Elna’s birthday party!

Elna was born on Memorial Day last year, so we thought it was appropriate (and mostly convenient) to celebrate her birthday on Memorial Day this year.  I had such a fun time decorating and getting ready for her party.  I did a pink lemonade themed party and  I think it turned out so cute! 

This picture was on the invitation we sent out.

When people came in they tried to guess which month was which from the monthly photos I took of Elna her first year.  Daren got all of them right—not even Brian or I got them all right, so that was pretty remarkable!

 

Linda and Allan Roberts

We had a barbeque and a lemonade bar (with strawberry, raspberry, & marionberry mix-in options)

I wasn’t trying to take pictures of people feeding Elna, but it just seemed to happen…do you think she got enough to eat?

So, you might be thinking at this point “What?  There are more pictures?”  But, believe it or not, there are—and this is only a tenth of what we took…

I really wanted to make Elna a perfect little birthday cake—pink with fancy piping and all.  You will see from the next picture that that didn’t exactly happen—this is how it looked when we got it out of the fridge:

But it was delicious!  Pink lemonade (and vegan! which I’m sure you had already concluded because of the look of that frosting. )

Elna was a little more tentative than I thought she would be.  She mostly poked her finger into the frosting and then licked her finger.

We skyped my mom and Annie during the cake singing/cake eating and she played the piano while we sang happy birthday all together.  The miracles of modern technology!

We made the birthday hat and bib for the occasion.  A lot of work for such a little girl.  After this party I can understand why non-first children feel slighted sometimes.  I can’t promise I will spend as many hours working or stay up till midnight the night before making fabric bunting and a bib for each of my children.  But honestly, I hope that I do, because as much work as it was, it was also fun to be creative and to celebrate our little Elna’s life!

Back row: Allan Roberts, Brian, DeWin, Lucy     Middle row: Barbara, Chris, Elna, Stacy    Front row:  Linda, Daren, Heather

Unwrapping her gifts from Grandma & Grandpa

The picture on the left makes me laugh—she was far more interested in Grandma’s cell phone than opening gifts.

I love the expression on her face in the picture on the left.  The picture on the right shows Elna opening her gift from us—a car seat.

The gift she is perching on above is from Chris—it’s a really cool puzzle/stool with Elna’s name in it and the number’s 1-10—I’ll have to get a picture of it.  She loves it!

Heather took these family pictures of us—I love how they turned out—thanks Heather! :