Baby Ella's Birthday Party

We celebrated baby Ella's first birthday last night with just the five of us.  It was actually nice to just have a small, quiet party with our little family.  We ate another breakfast-for-dinner (Lia's requests), opened gifts, and then finished off the evening by eating a strawberry cake with strawberry, butter creme frosting that was all made from scratch!  If I'm in charge of the dessert, I'm going to make sure that it tastes good even if the guest of honor is a one year old and doesn't know any different!  Ella seemed to really enjoy the evening.  She scarfed down her bacon, eggs, and cinnamon roll like no body's business and favored her new sippy cups over any other gift as she carried one of the pink cups around the rest of the evening.  Happy Birthday, baby girl!  We sure love you!

A picture of my homemade, strawberry cake before it got devoured after dinner.

We broke out the whole milk for the first time during Ella's birthday dinner.  Although she has struggled to learn how to drink out of a regular sippy cup these past many months, Ron tried one of Logan's cups with a straw the other night and she took to it like a fish to water!  I was so amazed to see her drinking water out of it like a pro without any practice.  Thanks to this recent discovery, Ella did a great job drinking milk for the first time yesterday (besides getting it all over her face).  I couldn't resist taking a picture of it.  

After dinner, we opened gifts.  We let Lia and Logan take turns "helping" Ella open her gifts.  Once the gift with Ella's new sippy cups was opened, Ella lost interest and just wandered around the living room while her sister and brother had a great time opening the rest of the gifts and pretending that it was their birthday all over again.

This picture perfectly captures the gift opening chaos while Ella sucked on her empty sippy cup.

I jumped in at the end and helped open a few gifts.  Here we are showing off an adorable new outfit from Lola.

Ella and me helping Logan open the last gift.

More birthday chaos.

Our one-year old and her cup.

It only took four tries to get this perfect picture of our three kiddos and the giant Easter eggs in front of the fireplace.  Aren't they so cute?

We headed back to the dining room for some singing and cake.  Here is Ella eyeing her piece of cake and the lit candle while we sang, "Happy Birthday," to her.

Ella trying out cake and frosting for the first time in her life.

Lia getting in on the fun.

Ella was a little timid at first, but started to get into the cake eating.

Even though Ron thought it wasn't necessary, I couldn't resist cutting Ella's cake into pieces (in my defense, this homemade cake was denser than cake made from a box and a little more difficult to tear apart with fingers).  Ella neatly ate the entire thing and barely needed to be wiped down afterwards.  Now THAT is my type of girl!  :-)