Janalynn Turns One!

We celebrated Janalynn's First Birthday the day before her actual birthday with a party with neighbors and friends. We had an evening barbeque with a cupcake theme. The only bad part was that because it was Sunday, the birthday girl took a short nap at the end of afternoon church and then wouldn't take another nap when we got home, so she was pretty tired for the party.

Our good friend, Jeannie, made her birthday cake. It was a giant cupcake to match the cupcake on Janalynn's shirt.

For dinner we had hamburgers, grilled chicken, hot dogs, and sides, with cupcakes, of course, for dessert.

Here's Janalynn with her birthday buddy. She was born on our next door neighbor's birthday, so it was nice to have him celebrate with us.

When it was time for cake, we lit the candle and gave the cake to Janalynn with the idea that we would sing, she would blow out the candle (with help), and we would let her dig into the cake and make a big mess. Here she is looking excited.

Well, after we sang to her and one of her brothers blew out the candle, she just looked at the cake and didn't know what to do. We tried to give her a taste of it and put her fingers in it so she was know what to do, but she just started to cry. I think it was mostly because she was so tired.

Later, we tried just giving her one of the smaller cupcakes to eat, but she didn't want anything to do with that either. So, we finally just gave up on having her eat cake on her birthday. (Incidentally, we've been to a couple of birthday parties since then and she has chowed the pieces of cake I have given her.)

After the cake fiasco, we let her open her presents. She was really excited. She got some cute dresses, a little see n' say and a play cell phone. Jim and I gave her a little table and two chairs and a tea set.

The boys gave her "Jessie" the cowgirl (for two reasons--1) they love all things Toy Story and (2) her middle name is Jessica and Jim wanted to call her Jessie.

I used the same idea that I did for Joey's party and gave water bottles with cupcake appliques as favors. However, since we had lots of adults, we just filled theirs with Crystal Light and chocolate instead of other candy and toys as we did for the kids.

Here she is right before bedtime, playing with Jessie and a balloon from her party. I think she had a fun time, even though she was tired.

The following Sunday, we were in Utah for Aunt Megan's college graduation (see separate post), so we had a little birthday celebration for her with my family. I experimented with putting cake in a couple of pyrex pans and made a medium-size cupcake for her.

We sang to her and someone blew out the candle. She had the same reaction to the cake we tried to give her in Utah that she did in Texas. She just cried.

Grandma and Grandpa gave her some really cute outfits that Grandma had sewn for her. She had fun ripping the wrapping.

Happy Birthday, Janalynn!!!