Birthday Bash!!

Who knew that throwing a 1st birthday party was so much work and so expensive?!? As the BIG DAY approached, it seemed that my daily planner got more and more packed with "things to do". Jared thought that the sight was a bit humorous (apparently) and decided to take a picture. I absolutely love lists. It really helps me to write down all the little tasks I need to complete in the day and have the satisfaction of checking it off my list. So, as you can see I had a lot to do. Much of it was brought on myself, so I really can't complain and I will say that Jared was a lot of help with both the food preparation and the cleaning! What a doll! Along with the cake, we also had kabobs on the grill, antipasto pasta salad, fruit salad, bread with artichoke spinach dip, and chocolate covered strawberries--YUM!


Anyhow, we invited four families to celebrate Ruby's big day with us, but (un)fortunately we only had three able to attend. It was unfortunate in that we missed having them, but fortunate becuase with 8 adults and 5 kids stuffed inside our house, it was a bit of a mad house--2 more adults and 2 kids may have pushed us over the top! Ruby was very shy at first and didn't want to play with the other kids, she just wanted to be carried around. Eventually she got better until Conrad decided to yank the bow (and some hair) off her head. That wasn't the kind of birthday surprise she had in mind!

Ruby had lots of help from 3 1/2 year old Emma opening her gifts. It started as Emma just bringing Ruby the gifts, but before long, Emma was basically unwrapping them as well! She was a bit bored by Ruby's snail like movement through the unwrapping. Ruby recieved several adorable outifits, a book, a puzzle, and a wooden xylophone from her friends! Jared and I let her open one present from us, which was a big cloth tunnel from IKEA. When Ruby opened that, the kids went NUTS! Apparently many of them have experience with the tunnel and were eager to show off their skills!

Ruby had a Jell-O "poke"cake for her birthday--a white cake with stripes of strawberry kiwi flavoring with buttercream frosting. I was very happy that it actually turned out quite nice! Sadly, the pictures are all horrible like this one, I guess becuase the cake was so white and her dress is so dark. I'm not sure. At any rate, everyone was very impressed with the cake and commented on how "light and fluffy" it was. I had to admit that I had used one of Claire's hoarded cake mixes and the Jell-O that Momma K had sent to make it happen. For the Danes in attendance, this was definitely one of the first cakes of it's kind that they had sampled and they were equally in awe that we served ice cream with it!

As you can see, Ruby enjoyed crushing her cake as much as she did eating it. Before we even got it cut Ruby had already managed to bury her fingers deep into several slices. That's the risk you take when you come to a kids party I suppose!

The party was a total success and we even got to play in the yard a little bit as the first rain drops didn't fall until the last people were leaving. What a huge blessing! The whole family was exhausted though and we were all in bed before 9pm!