Autumn's Actual Birthday

The night before, Autumn Eve I like to call it, I had my final cake decorating class (took a basic one up at the craft store). And I made my "final cake" for Autumn's birthday...

It was french vanilla cake layered with strawberry preserves. It was that exact flavor that got Autumn saying "Num num" to begin with. I did it up with pretty pink and purple for my girl. There were cute little pink polka dots all over the sides. I was pretty proud of it.

But...
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it didn't survive the trip home:


I actually thought it was pretty funny although I was admittedly bummed. But I knew it wasn't the end of the world. Jason said, "You passed cake decorating but failed cake transport." :) Thank goodness her big public celebration was a few days prior and also thank goodness she is only 1 and won't remember or care.

We had cupcakes leftover from her party but I took those to small group the next night. Luckily there were two undecorated ones in a Ziploc baggie that I'd forgotten about. I used some of my leftover icing from class and frosted those puppies up for the next day. Problem solved! I just wanted my girl to have Num Nums on her big day.

In the morning, we had to wake our sleeping beauty up (some birthday!) because both brothers had school. We all dropped Easton off then went to take Dalton for his first day. I already mentioned that Autumn and I hung out in the car. She'd nursed some and hung out on the floorboard some:


I'm telling you, this birthday was off to a smashing start. Not.

But soon school was over for D. Autumn got to come home to nap while we waited on Easton. When he was home and she was up we dug into some presents from family (us and her out-of-town grandparents):




Yay, a girl who's excited by clothes!






Then we took her up to Target for her one year portraits, some of which you've seen already. After her picture session we couldn't decide where to go for lunch or what to do. We wanted to go somewhere that was somewhat special where Autumn could eat something nummy like ice cream. Instead we came up with Gunther Toody's:




But she did get to have some slurps of chocolate cherry milkshake off a spoon:






We thought about taking the kids to Little Monkey Bizness (like we did for Dalton's birthday) but really, Autumn was tired again and we thought she could come home for a nap and maybe we'd go for a swim when she woke up. So that's what we did:


We headed up to the indoor pool at the nearby rec center. We're members there so it was free. We had fun. Easton and Jason took turns on the diving board with Easton doing dives and flips into the water. Diving team here he comes! As I've said before, he's been able to "swim" for a couple of years now but it's rather impressive (to us, anyway) how strong a swimmer he's becoming. And the lifeguards at that pool were remarking on how brave he is. Brave...insane. Same diff.

Autumn, who the outing was all about, had fun too. Lots of fun. She did some back floating with Daddy and she just really enjoys the water like her brothers.

After about an hour and a half or so at the pool we came home. Jason had worship band practice that night so it was just the kids and me. I took Autumn's monthly pictures. She had other things in mind. I think you can get away with a lot more while wearing a tutu:

I'm going to think about getting one for myself. :)

We had a simple dinner of grilled cheese (with leftover party cheese), chips (also leftover) and fruit (yup, more leftovers). Then we capped it off with a couple of cupcakes between the four of us and sang Happy Birthday. I don't love my singing voice but the boys are cute as is Autumn:

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I took the video since Jason wasn't here for it but I'm sharing it with y'all.

And with that it was bedtime. The kids went down easily and all you could see was the remains of the celebrations sprinkled around the house:


Empty boxes waiting to go to the garage. Clearly Fisher Price stock must be going up:


I think Autumn felt very loved and had a great first birthday!