More Birthday Fun!

Here we are with Grandpa and our DC family. We had a wonderful party and feel so lucky we got to celebrate with so many people we love! We got lots of wonderful presents too! Grandma and Grandpa got us these chairs for our deck. We loved having chairs just our size and can't wait to use them outside!

Felicity: So you're telling me I'm supposed to sit on the chair, not stand on it? Hmmm...we'll see about that!

We also got these adorable giraffes to ride on from our other Grandma and Grandpa. We are also excited to use these outside this spring! We got the hang of riding on it really fast!

Just my size! I love riding on the giraffe!

We got lots of cute clothes and cool toys too! We are so thankful for all of the cards, gifts, and well-wishes we got on our birthday! What wonderful family and friends we have!

We had a marvelous birthday extravaganza and feel so blessed to be strong, healthy little girls! It is going to be FUN to BE ONE!!!

All dressed up!

Felicity: We got all dressed up for our big party! (In pink of course!) And I even wore my birthday crown for this special picture with daddy!Everyone sang birthday wishes and then we got to dive in to our own cupcakes (but Mom and Dad had to help with blowing out the candles!).

This is SPECTACULAR! You guys have been holding out on me! Sweet, delectable, crumbly...what could be better?!!

Elyse: What's that you say? I have frosting on my face? No time to worry about that! I have cake to eat!

That's all? Can I have another one?!!

Elyse: One of the very best parts of our birthday was that Grandpa got to come!!! In this picture I was telling Grandpa that he shouldn't be so silly! Oh, Grandpa! What a funny guy!

All of the party guests! What a fun time we had!

We just think it was so special that we got to celebrate our 1st birthday while our Aunt celebrated her 90th birthday! Aren't they such a sweet couple? We are very lucky to live close to them!

Yippeee!! It really is fun to be one!

Pink Polka Dot Perfection

For those of you who know our Mommy, you know she LOVES to throw a good party. With our first birthday then, she put her party decorating and planning skills to good use! We didn't mind the pink palace one bit. In fact, we look forward to reaping the benefits of having a party-loving mommy in years to come!!
Since we live too far away for many of you to come to our party, Mom took LOTS of pictures of our party decor so you could feel like you were there. If you are not really into pink, polka dots, or party decorations, then move on to the next post as this one will bore you...if you love pink, polka dots, or just want to see what our party was like, then continue reading :0)

Here is the grand view our table:We shared our birthday party with our Great-Great-Aunt Evelyne and had a 1st and 90th party together! How cool is that? Happy Birthday to us and Evelyne!

Balloons, streamers, and "Fun to be One" signs sprinkled the table and window:

We even had "1st Birthday" high chair decorations with a "1st Birthday Girl" mat to catch all of our cupcake crumbs:

Here we have 2 dozen pink roses (1 dozen for each of us) with daisies (you know, to look like polka dots in the bouquet! Come on people, follow the theme!!):

Can you see our high chairs at the end of the table? We felt like princesses on our thrones!

At each place setting, there was a polka dot box with 2 cupcakes in each--one chocolate and one white. There are two of us, so of course everyone got two cupcakes! And the cupcakes had white frosting with pink polka dots thanks to Mommy's hard work. We enjoyed every bite of the cupcakes we had!

This picture is for our Mommy's best buddy Kate. Here is the cupcake tree she got us for Christmas. It is beautiful and everything a cupcake tree was meant to be!

And just in case you didn't notice, there are pink polka dot plates underneath the polka dot boxes next to Smarties which made the table look like it had polka dots on it...now you've got to be picking up on theme!!

We loved looking at our pink polka dot palace! What a fun first birthday!!

A Little Fun on a Special Day

Because our birthday and our party were on two different days, Mom and Dad wanted to do something special on our actual birthday. First, we went to the park (yes, it was 55 degrees here...that's just a mere 65 degree difference from what our friends in MN are experiencing at 10 below...sorry guys!!). Then, we went out to eat for dinner. What a fun birthday!

Elyse: Check out my fancy crown. It said "Baby's First Birthday!", matched my shirt, and I just loved it! (Felicity was a different story with the crown--she was not so easily amused!) Felicity: We had a BIG scoop of ice cream for our birthday at the restaurant and it was de-li-cious! Mommy and Daddy had just as much fun as we did celebrating the fact that even though it was a lot of work, the last year was simply spectacular!

Can you guys believe that just one year ago we were so little and now we're eating out at restaurants like the city-chic girlies that we are?

Earlier in the day we had a blast at the park and of course, we were lucky enough to have Peter come with us! We just love a good trip to the park with our cousin. He's lots of fun!
Here we are in our special birthday shirts that matched our crowns.

Felicity: So this whole crown wearing thing? Yeah...pretty sure that's not going to happen!

We just love playing with each other! The slide is definitely better with two!

Felicity: Who would have thought that we could play at the park on our birthday? What a fabulous development!

Just so you know, birthday girls 'round these parts get LOTS of Cheerios! Thanks, Mommy!

