of his professors

Toast at the party:

My grandfather Emil and I

My Grandmother Inna and I

Somebody brought us these beautiful flowers:

This tag brought back so many memories, thank you Candice! Maybe I will go back and post some about our pre-baby life and adventures, we have tons of pictures, which you can always find at our picture archive.

Oh, and by the way, I tag everybody who reads this too. If you do not have a blog of your own, just email me the fourth picture from the fourth picture folder, I hope it is funny!!! ;)