the tradition begins! weston and i wish we could have a bigger house because we LOVE to have people over and spoil them with delicious 'weston' food. other than hosting thanksgiving for our families, we've decided that each year jackson will celebrate his bday on the superbowl. here are highlights from superbowl XLIII... jackson received his first jersey for superbowl in 2009 (if we had thought of it in 2008, it could've been his second jersey ... but with jacks at five days old, we had a thousand other things to worry about). this year he donned a Steelers jersey, Polamalu 43. i know, i know, cheer for the underdog, right? if we had thought about this soon enough, we could've gone online and dug up a cardinals jersey for infants. but there was no time for shipping, so go Steelers!
(I later thanked Sport City for only having Steelers jerseys in stock - the other tradition we'd like to start is picking the winning team for Jacks to wear) 
jackson woke up early on the 1st to get cleaned up and ready for visitors! (i had to explain that so i would have a reason to insert the cute bath video. sorry you have to listen to me talk on it!) we celebrated the bday party 1st by inviting family and friends early in the day to watch jacks open presents. Weston disappeared at 10am to go to Granite City to make the delicious feast, so i was stuck trying to entertain 20+ family and friends with growling stomachs! we opened presents to distract the crowd - i was surprised by jackson's ability to concentrate on opening about 5 gifts in a row (opening means tearing the paper a little while i finish unwrapping and give "ooo's and aaah's".
when the gifts were opened, we had lunch with friends and family. lunch included a lot of great superbowl eats: buffalo wings with ranch, bleu, and celery (of course), pulled pork with homemade mole, guac, corn and black bean salsa, etc to load your tortilla with, meatballs with cheese and marinara for meatball subs (although the jimmy johns bread didn't arrive until superbowl time), chips, salsa and white sauce from the red pepper in GF (YUM!), and lots of candy and treats for dessert.
oh yeah, and cupcakes! i'm not a fan of cake, so i decided to make red velvet cupcakes with vanilla frosting and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting... turns out i made one horrible cupcake! next year i'll remember to put more frosting on so they aren't so dry :) overall, the bday party was a success. jackson was in a great mood and was a great entertainer for the crowd. he took a LONG afternoon nap and rested himself for the next part of the day: SUPERBOWL XLIII.
we had a completely different crowd for superbowl this year; friends from Doolittles and Granite City decided to skip the bday party and instead come over when the beer was chilled :) typical restaurant workers! a few of our friends brought their little ones to help occupy Lauren and Jacks during the game, although 1 year olds don't really play with each other, do they? more like: sit next to one another and steal toys! Lauren waited patiently for her friend to come over and had a blast all night. i guess there isn't much else to report on... everyone knows what happens at a superbowl party, right? superbowl XLIII offered some 3D commercials right before the halftime show, so a friend of mine brought the 3D glasses from the grocery store.
other than the LAME 3D show, it was your typical superbowl party with too much food and too many bottles of beer left for weston and i to drink later...
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