The Big 1

Everybody loves a birthday party. We celebrated Stella's this past July 28 (put that in your calendars and send cash in the coming years; we'll see that she gets it...) Erica had a ladybug theme (I mean if we did her nursery in ladybugs then we simply MUST carry the theme into the first birthday party, right?) and we celebrated in Ohio with both of our families together. Seriously, though, we recognize that children are a gift from God and we are grateful to him for blessing us in this way. Below are some pictures with little commentary, but then again you aren't on this particular blog to read anyway, are you?

You can't have a birthday without mass quantities of cake. Not bad for Erica's first attempt. I, assuming I could decorate a cake having watched it done once, thought I would tell Erica the best way to ice it. She rolled her eyes but handed me the icing-bag-decorator-thingy (those of you in the cake biz know what I'm talking about). Not only was I completely incapable of creating a dot of icing, but I also managed to smear black icing all over my shirt is I leaned over the cake. Leave it to the experts.
Here is a moment of great anticipation.

And this would be a moment of great satisfaction. You can't see her other hand but she has two fistfuls of cake. She seemed genuinely shocked when we finally took the cake away from her before she had finished the entire thing.

Of course she had a little version of the ladybug for herself but still, it was a pretty large piece. This shot captures the calm before the storm. She has just now realized that she can bury her entire hand in the cake and we're actually letting her do it.
Last but not least, no first birthday is complete without a cabbage patch kid.