Hardy's 1st Birthday

 

   Hardy turned 1 last Friday, YAY! I didn't expect him to do anything new that day, but sure enough, he learned to walk backwards. If my memory is correct, AnnElise began walking on her 1st birthday. She'd already taken several steps for over a month, but she became a walker that day. So, on Hardy's big day, he became a backwards walker. I watch him backing up to everything now. He had a fun day, but the most fun to be had was the day after for his party.

   We've been working tirelessly over the last week or more getting the house ready and party planning. So much work is put into the 1st birthday party and they don't even remember it the next day. Our theme for his birthday was Olympics, even though they've been over for 2 weeks, I wanted to stick with it and play some games. Hardy and another little boy that is only a week younger kicked off the games with unrolling toilet paper, Hardy's favorite thing ever. Hardy definitely won since he's had quite a bit more practice. I have to give credit to Daniel for thinking of this game for the wee ones.

  

   We had several games for the kids and gave gold medals to the winners at the closing ceremony. I think the kids favorite part was blow up water slide. I thought it might end up being too cool for it, but the weather was perfectly hot and humid for some water balloons and water slide.

    Our awesome neighbor and small group friend made some special cupcakes in ice cream cones to resemble torches. She made all of the cakes and they were delicious. I think one slice had about 1,500 calories.

Cupcake torches

Hardy really enjoyed his cake, but it took some time for him to realize that it was a good trade off from the watermelon he'd been gnawing on. As you can tell, he was really upset when I took the watermelon away from him. Once he got a good taste of cake, it was demolished and devoured.

Our favorite babysitter came to celebrate and thanks to    
 her mother, we have all of these great pictures to help tell the story.

Where has the time gone?

     We've been super busy the last few weeks trying to finish up some projects around the house in time for Hardy's 1st birthday party. Thankfully our house will be in much better shape that AnnElise's 1st birthday. Daniel is busy as usual with the outside projects and I've been busy with the usual DIY decor and trying to keep my two little tornados from tearing up everything. It seems Hardy likes to follow in his big sister's footsteps and destroy the book shelf every time it gets reorganized from the last time. So, for now, the books remain on the floor. I know that as soon as I put them up, he'll be tearing them down again. Like most people's book shelves, books can't just be placed back up, there's an order to it: color, size, hardback/paperback, content, etc. It takes too much time for it to be destroyed in just under a minute. Plus, he doesn't touch them as long as they lay on the floor! So it looks like I'll be organizing the book shelf during Hardy's nap right before his party.

    Besides Hardy's party there's so many things that I look foward to coming up soon. My favorite season is almost here, AnnElise will be starting a Mother's Day Out program, my oldest brother, Damon, is getting married, and Daniel will be back in school studying to be an EMT at the FD. While I'm not really looking forward to Daniel going back to school for a semester, I'll be happy for him to have it done and for it to help him in his career. It helps that he'll be in class for the 2 days a week that AnnElise will be at Sonshine School.
   I have to admit that I am really excited for AnnElise to be in school a couple of days a week. I think she'll love it, and I know that she needs that extra socializing with other kids her age. Not only am I excited for her, I'm excited for myself as I'll have a bit of break, but not so much for Hardy. I know that Hardy will really miss her, but maybe there'll be a few less bruises and head bumps for him. I'm hoping that all of those bumps and bruises will toughen him up, but I think he could use a break from them. Maybe we'll have some more playing in the mud days since AnnElise can't stand to be dirty.