Jacob's early birthday celebration!

Today, we had an early birthday party for Jacob. It worked out for Josh's parents to come since it was Labor Day, and we had a little celebration 9 days early! :) We had a lot of fun and ended up taking quite a few pictures. When they got here, Jacob was napping and Josh's dad started putting together his present... a red wagon!! When he got up, it was about halfway done, so he decided to help! What a little handyman...

He doesn't look excited at all about his new wagon, does he? :)
Checking things out...
After the wagon was all put together, we went out for lunch at a Chinese buffet.. yummm! Next, we headed off to the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. We had never actually been to the zoo here yet.. it is pretty nice! It took us about an hour and a half to see the entire zoo, so it was probably the perfect size for Jake. He loved watching the animals and just being outside. It did get a little hot, though, at 90 degrees!

Meeting the giraffes...

Checking out the petting zoo with grandpa...
Fish!!!
Pointing to some fish he liked with grandma...

After the zoo, we headed back home and Jacob opened his presents (a new truck to ride on and a baby guitar.. in addition to the wagon he got earlier in the day!!) and we had cake! I decided to go with the baseball theme because of his love for balls! I got a ball cake pan from Michael's and made Jake his own personal baseball cake to smash and eat! That cake decorating stuff is a lot harder than it looks!! Definitely a little lopsided, but he didn't care.. ;)

The cupcakes for everyone else...

Jacob clapped while we sang happy birthday to him!

He wasn't quite sure how to go about eating this big ball we put in front of him, so he just grabbed it by both sides and sunk his teeth in!! It was quite the show!

He ate so much frosting! He kept licking and licking! We finally broke into the cake for him, since he didn't seem to figure that part out.. or didn't bother since the frosting was so good! He tasted the cake, then proceeded to continue licking the frosting!

Cleanup wasn't so bad... the sprayer by the kitchen sink did the trick! Jake loved it!

After we said goodbye to Josh's parents, we took Jake for a little wagon ride around the neighborhood. He really liked it.. he took a book along and nicely sat and looked at his book... then he would look around outside... then he started playing a game of imaginary ball. He said "ball.. ball.. ball..." so we looked back and he had his fists together as if he was holding a bat and was swinging as if he was swinging a bat! The kid is already using his imagination! ;)

And to end the great day, we got a sweet picture of our happy little guy... getting so big, but still as cute as ever!