What a fun day in the sun!

Our 1st Birthday!

We can barely believe it's been one whole year since we were just itty bitty babies! We feel so blessed by the year we've had--we've grown healthy and strong, we've spent wonderful time with family and friends, and we've become BIG toddling one-year olds!

We thought you'd like a little look back to this time last year:Daddy called us his little baby burritos!

Remember, we were only 3lbs and 3 1/2lbs when we were born!

The tubes were no fun, but we remember our time in the NICU fondly because of our wonderful nurse family there! If you're reading this, know we are forever grateful for your time, love, and tenderness in caring for us during our 23-day stay.

And here we are now: big, strong, and tenacious! What an amazing year it's been!

Elyse: Watch out world, here I come!

Felicity: Here's to another wonderful year of growing, fun, and discovery!

Felicity: Happy Birthday, Elyse!
Elyse: Happy Birthday, Felicity!

And thank you to all of our faithful blog readers. We appreciate your love, care, and prayers over the past year! We promise to bring you plenty of good reading of our adventures in the year to come!
(pictures of our 1st birthday, our birthday party, and other such festivities to come)

Our New Tricks

Felicity: Many of you have heard, but just to make it public, I am now officially a walker! I have been taking a few steps for a week or two, but now I can walk a good 4-6 steps on my own. In fact, I like to walk all over without any help! This new freedom is great! Here I am with the phone, one of my favorite things to play with (despite Mom and Dad's best attempts to steer me clear of it)! Hello? Yes, I'd like to order one cheese pizza, one order of breadsticks...oh, oops! Sorry, Dad! You mean pizza is not on the menu for dinner? More homemade babyfood? Okay...I do love that chicken and squash medley with rice Mom makes...I'll call for pizza another night.
Another new trick we can do is clap our hands. We love to clap when we're giggling, when Mom and Dad are cheering, and any other time we feel so led to cheer for life!

Elyse: Along with clapping, we are now big into the high-five. Yay, Mommy! We're a great team!

Felicity: And just so you know, I'm still WAAAAY faster at crawling so when I get bored with walking sllllooowwwlly all over, I don't hesitate to hit the floor and crawl. They call me speed-racer around here!

Playdate Pal

We know it's been a whole week since we've posted, but we've been a bit under the weather recovering from our trip and Mommy got this nasty stomach bug that just came on suddenly, so we've been laying low for a while. Now, we're back!

We had the pleasure of having a marvelous playdate with one of our friends, Ava early last week. She is just about our age and we have so much fun together!
Here we are, all eating lunch together:

Felicity: I let Ava have my high chair (so don't think we were rude and made her eat on the floor), but then she didn't really want any food, so Elyse and I thought--let's make her feel more at home and give her one of our toys to play with! Then, after hanging out in the exersaucer, she was happy and ate lunch with us too! Cheers, Ava! Eating finger food is really the way to go!

Yes, Felicity, this was a great recommendation! Eating babyfood from the exersaucer is more comfortable than the high chair. You should try it sometime!
Felicity: Okay, Ava. This is Pooh. He is mine. But I would like to share him with you. But after you play with him, then you have to return him to me. Do we have an agreement? Good. I just want to be clear. Daddy (he's a lawyer, you know) tells me that posession is nine tenths of the law...I would hate to lose Pooh.
Ava: Oh, Felicity! Don't be so serious! I have so many good toys at my own house that I promise I won't keep Pooh. Besides, I've got this particular lamby blanket that, well, I'm not really interested in sharing :0)
Thanks for all of the fun, Ava! We miss you already! Good luck back home in Nashville! Maybe we can come visit soon.

Our last stop!

Our last stop in the Midwest was at our grandparents' house in Madison, WI. We had yet another Christmas celebration, visited more great-grandparents, and met lots of new people.

We did get a bit of a cold by this point in the trip, so we were sad that we were unable to see Mom's friend Jess and meet her little boy Sam. We were also really sad we weren't able to see our friends Adam and Andrea. If you're reading this, we send our love to you from afar!!

Elyse: Mom's always putting silly things on our heads! I definitely think pink is my color!
Here we are with our Great-Grandma and Grandma. We were sad we had to visit our Great-Grandpa in the hospital, but we hope he's feeling better soon!

Great-grandpa and his ladies! Of course the nurses thought he was one lucky guy to have such cute girls visiting him!

Our final Christmas celebration with Grandma and Grandpa was lots of fun! We had presents to open and a very furry friend to play with. We're pretty sure their puppy was quite happy to see us go home (he wanted his house back!).

By this time, we'd opened quite a few presents. Here we are showing Grandpa what experts we are!

Overall, we had an excellent time visiting friends and family in the Midwest. But after 2 1/2 long weeks, we must say, however, that we are sure happy to be home in our own beds, with our own toys, and enjoying our quiet little lives! As Dorothy would say, "There's no place like home!" And it sure was fun to see Daddy again!