One big ol' year!

This weekend we celebrated Elinor's first birthday! Due to my silly obligations, we didn't actually celebrate it on Saturday (her birthday) but on Sunday instead. But Sunday was grand! Caitlin covered the key points of the day on her freshly revitalized blog, The Gauge, but I'll hand over my own rendition here.

Caitlin and Mom spent the whole morning preparing all sorts of good food, including two different kinds of cupcakes, both of which were very good (well, too good, actually,... I've had three more today and I can't get the last one out of my mind) and our dear friend Brooke and her wonderful Douglas and Sebastian generously donated their house and yard for the festivities!

They have a wonderful yard (complete with three adorable young chickens milling about) that even had a nice blanket out with a sun umbrella! It was all fun with lots of friends and family, including some that I hadn't seen in a while! After extensive socialization, we sat down for present time, and the blanket in the backyard was perfect for this. Though Elinor still doesn't really understand the opening of presents (and I become a little flustered trying to get her focused on getting them opened one at a time) it all worked out dandy... Aunt Jennifer even gave her a nice wicker chair that she could sit in for present opening time while Sebastian brought her presents to open and even helped her open them, as she's not quite up for that yet. She got all sorts of good stuff: her wicker chair, an xylophone, books, plastic singing/noisemaking things, a metal chicken that moves around and lays eggs, her first "little people", summer outfits, and much much more! Now we'll need to expand her toy storage beyond just the one wicker basket we use at home...


and though I, of course, wasn't planning on giving her any cake-like stuff, she ended up getting to enjoy a birthday cupcake after all! She seemed to like it quite a bit.