Ariel's Birthday Party

My little baby is a whole year old today. Wow! At least I have a few more hours till it is official - she was born at 10:01 pm. We've already had her birthday party, but I'm going to try to make today special for her. Maybe it'll start a tradition... I know at the very least she'll get to eat another cupcake. Probably in the morning cause sweets in the morning aren't normal - so it can be a special birthday treat. I'm sad her daddy won't be here today. He is traveling for work for the next few days. It'll just be us girls for her special day. Gram will be here for part of it.

I want to use the rest of this post to chronicle her birthday party. I know I'll put some of the details in her baby book, but I want to put all the details on here on here. I want to be able to look back. I don't think I'll put all the pictures up yet cause I think other members of our family got better pictures than I did. They will come eventually though.

We had Ariel's 1st birthday party on Saturday, October 24 at 2:30 in the afternoon at our house in Elizabeth City. Her guests included Grandma and Grandaddy Woolard, Gram and PaPop Piner, Aunt Tab and Uncle Mat, Uncle Chris, Aunt Lindsey, Silas, and Savannah, Aaron, Beth, and Isaac, Mommy and Daddy, and Granny. Gifts were sent by the Guthries, the Beauchamps, Grandma Peg and Papa, Great Grandma Reynolds, and Mrs. Lopez (one of my neighbor's growing up).

When everyone arrived, we played outside for a while. Ariel and Silas tested out her new swing from Gram and PaPop. Daddy did a great job hanging it from a tree in the back yard. It worked fine; however, when PaPop saw it he left the party to go to Lowe's with Uncle Mat. It needed a chain extension, so it was lower to the ground. So now the swing is lower and, much to Silas' enjoyment, the chain makes it spin too.

After we played for a while, we went inside for presents. Ariel got a lot of neat gifts from everyone. Silas helped her unwrap them - he was really good at it. She got money and cute clothes from a couple people - these are always nice. I was especially impressed with the beautiful cardigan sweater that Grandma Peg made - Ariel just needs a dress that is pretty enough to wear with it now ;). She got a ride on toy from Uncle Mat and Aunt Tab that is decorated with Ariel, the mermaid, and sings a song when you beep the horn. Silas enjoyed this toy too. She was given great gifts like legos, a drum of percussion instruments, a baby cd player, a pop-up toy, a few cds, a book, and a My Pal Violet dog. I hope I didn't leave anything out - that's all I can remember without going into her room and looking. She's really enjoyed all of her gifts.

While we were inside, we listened to Ariel's Sing and Play Baby Einstein cd. Mostly because she likes to dance to the music and I thought our guests would enjoy seeing her dance (aka bob) to the music. She did and we did. After presents, it was time to eat. I served crackers and sliced cheese, fruit and walnut salad (like at McDonald's - and I used veggie oil instead of peanut oil) minus the grapes, little piggies in blankets with mustard dip, chips and ranch dip, and a simple punch of powered country time strawberry lemonade frozen till slushy and mixed with sprite. Nothing fancy.

This was followed by cupcakes. I stripped Ariel down to her diaper and put a little birthday bib on her. We lit candles and sang Happy Birthday to Ariel in her highchair. Daddy helped blow out the candles (spitting on most of them in the end). Then we presented Ariel with her very first cupcake - it was white confetti cake with chocolate icing and rainbow sprinkles. She loved it. She spent the first few minutes trying to eat each individual sprinkle, but then I broke the cake in half and she really dug in. She almost ate the entire thing. I think she realized we had been holding out on her because now everytime someone is holding/eating something sweet she just stares at it relentlessly.

That was pretty much Ariel's birthday party. We visited for a while after that and Ariel checked out a few of her new toys. We went outside to play with some neighborhood kids that came over and asked for cupcakes. Then we went out back to swing some more. It was a good little party, I think. Ariel was exhausted afterward and so was I.

I'm so glad we were able to have this special day for Ariel. She is our precious little girl.