1st of Catch-Up Series- Branson

Papa with Rich & Shirley

Addi with her great-uncle Rich

The kids bowled in their own lane.


Grandma with Rich & Shirley

Addi's first Branson Show- The Dixie Stampede.

The Family in front of Bass-Pro

Mama & Addi at the Precious Moments Chapel

I'm sorry that I haven't posted anything in a while. We've been busy with life. I will try to keep posting to get you caught up with Miss Addi. She has started saying da-da. She had got 6 teeth since her birthday! She has turned into miss personality. I need to make her 1 year appointment, but i think she weighs around 25 pounds. She's still wearing size 4 diapers and 12 month clothes. She is even climbing up on the sofa by herself. I will include videos in my future posts and you can see her talking and teasing us. :-0

Here is a summary of Spring Break week.

We had quite a busy spring break this year. We started the week off with Addi's birthday party. I had family in from Colorado- Uncle Rich, Aunt Shirley & their grandkids Blake & Miranda. The guys fished most of the week- their goal was to catch big strippers. Well, Uncle Rich caught a 26 lb bass on Monday! It's a whopper and is going to be mounted!! On Wednesday, the girls took a road-trip to the Precious Moments Chapel in Carthage Missouri. It had been a few years since I had been. It was a nice trip., wonderful weather. The paintings are beautiful, as is the stories behind the artist who created the figurines. As you can see in the video, Addi enjoyed the music playing in the garden and danced her way around. :-) Everyone kept saying "look at that little girl- she's so cute!" . The next day everyone loaded up and drove to Branson. It was Addi's first trip to Branson. She did pretty well during the 2 hour drive. She got fussy for the last 15 minutes or so. Stephen and I had been to the Titanic Museum (which was where the rest of the crowd wanted to go), so we hit the Outlet Malls and shopped while the rest learned something. I tried buying out the Carter's store!! Addi came home with 2 swim suits and numerous other outfits for this summer. Of Course- we had to take my relatives to a show... we were in Branson after all. So, we went to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede. It's a dinner show and we had some awesome food and a GREAT time. The only thing my relatives did not enjoy was the fact that you did not eat with silverware! :-) We even lucked out by getting in the last row that was bench seating and people next to us never showed, since Addi had to sit on our laps and eat our food or it would have been expensive and CROWDED. She did very well. She watched all of the animals and people singing. She had a great first trip to Branson. We will make it again this summer attend the Sons of the Pioneers, Chuckwagon show with my parents.

We finished off the week with bowling. I'll post video of our bowling techniques later. They are pretty funny!

Photos

Cookie photo's-- I can't find any of them completed... they did have eyes!!

About the Birthday Party-- Finally

The family after Addi got cleaned up.
YUM!! She practically at this whole thing!

This is the best picture I had of her in her birthday dress. It was cool that day, so she wore a cardigan for most of the party and you couldn't see the details (balloons) on the bodice.

She was being shy about the room full of people singing.

Here is all of the kids that attended her first birthday!! We were so lucky to have friends and family that traveled to attend!! Thank-you for coming!!

We had family from: Colorado (who happened to be here for the party), Kansas and Friends from Hawaii (lucky timing). We had great uncles, great grandma's, great aunts, cousins, grandma's , grandpa's... quite a crowd. We even had kids that they should be in the same class in school: Rex, Mika, Lilly, Shannon & McKenna.

The party and it's planning had it's crazy moments! It took me weeks to pick out the perfect cake. There is an awesome website: cakecentral.com that has TONS of idea on it, which is where I developed our idea for the cake. I had decided on baby sesame street as the theme months ago because it was so bright and colorful. She liked the cake ideas that I would print out and hang on the frige. The cake drama: I had decided I wanted a tiered cake so she could have the top layer, but I wanted the baby sesame street characters made out of icing, sitting on the edges of the cake. Simple right? Well... there are copyright laws that prohibit bakeries from making icing characters!! They would only use the plastic kits. So, back to the grindstone. Then I decided to use some baby sesame street character candles and make the cake you see. I absolutely had to use the best bakery in NWA- Ricks. They have the best icing around. I ordered her cake 2 weeks before and when I went the night before to pick it up, they had lost my order!!! What!!!??? I was actually very calm and they said it would be ready before the party AND they would deliver. I also got free icing from them and used it to decorate the cupcakes. Those are also one of my favorite details about the party. I made baby cookie monster and elmo cupcakes. Red & blue icing with big marshmallows cut in half for eyes with chocolate chips for the mouth. Baby cookie monster was even complete with a mini cookie (cookie crisp). I also made sugar cookies for party favors and decorated them as baby elmo & cookie monster. I'll post pictures of those later. Another favor was a birthday cd of sesame street music. I made them and the cute labels (pics later). All in all, everyone had a great time and enjoyed all of the food! Thank-you to everyone who came to celebrate the first birthday of a very special little girl! The only thing that I am a little disappointed about was I had planned on making a time capsule for her to open on her 18th birthday. I had stationary and pens around for people to write Addi a note and I would include decorations, pictures and information about the year. Nobody wrote her anything. So, it may just be from mommy & daddy.

Many of you may think I went over board... but she only turns 1 once!!

Can you tell I have waited a very long time to do this?! :-)