Abby's 1st Birthday!!!

We are so far behind in our postings and I am going to kick myself later because of it. I use this blog to remind myself of when things happen and I am about 2 months overdue. Poor Abby will have a gap in her first year! I am going to attempt to remember everything.

So starting with her first birthday!!! Of course poor baby had to start teething and get a cold right before her big day! So she spent Thursday and Friday home with mom and dad. She also spent all weekend in her pack and play which we had to rig in order for her to have an incline. She was so stuffed up it was pitiful and it was also keeping her up. She really has been a healthy kid considering she has been in daycare since she was 8 weeks old. But thank goodness for Motrin and Orajel. There is nothing else we could give her for the little cold. So on the day of her party she was a little doped up. And in some of the pics you could tell she was a tad out of it. And the other part of the Motrin is her equilibrium is off so she falls more - which for her is frustrating!

Her theme was "on the farm" and let me just say Oriental Trading Company is the best for little themes. They had some of the cutest stuff! So I went a little overboard with the theme - she had two goats come to her party, Ziggy and Rascal (the party animals as their owners called them). Some of our friends from church have goats as pets which they were really great to bring them. The kids loved them because goats eat NON-STOP so the kids got a kick out of feeding them. And they were still babies so they were just about the same height as the little ones. Abby had about 15 kids total at her little party. We had also ordered this Ball Pit/tunnel castle (didn't go with the theme - but the kids loved it). Abby loved the ball pit and she was short enough she could walk through the tunnels. Lucky for us Joe is a "weather forcaster" because he had the insight to have them set the ballpit in the basement. At 12 it was sunny and warm so I was thinking it was kind of silly to put it inside, but by 3:30 it was raining sheets, we had a waterfall coming down our backyard. I had never seen it rain so much.

For her cake, it was my first attempt at using Fondant icing. I got some pointers from a friend on which brands to go with and what to add to the cake mixes to make it a little more sturdy. It turned out a lot like what I had envisioned. And best of all it was edible =) Some of the layers were strawberry with strawberry icing and others were lemon with cream cheese icing and then the pig pen was yellow cake with chocolate icing. The silo and hay bales were made out of rice krispy treats. Abby slowly but surely tore into the cake. Then she was trying to share with everyone around her. She didn't get to wierded out with everyone singing Happy Birthday (probably because of the Motrin =)) She was such a good sport about everything. I think all of the people and the activities it really helped to get her mind off of the teething pain.

For the kids we had a egg hunt in the living room and craft time out on the deck. They were able to make barn photo holders. They could decorate them with all these little farm animal stickers. Then just for laughs I had gotten a John Deere tractor pinata. The kids got a kick out of it.

We had attempted to control the gifts by asking people to donate to the Weirs mission trip to PNG. We understand it is hard not to get stuff for the little ones. So it fell on deaf ears for some people =) But from what we know about Abby was able to give $180 to the Weirs, which is great for a one year old =) No one is to little to give!

It was a lot of fun. Joe and I looked at eachother when it was all done and said family party next year =)