Everything Mickey Mouse

 This weekend, Aaron and I took the pups down to Forest, VA for our niece's first birthday party!   We went down early so that we could help make decorations and cake.  When we got there, Jessica was elbows deep in cake frosting... it looked like a lot of work.  So I took the birthday girl and we sneakily stole frosting as it fell off the cake.  Sugar up the almost-1-year-old... these are the things that you can get away with when you are the aunt.  Once Emma was asleep, we all helped finish up the decorating and baking while enjoying some downtime with friends.  Kristen and Drew had been there for a while, so the 6 of us enjoyed some brews and wine while we crafted.

The next morning, we finished setting up for the party.  The place looked awesome.  There was a front door banner, a cupcake stand, flower centerpieces, festive tablecloths, Mickey place mats, gift bags, balloons, a Happy Birthday banner and Mickey tableware.  There was also this fantastic cake that Jessica had made.  She had put a lot of time and effort into making this an awesome party for her baby.

Then the guests arrived - grandparents and friends from both sides of the family.  We ate lunch (delicious barbecue that Brent had smoked in his Pit Barrel Cooker - which we had gotten from a whole group of people as a house-warming/anniversary gift and Aaron is now super inspired to play with) and Emma opened her presents.  Well, Jessica opened Emma's presents and tried to get her interested in each toy and piece of clothing and book.  Emma's attention span was not helping the situation, but she was genuinely interested in some of it.... it just depended on what else was happening in the moment.

And then it was time for cake...

Jessica cut a huge slice for Emma and (after wrapping her in a bib and some paper towels) let her chow down.  This was the scene from Emma's perspective...

She had cake all over her face, the table, the floor, her bib, her hands... she was covered and she was loving every bite (I would post pictures, but she's not my kid, so I don't want to slather her face all over the internet).  It was getting close to nap time though so there were occasional sugar-free moments where she just set her head down on the table to sleep... she was partied out.

After she went to sleep, most of the guests headed home.  Ben showed up a little later, the guys made beer runs, Jessica and I made a fried-food run, and the second (less child-friendly) party started!

Mostly we just ate junk food, drank tasty beer, listened to music, and hung out.  We played some games too.  It was fun!  The pups partied too, but they crashed much earlier... and took up most of the chairs.

The next morning, we ate McDonald's, played with Emma and her new toys, and headed home. 

Aaron and I did laundry and watched football (where both of our teams lost...).  The pups napped.  All day. 

We had a great weekend!  I'm excited for round 2 (Nicholas's 2nd birthday party) in PA this weekend!

One Year Later...

One year ago yesterday, Aaron and I got married!  It was a beautiful day.  Yesterday was also a beautiful day and we celebrated our first year together!

 We had gotten a coupon from our HOA for a free wine tasting at a local winery, so we decided to head down there for the afternoon.  After our free tasting, we had a few glasses of wine and listened to the live music.  There was a guy (named Boo) playing the guitar.  He was good and he played mostly classic rock, so it was right up our alley!  When he went to take his break, the winery owner's step-father stepped in to play his ukulele!  He's 96... he was so cute.  Also, I hope I'm that mobile and lively at 96.

Then we headed back to make our special dinner!  We planned to re-create some of our favorite dishes from our honeymoon.  I had baked the bread and the dessert that morning (while Aaron meticulously manicured our lawn with his new toys).  We had asiago foccacia bread, pumpkin soup, jerk chicken, potato stuffed mushrooms, and fudge brownies with coffee ice cream.  It was an insane amount of food.  There are a LOT of leftovers.  We made it an early dinner/late lunch sort of deal.

We ended the night by having some champagne (from my parents) and eating our year-old wedding cake whle we watched the wedding videos that my dad put together!  He did a great job and it was vary cool to watch the day all over again.

It was a great first year and we are both looking forward to many many more to come!

You guys, the Browns!

As an ode to the best team ever (don't shoot down my hopes and dreams, just roll with it - they ARE currently first in their division), I thought I'd share a couple Browns-related pictures.  These are from the last few Browns games that I attended.

A win against the Jags back in... a long time ago... junior year?  It snowed.  It was 1 degree.  It was awesome.  We introduced Rebecca to the NFL.  She is now a Browns fan and she helped cheer them on from Montana lat night!

A loss on the road against Cinci (but more importantly, we won last night!) sometime during my sophomore year.  We were headed up to Miami to see Britta.  I'm not sure why I'm not wearing Browns gear.  Lapse in judgement, clearly.

An I-don't-remember against I-don't-remember.  Clearly memorable.  I do remember that it practically hurricaned (not a word, but you know what I mean) - Waterfalls of rain, huge wind gusts, large hail... we were stuck in the bathroom for about 45 minutes because it was so bad that they delayed the game (I think).

There was another game in there (versus the Ravens), but it was an eventful tailgate and I didn't actually see the game.  It was 10 degrees.

Here we go Brownies, here we go!