Rachel's Barnyard Party

Here are the pictures from Rachel's birthday party. We will start with the food first. Katie saw a picture of a really cute barnyard themed cake and I had no theme/ideas for her party, so we decided to try it. We started working on it the day before her party and put about 6 hours into it while watching 4 kids. She then came over on the day of the party to do some finishing touches for another 1.5 hours. Here was the finished product:

The little animal cupcakes turned out really cute and were pretty easy to make! We also saw this chick idea made from a boiled egg.

We had hamburgers, hot dogs, pulled beef and chicken BBQ sandwiches, crackers and dip, macaroni salad, and a big fresh fruit salad.

I was so busy the whole day that I didn't have time to fix Rachel's hair. Aunt Lauren and Grandma decided to do pigtails for the little piggie.


She had mostly family and a few friend's over (actually Matt and I's close friends who were willing to spend a few hours at a one year old's birthday party). Her two most best friends (Lauren and I could only hope) and cousins were there, Hannah and Kate!

DJ and Adam manning the grill. There was actually a small fire out there at one point.


We sang Happy Birthday!



She ate an entire cupcake!




Hannah and Kate finally got a cupcake too!
Hannah was not as thrilled with hers as Kate, but I recall that was the way it was at their first birthday party too.

Of course, Rachel made a huge mess. Matt and I bought her a little kiddie pool that looks like a hippo for her birthday. Matt had blown it up and filled it with water hours before so that it warmed up a little bit. We stripped her and let her take a bath out there so that she was nice and clean for present time. After she came in, I started cleaning up a few things and noticed that we forgot to light the candle. So, in order to get my $1 worth out of the candle, I lit it just for a picture.

We opened presents and she didn't care at all. Matt and I quickly opened the gifts. She got some books, a pool floatie, some clothes, 4 sets of PJ's, Toy's R Us gift cards, a few toys (including some beach ones) and some stuffed animals.

The next day, we went to Siesta Key for the second time in 4 days to celebrate a few birthdays on Matt's side of the family. The weather was not nice and it was actually chilly for most of the time. Rachel ate most of the time and I finally let her down to play in the sand for a few minutes before we left.
I was trying to take a group picture, but Rachel decided she would just rather crawl out of it.

One of her toys that she got, a corn popper. She cannot walk behind it yet because well, she cannot walk, but she will drag it along the floor to hear some noise.


We also went to her one year well baby checkup yesterday, but she was actually not well. She still has fluid in both ears and the green nose is an infection. The doctor put her on some stronger antibiotics and allergy medicine at night. She acts just fine except I can hear her coughing sometimes during her naps. She is learning how to blow her nose. I don't know how she figured it out, but when I put the Kleenex up to her nose to wipe, she will blow out a little bit. Hooray! We are also beginning to discipline her for opening the trash can, cabinets, dresser drawers...If you don't agree with our methods, I don't want to hear about it. You will thank me someday for having a well behaved child.