Girls' Day

One of Lilly's best friends, Avery, turned four on the 14th of this month. To help her celebrate Lilly and I thought it would be fun to paint some pottery together. Tania, Avery's mother, and I decided to add brunch and make it a hole Girls' Day Event.
Here are the girls at brunch. They each ordered a pancake and a scrambled egg. They each ate exactly half of a pancake and half of a scrambled egg. Next time we'll know. At least Tania knew to bring coloring activity sheets. Here are the girls displaying their work.
After the long and drawn out process of choosing which piece of pottery to paint the Lilly and Avery picked their colors (which actually only took a few seconds) and then got to work painting.

Avery really concentrating on her castle bank.

As her second piece Lilly chose to paint a very nontraditional rainbow on her rainbow bank.

The unfinished finished products before firing. Avery's are the castle and the horse. Lilly has the butterfly box and rainbow bank.

So proud of their work.

I picked the pottery up a week later and we tried to get a picture of the girls displaying their works of art. This was pretty much the best we got. They mostly just wanted to play with Avery's toys during the pottery drop off and photo shoot.

So, we just put the pottery on the dining room table a take a picture. That worked a lot better. Pictures are substantially easier to take when there are no children in them. But, nowhere near as cute or funny.

Cowboy Birthday

Like all good birthdays, we celebrated Jack's 1st for exactly one week. David Jack Traylor turned one on Thursday, November 10, 2011. But, we got a jump on the party the weekend before. Bryan's parents, sadly, had to miss the party so they decided to come up the weekend before and make a mini birthday party. It was great. It gave Jack a chance to practice opening presents...although Lilly had to give him a brief lesson. Very excited about his new blocks.

The next day we went on a walk at Starkey Park and threw some rocks in Eagle Creek.

Now that he is a year old Jack has graduated to the backpack carrier.

Lilly chose not to walk the entire time.

Walking makes Jack very sleepy. Even though he didn't do any walking.

Later that night Jack got to blow out a candle on the Traylor's traditional first birthday cake: A lamb covered in coconut. Bryan's Nana has used the same recipe and mold to make a lamb cake for everyone in the family's first birthday since anyone can remember and she reins to Jo when Lilly was a year old.

On Jack's actual birthday I planned a nice dinner that I thought he'd enjoy, bought a little cake at the grocery store and had everything ready for our little party. However, due to a glitch in communication and planning Jack and I had to take Lilly to gymnastics at 5pm. That made it almost impossible to follow the plan. So instead, on the way home from the gym we stopped at the house, picked Bryan up and headed to El Rodeo. Jack was just as happy with his birthday beans as he would have been with beef stroganoff. We stopped by Target for some last minute party supplies and then headed home for cake.

Jack did exactly what he was supposed to do with his cake. We sang and Lilly helped blow out the candle.

Then, Jack smooched his little hand into his cake, rubbed it all over his high chair tray,

and his face.

At this point Jack was all warmed up and ready for his Cowboy Birthday Party! Or so we thought. The party started at 3pm. I planned Jack's nap accordingly, but somehow at around 2:15 he was cranky and sleepy. I put him in his bed and he rested for about a half an hour and woke up ready to party just in the nick of time.

Jack and Grandma inspecting the balloons.

The cake....and Jack's little smash cake.

David Jack and Grandpa David.

Just walking around in his cowboy shirt.

Playing with the girls.

Gifts for Jack. He even opened a couple.

Goody bags for the kiddos.

Jack was not as enthusiastic about this cake as he was the first one. In fact, after we sang to him he looked around and immediately started crying.

Finally eating a little bit of his cake.

Jack opening his gifts. Bryan did not have this crazy look on his face during the entire gift opening time, but this is the only picture of Jack actually helping open a present. Bryan and I along with some of the other kids had to open most of them.

This drum filled with assorted musical instruments was that gift. It was very popular with all of the kids, and almost none of the adults.

I was at the party too...and helped open some gifts.

Jack's favorite thing to play with was, of course, this little plastic piece that was part of the packaging for one of his new toys.

Cute little face.

Dylan is eyeing Jack's new Little Red Rocket ride on toy that Bryan and I got for him. I'm sure D will get a turn. Kristy and Samantha.

As the party died down the kids decided that they were hungry for more than just party snacks. So, I served up some good old fashioned peanut butter and jelly, veggie straws and cottage cheese. Clearly, Georgie takes his meals pretty seriously.

Thank you everyone for helping us to celebrate Jack's first birthday! And, a special thanks to Tania for taking all of the pictures.

Happy Birthday Jack! We love you.