The Birthday Party

As much as I wanted to throw a fun party for Amelia’s birthday, it just didn’t work out.  The people we would typically invite were not able to come.  Not one to give up, I decided to have a party anyway even though it would just be our little family in attendance.

The party started off a little rough.  I made Amelia a cute pink ruffle cake and topped it with a pink candle.  I lit the candle, we started singing, I placed the cake in front of her and started to take pictures.  Suddenly she reached out to grab the flame (which I should have anticipated).  Startled, I lunged forward and hastily blew out the candle (and by default blew straight into her face) with a bit too much alarm.  It scared Amelia so much that she immediately burst into sobs and we had a hard time cheering her up for quite awhile.  The poor thing.  We never even finished singing “Happy Birthday.”

  You can see that while she never really got into eating the cake (despite the fact that it was healthy and delicious), she at least cheered up a little bit.  We managed to salvage the party spirit and enjoyed watching her sample the cake.  At least Glenn and I enjoyed it.  The boys all thought she was taking WAY too long and that watching her eat tiny cake molecules was a bit boring.  Anyway, here are a few shots from the party…

That last picture makes me laugh.  I love how she’s holding up one finger like, “Wait!  You just blew out my candle?  And didn’t even finish singing?”  We all got a good laugh out of the tragedy except Amelia (and maybe Evan, who couldn’t believe I was so negligent to put her in danger like that).

Then we remembered her party hat, and she thought about cheering up and eating the cake…

She did cheer up (a bit), but still wouldn’t eat the cake, so we gave her a fork.

And she ate some cake at last…

Since the cake didn’t seem to be a huge hit, we decided to move on to opening presents (messy frosting hair and all).  This had a slow start as well, but pretty soon Amelia was having a great time shaking the presents and trying to get them open.  She loved them all!

(Presents: toothbrush and toothpaste, cute outfit and mittens from Aunt Amy, stacking cups)

Amelia also carried on the Roper family tradition of getting her own tissue box to empty for her birthday.  She got about half way through the box, and seemed pretty fascinated by the fact that another kleenex always popped up, no matter how many she pulled out.

As the party started to wind down, I changed her into her cozy PJ’s and we had some snuggle time (especially since her birthday brought the first snow for the season here in Denver).

Then, just to show us who is boss, she decided that although she rejected her cake, she would happily gobble up handfuls of peas for dinner.  I guess I can’t complain, but I didn’t work nearly as hard on the peas.

We ended the evening with a little visit to the spot where she came into the world a year ago…

Despite the lack of distinguished guests and the hasty candle extinguishing, the party was a success.  It turned out to be a happy birthday after all!