It's my party and I'll cry if I want to

Last weekend we had Sadie's first birthday party and it was a huge success! Thankfully there was no crying, but there was lots of cake and friends. Though we've only lived in the area for about 2 months, we have been blessed to make some wonderful friends who were able to share the afternoon with us. We took a ton of pictures of the party and I want to post them all but, since we took over a hundred, I should probably be a least a little selective.

Here's the birthday girl in her special party dress, waiting for friends to arrive.

Sadie loved reading her birthday cards. Thank you grandparents and great-grandparents!

We got her this pony riding toy a couple weeks ago for one of her presents. She seems to have figured it out pretty well.

I did some research online and decided to try my hand at decorating a cake for the big event. I've never done anything more extravagant than dumping canned frosting onto a store-bought cake mix, so this was kind of a big deal. It required repeated trips to the store as I kept forgetting things, and then a last minute late-night Walmart run for a frosting tip coupler (the thing that attaches the tip to the bag--I had no idea I even needed one), but eventually I had everything I required to make a fabulous cake. Though a seasoned cake decorator would surely see a bounty of flaws in my work, I'm still pretty proud of what I came up with.

I made a regular sheet cake of yellow cake mix for the bottom, then I made a chocolate devils food cake mix and baked it in a cereal bowl for the body of the ladybug. The head is just a chocolate cupcake covered in black icing. I piped all the grass (which wasn't as tedious as I anticipated---it was actually kind of therapeutic) and piped the spots on the ladybug. I made the buttercream frosting from a recipe I got from my amazing cake-decorating sister-in-law Allison and it was super delicious. I've made buttercream frosting before that didn't taste as good and I think the trick was using real butter. I always just use what I have, which tends to be light margarine, and the difference was significant. No healthy shortcuts when it comes to good frosting. Yum!!

We threw the party with some friends of ours that also just moved to the area and have a boy named Asher, who is 4 days older than Sadie. Once friends arrived we just let the kids all play for a bit before we got out the cake and ice cream and let the birthday babies go to town.

I still can't believe how much Sadie LOVED her cupcake that she got to eat all by herself. The girl devoured the whole thing and then was on a crazy sugar high the rest of the party. Nom nom nom!

Happy birthday to you!

After cake and ice cream I gave Sadie and Asher each a special wrapped present: a box of tissues of their own for them to do with what they will. I promised myself I would let Sadie take out every single tissue and shred each one to her heart's content and I wouldn't mind. She was in heaven.

Really? Is this a trick?? I usually get in trouble for emptying the tissues...

Cousin Rosie came to help finish off the tissues. Such a good helper. :)

We made a bit of a mess...

Overall it was a wonderful birthday party!! We are so grateful to friends and family who traveled from near and far to be with us. Happy birthday to our little Sadie Bug! We love you forever and are so lucky to have you in our lives. May we continue to be blessed with many more birthdays together. <3

Happy Birthday Sadie Layne!!

 My special little girl turned one last week and I can hardly believe it. I feel like she's turned into a little girl during the past few weeks. Where did my baby go?

August 2012

 August 2011

I cannot describe the joy that little Sadie brings to my life every day. I am so privileged to spend each day with her. She makes me laugh, teaches me patience, helps me to grow. I am so lucky to have her.

Sadie turned one on Wednesday but we were planning her birthday party for today. I had big plans to make and decorate a ladybug cake. Unfortunately, on Thursday night while we were all out bowling with friends, Sadie was acting fussy and felt warm. We went home and put her to bed; at 3:30am she woke up crying and felt hot so we took her temperature. Poor thing had a fever of 102. Conveniently enough, her 1-year doctor check up was scheduled for Friday so I got to take her in and get checked out. We're thinking she may have picked up a virus from some kids she played with this week but I'm hoping it's not as bad as what those kids had. We'll just have to see. She's feeling better now (not 100% yet, but better) but we had to postpone her birthday bash to next Saturday. I'm still gonna make the ladybug cake and will definitely post pictures later, no matter how it looks! I've never decorated cakes before so this will be a good learning experience. :)

Sadie currently has 2 and a half teeth (and counting!) and is showing signs of wanting to walk soon. I'm still hoping to delay walking as long as possible because she already gets into things too quickly!

She waves, says Mama and Dadada, loves to play with anything electronic: laptop, cell phones, camera, tv remotes, Wii remotes, cords, etc. A couple weeks ago the laptop was turned off but we figured we'd let her bang on the keyboard for once since we were always telling her "no" and she ended up pulling off the space bar. Oops... She loves to empty out the kitchen cupboards, especially the trash bags as evidenced above. Sadie really enjoys emptying anything that can be emptied: cupboards, toy baskets, boxes, diaper bags (her own or anyone elses), purses, high chair tray... She hasn't quite learned how to put things back but she sure is a champ at taking stuff out. She also recently learned how to stack rings on a stick. Very impressive. :)

Her official one-year stats:
Height: 29.5 inches (50-75th percentile)
Head: 17.5 inches (50th percentile)
Weight: 19 lbs 6 oz (25-50th percentile)
She's stayed pretty consistently within those same percentiles throughout this year. She started off in the 10-25th for weight and then bumped up a level, but otherwise I think they're all the same. I've had people tell me that she's huge and others say she's tiny, but really, she's right smack dab in the middle.

I haven't uploaded pictures in awhile, so here's a bunch, starting with 4th of July activities with Ben and Allison. (Though, I don't think we got any pictures with them...)

Sadie got a lady bug painted on her cheek. She actually sat really still for the girl who drew it on.

We tried the moon bounce but Sadie wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. Maybe next year.

I think this picture is hilarious! Daddy and Sadie, sharing a bag of popcorn and looking too cool for school. You can definitely tell they're related. :)

We found a Cafe Rio in Fort Collins and it was DE-licious!!

Someone had a popsicle!

Woah, who's that??

Look mom! I found a friend!

Before.

After.

Bowling with new friends.