December, 2006 - Ella's Big Day!

The moment you have ALL been waiting for! Ella's birthday party pictures are finally up on our website! The first pictures are of our own little present giving to Ella on her actual birthday, December 11. We decided to give her our gifts on her real birthday. (Plus we wanted the first look at her opening presents for the first time!!)

Now for her birthday party on December 16... We invited friends from church and family to the big celebration. It was a pretty good turn out and LOTS of fun. As most of you know, we did a combo birthday party. Daddy knew about Ella's party, but he didn't know about his part (we surprised him)! Here is a picture of Ella's personal cookie cake, the cupcakes to throw Daddy off the scent of his surprise, and Daddy's surprise cake (hiding in the car in the garage) that unfortunately for him, he had to share with everyone else at the party.

Here's some of the guests from the party. Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of Megan and Noah who were out getting the pizza for the party - such sweet friends!

It's pizza time! Yum!

Now it's cake time!!! Get ready for some excitement! (Just about the time we were ready to do cake, Ella was starting to fight to get out of her high chair... Little did she know!)

Time to serve cupcakes (AKA Justin's cookie cake)! Here's the surprised face... He blew out the candles so fast, Mom and I both missed the picture - so we made him go back and pose for us! (Meanwhile, remember that Ella is still eating her cake in the background...)

Weren't we surprised when we turned around to see this!!

Time to wash some of this gunk off! Unfortunately, Ella didn't have a very good birthday bath. The icing got in her eyes and she broke out slightly in a rash from the icing on her face. But, she did have the cutest pink stained hands (and poop for the next two days). The icing left pink water and a pink ring around the tub as you'll see in the pictures below.

Now that the icing's off her face, she's doing better - but not quite smiling yet.

It's present time! We started with the ceremonial "passing of the bow" (every year Justin has been "forced" to put a bow on his head and pose for pictures because he did it when he was young and thought it was funny - then...). Now it's Ella's turn to be a bow queen at birthday and Christmas! We had to get one last picture of Daddy as "bow king" (you can tell how much he loved it). Unfortunately, Ella's face was so red and puffy, she didn't look as cute as she was "supposed" to in my original plans.

Ella loved opening gifts and Rylee LOVED helping her!

We forgot and left the icing-covered sippy cup on the floor - oops! Time to clean up again!

Later that day...