Sasha's First Birthday Party

It's been so much fun sharing so many firsts with our little girl in the three weeks we've been home (how can it only be three weeks?!?) and today we got to celebrate Sasha's first birthday party! Our little wonder turns two tomorrow and today we gathered with a small group of friends to wish Sasha a very happy second birthday.

Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side. But we would not be deterred! Growing up with an April birthday I had many a rainy birthday party - one would think that in Utah Sasha wouldn't have this problem but we have had a very wet April. Oh well, it was fun nonetheless and the kids certainly didn't let the rain dampen their spirits.

We had the party at a local park (not having people in our house yet does have its inconvenient parts). Steve did a marvelous job decorating the pavilion... in the freezing rain. I think that man's love has no bounds.

We kept the fiesta pretty low-key and only had a few activities - the Easter Menagerie, an egg hunt, and cake. This was fortuitous because it left us ample time to huddle together around the space heaters clutching our hot chocolate.

Ok, "menagerie" may be a bit of a stretch, but it's amazing how entertaining three chicks and two bunnies are! Sure, they're fun to hold and cuddle with their sweet fuzziness, but the real fun comes when one of the bunnies gets loose! Don't worry, he was eventually corralled. I suspect that having Sam and Ben "help" catch him wasn't actually helpful, but it definitely added to the spectator enjoyment.

The egg hunt was also a rousing success, although I am still very unclear on how the roughly four thousand eggs that I took hours lovingly filling and Steve placed around the park could all be collected in about twelve seconds. Steve had the bright idea of a staggered start, which is the only way that Sasha managed to "collect" three eggs. I guess that her haul was proportional to the amount of effort she exerted, however - look at her lazing about while the rest of the under-four set is running hard with their eyes on the prize! Oh, sure, you're going to try and convince me that the fact that she's never seen an Easter egg hunt before and had no idea what was going on should excuse her from exercising a competitive birthday girl edge... yeah, good call.

Well, at least she looked dang cute when she did eventually pick up an egg. Don't you just want to kiss those chubby cheeks all over!?! Can you believe that this little princess is ours!? Amazing, I know.

Once the eggs were opened Sasha did suddenly become a huge fan of the whole egg hunt concept. Note in this photo the mouth stuffed full of Hershey Kisses while she surveys her basket for the next victim.

After the egg hunt we celebrated with bunny cake. I will say that I'm pretty proud of the decorating job on the cake - Nilla Wafer and M&M eyes, coconut ears (I don't like coconut, so Steve and I compromised on coconut on the ears only), Poky Stick whiskers, and licorice mouth. That's one good looking bunny cake!

Sash did need some help blowing out the candles... both because she had no earthly clue what was going on and because she can't blow out of her mouth yet. There are some tricky parts of having your mouth and nose connected more than "usual"! I suggested that she could blow them out with her nose because if she closes her mouth she can blow pretty well, but this idea was voted down because the idea of a two-year-old's nose breath (et al) all over the cake was rather unappealing.

We had a wonderful afternoon celebrating our beautiful little girl with dear friends. Happy second birthday, Sasha!