Maddie's First Birthday Party

Maddie turned one on Valentine's Day!  I can't believe that a whole year has gone by since she was born!  What an eventful time we had a year ago!  You can read about her birth here, here, and here.  We had fun celebrating her birthday as a family on Valentine's Day (I'll post some pictures of that with my Project Life post next week), and we had a birthday party with the extended family on Saturday.  

Jim's family members are all local, but all of my family lives in South Carolina, and we usually have to miss out on a lot of family celebrations with them.  However, my mom and sister were able to come up for the weekend to help me with Maddie's party and to be here to celebrate her birthday!  They arrived late Friday night after the children were already in bed.  The next morning, the kids were both up around 6:00, and I came out to find them hanging out with their Aunt Nora on the couch.  Aunt Nora gave Maddie her gift that morning, and Maddie (and Drew) had fun playing with the new picnic set.

 Our house is very small, so we were very grateful that Jim's sister and brother-in-law allowed us to have Maddie's party at their house.  We arrived to find the dining room fully decorated for our little Valentine's party!

 I made Maddie a pillowcase dress to wear for her party.  I found the Valentine cupcake fabric at Hobby Lobby and thought that it was perfect!

 Maddie and Aunt Nora.

 We had a soups, salads, and breads for dinner (which I forgot to photograph!), and we opened Maddie's gifts.  Maddie ate a sucker while we opened the gifts.  Drew was my opening assistant.

Maddie received lots of fun gifts from the family.  Then, it was time for cake!  My mom made Maddie's smash cake and frosted it.  I had seen some similar cakes on Pinterest, and since we were doing a Valentine's theme for the party, I thought that the frosting roses would be perfect.  My mom used a 1M frosting tip to make the roses, and I loved how they looked on the cake

 and on the cupcakes!

 We stripped Maddie down to a bib and a diaper for her cake.

 She grabbed her cake right away and pulled it over to herself.

 At first, she just picked at the frosting quite daintily.

 Aunt Nora showed her how to smash into her cake, and then Maddie got busy eating it!

 She did a pretty good job of demolishing her cake.

 She was pretty proud of herself!

 Maddie's cousin, Lilly, just turned 4, and she loves Maddie!

We had such a nice evening celebrating Maddie's first year of life!  We are so grateful that God brought her into our family!

Project Life - Week 6

Week 6 was a fun week!  We started the week with a birthday celebration.  Jim's mom had a birthday at the end of January, and since Drew was sick on her birthday, we postponed her dinner a little bit.  We brought dinner over to her at her apartment on Monday evening.  Her sister lives in the same building, so she came over for dinner too.  We gave her some pictures for one of her living room walls.

 One of Jim's cousins is married to an artist, and he did some drawings of Drew and Maddie.  Jim hung them for his mom a few weeks ago, but she wanted some photos of the children to go on the wall with the drawings, so we gave her a new frame and another little hanging for her birthday, and Jim hung them for her that evening.

 Jim rented Season One of Downton Abbey for me, and we watched the whole thing.  I am hooked!

 Maddie is getting into everything!  Jim says that she needs a hobby!  She looked so cute this day that I had to take a few pictures of her.  Her aunts have spoiled her with many cute clothes.  Her little shirt is from Aunt Nora,

 and her rainbow jeans are from Aunt Sharon.  So cute!

 Maddie has learned to hug recently, and she gives some really good hugs!  She loves to hug Drew, and she sometimes crawls over to him just to hug him.

 Since Maddie is a Valentine's Day baby, the actual day has become pretty much hers, so we celebrated Valentine's Day early, and Jim spread it out over several days.  He brought me some little roses on Thursday.

 Drew loved his little Valentine mailbox, and he asked me every day after school if the flag was up and if there was going to be a surprise inside when he got home from school.

 We got several inches of snow on Thursday night, and we had a snow day on Friday.  After the boys cleared the driveway, we took Maddie out into the snow for the first time.  She was very serious about it.

 Drew made a quick snow angel

 and threw a few snowballs before we came inside.

 The snow must have tired Maddie out because she fell asleep in her chair at lunch.

 She also got into a box of tissues that afternoon - it was a busy day for her!

 The boys went out that afternoon and came back with some Dove chocolate, a Sonic gift card, and some coupons for me.  Jim said that he knows how much I love coupons, so he made some for me.  They really spoiled me!

 We had a little date night on Saturday night (I told you that he spread out Valentine's Day over a few days!), and we went to our favorite Greek restaurant.

 Here is what I did for Project Life for this week.  I made a big page and a little insert this week.  This is how it will look in the book, with the insert on top,

 and here is how it will look with the insert flipped over.

