Happy 1st Birthday Katie!

We had a wonderful day for Katie's first birthday!

We had a small gathering of people in our apartment - just our parents, Aunt Rachel and Aunt Lesley, and Katie's baby friends and their parents. It was a fun party - babies played with Katie's toys and their parents ate lots of food. I was so happy that our families got to meet many of the "preggos" - women with whom I met weekly when I was pregnant who have now turned into a really nice weekly playgroup/mom's group. I think everyone had a great time and I couldn't have been happier with how the day went - except for the rain, but as one mom pointed out - "it's nice to have something fun to do in the rain instead of being cooped up inside." I tried to do a lot of little things to make it special, including baking lots of sugar cookies, my great-grandmother's recipe, in the shapes of birthday cakes, number 1s and letter Ks.

The highlights include a really yummy cake, decorated with a monkey. For some reason I started calling Katie "Monkey" very early on. She just seemed like a monkey, she's always been very active. She was a monkey for Halloween (see January posts for a pic) and she's my little monkey. So I got a cake with a monkey on it - and it's a girl monkey, just like Katie.

Here's a picture of Katie eating the cake. She thought it was delicious. It was her very first cake - we haven't done too many sweets yet.
Other highlights:
- Ann & Alan came in from Dallas to be there for Katie's birthday. Ann and Rachel were such huge helps with getting things set up and cleaned up. It it had been left to me, nothing would have been put out. As it was, I forgot to serve the beautiful apple tart I made. Peter just had to eat it all later, okay, well, I helped.

- my dad was a big hit with the babies. At least two of them actively wanted to be held by him. We loved this, especially because Katie never asks to do that.

- Katie was just so cute. I had gone a little nuts looking for a dress for her. My friend Kim had gone shopping with me and we found a dress with monkeys on it, but another dress won out. And she was so happy almost the entire time. We changed furniture around and had many more people than usual - definitely changes for a little girl and it didn't seem to phase her at all. As Aunt Lesley said, "it's as if she can't smile big enough."

So it sounds completely corny, but I loved having so many people I care about in one room celebrating the past year. It has been such a life changing experience, being a mom for the first time.

After all the babies left, our families went out to dinner at a local Italian place we like a lot. It was so nice. Our parents rarely get together so I really loved that we got to do this in honor of their shared granddaugther.

Here's a picture of Katie and her Grandpa/Dipa. I realize that I don't have any pics of him on the blog yet.

I have lots more pictures, e-mail me or check out this link if you want to see more
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=5ri1b2qn.3aa4sa2v&x=0&y=-kxyj2j