Such a highly documented birthday party!

I snagged some more pictures of E's birthday party from friends instagram accounts and facebook. This one is courtesy of Karen, and came with the tagline "She's already got the despondent teenager completely embarrassed about her goofy parents look down":

This one of the rents taken by Jan:

Speaking of Jan the photographer... this one by Matt:

The rest, also taken by Matt. Jana and Natalia in the shade. Jana enjoying one of her spectacular lemon strawberry curd filled cupcakes!

The Millers and me making a weird face.

Smash cake!

The new mommas, Mandy and Natalia, with Shalom and Peribeau (under wraps).

Tired birthday baby...

A few more from the Rents visit

Elsa in the fortune teller turban my mom crocheted for her, opening her prezzies.

We went to Number 9 for lunch with the parents and Elsie fit in their little booster seat like a big girl! We had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn't slip out and under the table but she behaved very well!

We got my dad set up with an instagram account so he could follow our pictures and he took this artsy one.

Good lighting, awesome baby.

The ladies and their babies. WAIT. One of those is a doll. Can you tell which one?

Relaxing in her tutu after the party...

Elsie's birthday party!

We had Elsa's birthday party today in our backyard and were joined by our parents, my brother, and some of Elsa's favorite people. I wish we could have thrown her a rager and invited everyone, maybe next year.

Our amazing friend Jana went to TOWN on Elsa's dessert station. It was so crazy sweet (get it!?) of her to offer to take this on, and it was so so perfect. The cake was a funfetti cake with ombre frosting and gold sprinkles, the cupcakes were lemon with strawberry frosting and a lemon strawberry curd on the inside, and to top it off, chocolate covered rice krispie treats and white chocolate covered marshmallows. DANG! Thank you Jana!!!

The water in the baby pool was a little on the cold side for Miss E (not Henry, he got right in) so we just dipped the toesies.

Meltdown before smash cake time:

All better.

 Nom nom nom...

Smash cupcake! Elsa loved the frosting, but didn't really go crazy on the cake. I think the 2 year birthday party smash cake will be epic though.

Fish face! (Elsa, not me)

Poor Elsie woke up on the morning of her party with a slight fever and wasn't feeling too hot all day, but she was a trooper and tried to hang through the whole party. We just gave her a bath and she crashed hard, sweet little party girl. Time to break out the wine...

Happy 1st birthday my sweet baby

I *cannot* believe we have a one year old. Our little Elsa turned the big 0-1 today, and got to celebrate it with her three grandparents, Uncle Jan, friend Brooke, Goddaddy Jerod, and of course her adoring parents and brothers.

The day started at 7:06 am when Elsa woke me up with her soft cry, precisely the exact hour and minute a year ago when she first crowned and sort of entered the world. Spooky!

We started her morning off with a little breakdancing and playing with toys.

Then did a little standing and practiced balancing. Jude took his first steps today (!!) so Elsa needs to start training right now to catch up.

Elvis checking out the pensive birthday girl.

Then she had a stare down with Tyr. Or Thor. Hard to tell from this angle.

She lost the staring war and decided to get into mischief with my sewing supplies instead.

A little later in the morning I was cleaning and organizing the pantry and someone got into a box of old stale meringues and shoved both in her mouth before I could protest. It was her birthday so I let her suck on them for awhile.

She's a big fan of meringues.

We opened some presents that the family brought down for her (thank you Lisa & Mark, Jen, Grammie, Linda & Dick, Nonnie, Marmie and Grampa!!) and one that came in the mail (thank you LeeAnn!!). One special gift was this turban my mom crocheted for Elsa. I told her we wanted to dress her up like a fortune teller for Halloween (or everyday, whatever) and she made this:

So cool!! It's made with sparkly blue yarn and is oh-so-chic on her. I'm pretty sure Mandy is calling dibs on it for Shalom as soon as E grows out of it.

We went to the park and swung a bit before dinner, and before the crazy rain storm that blew in. Freaky weather today in the LB!

The grandparents couldn't get enough of Miss E. She's changed a tiny bit since the last time they saw her in person.

Elsa must have been pooped from all the birthday excitement because she zonked out soon after her bath, allowing us to enjoy our homemade pizzas and a nice family dinner. We had to say goodbye to Brooke who flies back home tonight (sad face) but I'm so happy we got to have four awesome days together. Miss you already B.

The festivities will continue through the weekend and Elsie's birthday party is this Sunday. Just a small party with family and some close friends, and a whole lot of sugar. Happy birthday my little donut peach, we love you more than we ever thought possible and can't wait to watch you grow up. Hugs and keeses from your momma.

New poop cabinet!

