Let's Party!!!

Today, we celebrated Clara's 1st birthday! We invited family and friends over to celebrate our sweet little girls birthday. Kevin smoked a few pork butts on Friday so we would have BBQ pulled pork sandwiches to eat! Mmmmmmm!

Since Mairead's 1st birthday, I have started two little traditions of my own for the girls. For each birthday, I make a homemade cake and decorate it myself. As the girls have gotten older, each girl gets to request the type, color and decorations. For Clara, I chose the family favorite 'marble cake' with pudding frosting (one large box of vanilla pudding to a pint of whipping cream) in a circle color. Clara, of course, was able to indulge in eating some cake batter and frosting and she loved every second of it! In one hand she had the vanilla cake batter and in the other, she had the chocolate. She was in heaven! The other tradition is I let them pick out a new 'birthday dress' - of course, Clara couldn't pick hers out, so I chose one from Baby Gap. I thought this one would show off her gorgeous eyes nicely!

Once all of our family and friends arrived, the fun began! Clara enjoyed playing with all the kids, though she is going through a bit of a stage where she gets a little clingy around a lot of people. Of course, once it was time to sing happy birthday, she was having a lot of fun and didn't want too much with her high chair, but once she realized cake was coming, she was very excited! Once the cake hit her tray, she dove right in and didn't look back. I love first birthdays for this very reason - all they care about is the cake!

We didn't do presents while everyone was here because, well...it's not like Clara really knew what was going on! Once things calmed down, we did presents and she had a blast, though, I think her sisters had more fun than she did! She got lots of cool toys that we didn't have, some beautiful clothes, an awesome new Pottery Barn chair, so she can sit next to her sisters in their chairs and lots of other cool things! We're so lucky to have such great family and friends who are able to celebrate along side of us!