It seemed like a wedding; a giant whirlwind with only the pictures left to piece together the stuff we had already forgotten. Tony and I invited 50 or so people over for a low-key BBQ to help us celebrate Gwen's big day. We had lots of yummy food to share with lots of great friends and family who gathered in our back yard for the celebration, sand box unveiling, present opening, and the coolest cake I have ever seen (thank you, Jacques)!
Thank goodness we had some of our very good friends, Keath & Ceridwen, come over early as they proved to be a tremendous help in properly setting up tents, filling three dozen balloons with helium, and aesthetically placing the remaining assorted decorations. Because of their rigorous travel schedule we were happy to put them up for the night, getting to enjoy some grown-up quality time drinking and being rowdy once Gwen had gone to bed.
Gwen, who woke up from her nap just past noon to Mommy shoving a bottle at her and dressing her as quickly as possible (almost simultaneously), was understandably a tad cranky as the festivities started, but quickly settled into her role as "center-of-attention-birthday-girl" and was in an excellent mood the rest of the day. She was such a good girl and was in perfect form for all her pictures.
Here's a giant pictorial extrodanaire, in case you missed the party, or forgot about it already, too. :-)
Gwen in her new sandbox, a special "Yea! You survived your first year in our care so we must be doing a decent job so now eat some dirt" first birthday present from Mommy & Daddy.
Opening presents!!!
She had her cake, and ate it too! And boy did she love it, even though it was a smaller, less expensive version than the real show-stopper...
A couple of close-ups of the amazing, buttercream frosting laden, Cupcake-Cake provided by Jacques Pastries, conveniently located right up the road...,
And, as a special parting gift, the cutest pictures that needed to be seen but didn't fit into the "party story line":
