Sunday, September 9, 2012

One Awesome Birthday



 Where do I start as we celebrate this milestone. This sweet girl blessed out lives a year ago on Labor Day. Labor I did to get her here and the weeks following were not so easy either. Well, lets be honest, the whole year has been one of change.



However, I would not trade this little monkey for the world. She is such a blessing to have in our lives and in our home. The day of the party we had a torential downpour in the morning, and I was a mess. I had rented a pavilion at a local forest preserve to have cake and ice cream at and I was sure we would be celebrating in a hurricane, or smushed in our small home with the cake table in the master bedroom and the toilets would have to act as the finest chairs.

We spent the morning celebrating with birthday pancakes for breakfast and then made a quick and short job of opening the Birthday presents that Grandma and Grandpa Bywater had brough the night before when they arrived.
She loved the princesses and the books, and the cute little dress. She also will not get off the trampoline from Grandma and Grandpa Bywater. The jumping is endless and the buttons that make noise more so.
Not sure how I captured this face...it's her dad's.
  

 I then ran (well okay, drove) to the airport to get Grammy and collect the cakes. We enjoyed the day chatting and watching the little munchkin jump and play. We also made four kinds of homemade ice cream for the party.
I found this great link with some perfectly simple recipes for homemade ice cream.

We headed over to the forest preserve later that day and had a gorgeous evening to work with despite the not so great forcast.


My fantastic friend Aimie made this cake for Elsi. It was a checkerboard on the inside and a delight of sprinkles on the outside. It was fantastic!

Ice cream flavors included chocolate (soupy chocolate anyway), Strawberry, Oreo (by far the leader and champion of the night), and vanilla.





 


Elsi wasn't sure about the cake and at first just really liked brushing the sprinkles off, and then when I gave her her own piece (yes, she is independant and worried about having her own thing...drives this mom nuts some days!) she dug right in. Loved it...


We are so grateful and lucky to have so many wonderful friends, the party was so fun and we loved having family and those that are our suragot family around us.


 
The party was such a big hit that I caught Grammy cleaning sprinkles out of the tred of Elsi’s shoes later that night...I couldn’t ask for more.

A one year old party in the hat for this mom.