Aubrey's first birthday!!!

HAPPY  FIRST  BIRTHDAY  AUBREY

Yesterday was the big ONE!  Our wee babe turned one year old.  Wow!  Seriously the time goes so fast!  Aubrey was up early.  Jonah woke up way too early as well.  So I put Jonah back to bed, and took a little snooze time as well :-)  Aubrey fell back to sleep for a bit as well.  He took an amazing afternoon nap, which let me get a bunch of things done.  Things like make his birthday dinner and cake :-)  Isabella made the cake, and I made the frosting.  The frosting was a new recipe for us.  My first attempt was a failure.  The second attempt came out perfect.  We made a plain vanilla bean cake and I made one batch of vanilla frosting and one batch of chocolate frosting.  You should have seen Aubrey's eyes light up with the first lick of the frosting!  He wanted to dive right in!  We let the cakes chill in the fridge a bit while we went outside to play.  It was growing dark and we didn't have much time before coming in.  I wanted to make sure to eat early so that Aubrey didn't crash before it was time to have cake or open his birthday present.

Everyone loved, LOVED the cake.  And it seems like we hit the jackpot as far as the gift.  Everyone wanted to play with it.  It's only a set of wooden nesting boxes.  It was a fun evening for all.  Here are some pictures of our day and celebration:

Saoirse took this picture.  Aubrey was much too interested in what his brothers were doing than looking at the camera.

Moira has done a lot of work in this front garden area!  You can see there are some tall weeds at the end of this area.  The whole area was covered in those weeds, but she pulled them out.  I started to watch this great video on gardening last night.  I decided to watch the rest with the family.  Because we have done away with movies (all but educational ones) the girls get pretty excited about watching a homesteading movie!  They really want to grow a big garden to store food and to sell some of the extras.  So I think they will really enjoy this film.

Saoirse wanted me to take a bunch of pictures of her :-)  She's our photogenic one.

Hanging with our cat.  We were loving on him.  He was kind enough to bring us a present today, his first.  I was beginning to wonder if he was earning his keep :-)

Aubrey wanted to try on some boots, either that or it was Jeremiah who wanted him to try on some boots.  Ha, ha!  One way or the other it was pretty cute, and short lived.  As soon as he took a step he stepped right out of them!

Jed wanted a picture of his cars.

A boy can't have too many pictures of his cars.

Aubrey was a whirl of activity!  It was hard to get a picture of him that wasn't one big blur.

He's really into climbing now a days.

I'm bummed that I didn't get a clear picture of daddy and his boy.  It was getting dark.

It was time to come in and have some cake!  Oh, wait, first we needed to eat dinner.  Chili was on the menu as that is one of the easier meals for Aubrey to eat.

The girls reminded me that we had to have Aubrey partake in the one year birthday tradition.

Most of our babies picked up two objects at the same time.  Aubrey was very decisive and chose the tomato firm and square.  That means he's supposed to be a farmer when he grows up ;-) 

Finally it was cake time.  Looks to me like Aubrey enjoyed himself.

Making sure to get every last lick!

After a quick bath it was time to open the birthday present, but not before a little dancing.  Aubrey was dancing in a circle and clapping his hands.

Ooh, what's this?

It's mine to play with?  (technically yes, but try telling that to all his siblings :-))

Trying to figure out how these things work.

All this celebrating is hard work...time to take a breather.