Little Miss Crawler is getting into all our business now, including the cats' business, so I figured it was time to work out something with the cat commode. The last thing I wanted to see was Elsa fishing around in the cat box for a turd or pee brick to play with so I turned to the IKEA Hacker website to get some inspiration. I knew I wanted an enclosed cabinet for the litter box, with enough room to also store their litter accoutrements, but some of the pre-made ones sold specifically for this purpose are in the hundreds of dollars. Um, no thanks. It's a poop cabinet, not vintage Danish Modern.

The IKEA Hacker website didn't give me too many great plans, so Jeff and I just went down to the store to see what was the cheapest cabinet that could work. We found the lovely Flåren discounted to $99 (from $250 so it was a good deal) because it's being discontinued and thought it'd work perfectly. It was the exact size I wanted, solid wood, and plain enough to not be too offensive design-wise. 

We put it together when we got home and started the several day process of getting the cats to see it as no big deal, this is where your litter box always was! We turned it around at first so the back was open and they could just cruise right in. Then the next day Jan came over and we borrowed Jerod's jigsaw to cut out the hole in the top piece, and installed it but kept the doors open so the boys would have the option of side entry or top entry. Day #3, doors got closed and I held my breath. The morning of Day 4, litter bits on the top of the cabinet and pee bricks in the box! SUCCESS! My cats are so smart.

So it was an easy transition, and with a baby cabinet lock on the doors now, totally inaccessible to Miss Elsa. By the time E is tall enough to reach into the hole, she'll know that cat poop is gross and not something you want to play with. Hopefully.

Happy 4th!

We had a lovely little Independence Day here in Wrigley. Our neighbors across the street had a big potluck party that we to for a few hours and then headed over to Andy & Kim's for their party. A day full of good food, friends and fireworks!

This was E's patriotic outfit. I had a backup shirt that was navy blue with white stars, that she amazingly didn't need. I thought for sure we'd have a couple costume changes during the day, but she stayed pretty clean!

Kids love waving flags around and almost putting each other's eyes out.

I love it when Karen is around because then my arms get a rest. Elsie loved this pinwheel. We should have stolen it.

Elsa was a little unimpressed by the fireworks. They captured her attention but she wasn't squealing with joy like I thought she would. Maybe next year.

Suze took this one of Elsa, I love it so much. She does that tongue thing a lot and it melts hearts.

Henry was the only one at the party with sense. He kept saying "THIS IS REALLY DANGEROUS!" as the adults kept running through the fireworks.

Uncle Roger. A fingertip on the baby is about all he can handle.

WHOA cheeks!

And we discovered Elsie loves herself some watermelon. It's kind of the perfect baby snack, albeit a little messy. It kept her busy for awhile though!

Thanks for having us over friends! AMERICUH!!!

Elsa's birthday gift

Ta-da!! We got a whole new backyard! Kind of. Our backyard lawn was looking so sad, big straw patches and weeds scattered throughout, covered in a blanket of fallen bottle brush pollen threads. It was no place for a baby to play, so we decided to take action and re-do the lawn.

When we had a few gardeners pass through to give us some quotes, every one of them said "That bottle brush tree has got to go." Apparently the pollen stems are really bad for grass, allergies, cleanliness, etc, plus the tree was growing onto the neighbor's garage and impeding the growth of our lovely little orange tree (who now needs a name. Julius! Yes, Julius the orange tree, and Linus the lemon tree). So out came the bottle brush, and it makes such a huge difference. The backyard is so bright now and looks a lot bigger too. Bye bye scary bottle brush man!

Because the tree had to come out, the old lawn pulled up, new dirt put down, and the sprinklers needed to be tuned up, the little lawn replacement turned into a major project (anything over $1000 is major to me- this tallied up to $1400). It sounds like a lot but it was a ton of work. Look at the end of Day 1:

It's pretty amazing they could do all of that in two days. So anyways, as we were working out our budget and how we could afford to get this done in time for Elsa's birthday party, we thought, "why not exploit Elsa's first birthday and convince our family to chip in and help us pay for this as a gift to the baby!?" It totally worked and they all fell for it, hook line and sinker. No one wanted to see the baby eat weeds and get scratched playing in dead grass. Here's a patch of what the grass looked like before:

Scratchy!! But not anymore! Lush and green and velvety:

So a VERY special THANK YOU to our donors who so generously contributed to Elsa's new playground: Noni, Grandpa & Marmie, and Elsie's great grandparents- Jeff's Grammie and my Abuelo. It's a fantastic gift for a 1 year old and will make her birthday party and the rest of the summer so much more enjoyable. I told Karen we were going to give Elsa a home improvement project every year for her birthday and she said good luck with that. I'm thinking maybe a new roof for her 2nd birthday? How exciting!!

I love this so much.

I don't know these guys, it was a random instagram Jeff showed me, but it cracks me up. The only things that would make it better are helmets. For the dogs.

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