 I made the main page about our week, with several pictures from the snow.

I made the insert all about Valentine's Day.  I made it by cutting off the top third of a Design A page.  This is the front side,

 and this is the back.

I like using inserts to include extra pictures about events or celebrations.
I am linking this post at The Mom Creative.
I hope your Valentine's Day was very nice.  I hope to post again this week about Maddie's birthday.  We had so much fun celebrating her first birthday this weekend!

Project Life - Week 5

Week 5 was a bit rough!  Drew came down with a stomach bug on Sunday evening right before bed.  He was fine the rest of the night, but he had diarrhea the next morning.  We were going to keep him home from school on Monday anyway, but it ended up being a snow day, so we were glad that he wasn't going to miss anything by staying home that day.  That day was also supposed to be the start of Spirit Week at school, and  since it was Sports Day, Drew wore his Lions jersey with this pajama pants.

 Maddie has really gotten good at playing peek-a-boo!  She starts it up all on her own, and she cracks herself up!

 Peek-a-boo!

 Poor Drew had diarrhea again on Tuesday morning, but then he felt great all day.  We really thought that he was better, so we went out to Cracker Barrel that evening for Jim's belated birthday dinner with his mother (since she had been at home recovering from her blood clots the week of Jim's birthday).  Drew woke up crying later that night and then threw up in his bed.  He threw up in the night every night throughout the rest of the week, and he felt pretty sick during the day those days too.  He was so frustrated about being sick for so long, and he was sad to be missing school and Spirit Week.  He lay around on the couch a lot that week.

 I tried to play Uno with him one day, but after one quick game, he wanted to stop because he was feeling too sick.

 Jim came home early one afternoon, and I went out to a couple of grocery stores.  I found some Goldfish crackers on sale, and I bought some of the little baby ones for Maddie.  She loves them!

 Drew's teacher sent his work home, and he worked hard to get it all made up.

 We ended up going to the doctor on Friday to make sure that Drew didn't have something more than a stomach bug.  The doctor said that Drew had a stomach bug and a sinus issue going on at the same time that week.  He gave us a few suggestions to help him get better.  We stopped at Sonic to get Drew a Powerade slush (and to get me a Diet Coke with vanilla) on the way home from the doctor's office.

We kept Drew on his bland diet the rest of the week and started giving him a nasal steroid and allergy medication.  He was feeling pretty good on Saturday and was much better on Sunday!
These are the layouts for Weeks 4 and 5, as they will look together in the album.  I used papers that coordinated to tie the two layouts together.

 This is my Week 5 page.  I did one small picture collage about Jim's belated birthday dinner at Cracker Barrel.  The rest were all 3x4 inch photos.

I hope you have a great Valentine's Day tomorrow!  We will be celebrating Maddie's first birthday - it is so hard to believe that she is a year old!

Project Life - Week 4

Monday was MLK Day, and Drew had the day off from school.  We got about an inch of snow that day.

This week was very cold!  Jim had a day off on Tuesday (the coldest day of the week!) because he had worked the previous weekend.  We dropped Drew off at school that morning, and then Jim, Maddie, and I went out for breakfast.  It was 0 degrees when we pulled into the restaurant parking lot!

 We have found a little restaurant near Drew's school that we really like.  We've gone there for breakfast a couple of times this winter.  I love the Greek omelet, which comes with Tzatziki sauce - my favorite!

 Jim was also off work on Friday, and we ran errands that morning while Drew was at school.  I took a picture of Maddie and me at Marshall's.  She was waving to herself in the mirror, and I was trying to get a picture.  She only waves to herself, no one else.  :)

 We ate lunch at Sam's that day after we picked Drew up from school.

 We played a couple of Drew's new games that he got for Christmas - Sorry and Connect Four.  We played them each several times that week.

 Maddie got a Little People Disney princess castle for Christmas, and she really likes playing with it.  She likes to put the princesses in the different rooms, and she likes the noises the castle makes.

 Maddie was teething this week, and her stomach was upset.  We decided to give her bland food for a day or two to let her stomach calm down.  She was not impressed with plain rice cereal.  She was making the funniest faces!

 We had a rough night Friday evening.  Drew didn't want to eat his dinner, and Maddie was struggling with her sore teeth.  They were both sobbing in the kitchen!

 Jim has a new snow removal helper!  Drew has been helping Jim clear the driveway and sidewalks, and he really enjoys going out to help.

 Here is my Project Life layout for this week.  I made a couple of 4x6 collages of our mornings out.  The rest was pretty simple and straight forward.

I hope you are having a good week and that you are staying warm!