Sophie's First Bee Day

A month to the day overdue, but Happy, Happy Birthday Stinkerbell!! Since Sophie was named after her great grandma Marge (G-G-Ma Marge as we like to call her) and since Marge is unable to leave her nursing home, we decided to bring the party there. All from both of our families were invited and we totally packed the house. As you can get from the title of this post and the invite on the left, the theme was Bees....as was Halloween last year. Man, I'm getting less imaginitive as the years go by.

The highlight of the day for most of us was the cake. My multi-talented best friend Mandy made this wonderful cake for the occasion. I keep telling her she needs to start a catering business. I mean, who wouldn't pay serious money for a cake like this??

But, before digging in, we decided to do presents first....I was hoping to keep them icing free. First, Sophie snagging some snuggle time with Aunt Sue.

And then the present-paloozaa. She truly got too many to post, so I'll just show off some of the highlights. Cool socks from Sue (okay, a highlight for sock-addicted mommy)...

A very cool big girl outfit complete with capris and her first real headband from Mandy...

The most gorgeous dress EVER (which she will wear to Nikki's wedding in May, no doubt) from Cousins Meggie, Carson, Molly and Aunt Teresa....

A cool puppet book from Uncle Mike and Aunt Pam, which caused a mini brawl between Sophie and Mandy's little boy James...

A nightset complete with a tutu from Gma Judy....

And many, many more adorable gifts... Thanks so much for everything!! I caught this cute pic of crazy boy Carson while we were cake prepping. Those dimples get me every time.
And now....drumroll please.....CAKE!! I went to great lengths to ensure that Sophie's first birthday included her first taste of cake, even fighting of Gma Judy and Daddy on occasion. Here she is scoping out the cake sitch...

I had to shove her hands in the icing to get her started. But once she got a taste, there was no going back. Yes Mommy, my hair needs icing, too!

Luckily, we had the foresight to bring her clean clothes, despite being ill-fitting. We stripped her down and cleaned her up and she snuggled up to Uncle Mike for a little Elmo reading. The icing, however, took two washes to evacuate her hair.

And now, the big news. We took this family pic before we let Sophie at the cake, but it didn't really dawn on my at the time that it was a first family pic. Yes, we have many pictures of us with Stinkerbell, but the morning of Sophie's birthday we found out that she was going to be a big sister. When we were pregnant with Sophie (before we knew she was a girl) we called her peanut. Well, this is the first picture with Mommy, Daddy, Peanut and Cashew. I have a pregnancy bar along the side of the blog showing our progress and, as with Sophie, I'm taking pictures of my belly each month so that we can watch Cashew expand (or, expand Mommy).

Next up....warm weather finally comes to Cincinnati!! Stay tuned...