At 12:44am exactly one year ago today, Madelyn was brought into our lives and things just haven't been the same since! Dan and I often reflect on our perspective of life before we had Maddy and we realize that we can only NOW fulfill our only purpose in life, to be parents, good parents. Our lives really had no significant meaning until we had Maddy, and what a wonderful perspective that gives us. We are still learning everyday what it means to be a parent and how we want to improve ourselves in order to offer Maddy the best version of a Mom and Dad that she can have. (I suspect we will be learning something new everyday as long as we are parents.) It's a very humbling and joyous feeling to experience being a parent and we are so grateful to have our sweet Maddy as part of our family!
And now for the recap on the birthday festivities... Sunday evening both sides of our family met at a local park for Maddy's party and a BBQ. While the specific location had to change at the last minute, all worked out for the better and it was a great time! Maddy really had a lot of fun being spoiled with everyone's attention, playing outside, and of course eating a cupcake!
We had a slight delay with the grill and it was about an hour after everyone arrived that we finally got to dig in. While we waited for Grandpa Kent to save the day with the charcoal, we played a couple games I had planned. First was to guess how many Cheerios I had put inside a large jar. The answer was 1862, and surprisingly Uncle Jay guessed within 20 making him the winner! The last game was a Maddy quiz. I had 10 questions about Maddy and we had a 4 or 5 way tie for the winner....highest score was 60%....kinda disappointing family, i.e. the grandparents that should know ALL! Anyway, hopefully the games weren't too lame but I had to keep them low key, being the Sabbath and all....We moved on to opening gifts and Maddy was spoiled once again. Now that she is older all the toys for her age range seem to play music or make noise, which she loves, and it has raised the volume a bit in our home...since some don't have OFF switches. ;) That about covers it....I made cupcakes and Maddy thoroughly enjoyed hers, eating the decorations first and moving on to the rest of the sweet stuff!
It was a lot of fun and thank you to everyone who helped make it all happen and everyone that came to party with us making it a successful 1st birthday for Maddy and first birthday hosting experience for her parents!
And today on her actual birthday we went out with our good friends Brittney and Aaron and their two munchkins Brynlie and Dayton. (you'll see a change of outfits in the pics) We had dinner at Cafe Rio and then came back to our house for ice cream cones...Maddy devoured hers to say the least. She's my daughter alright! Fun fun! Aren't these two buddies so cute together!
