Abigail's birthday

Last weekend we celebrated Abigail's one-year birthday. 

Birthdays in my family are always a very big deal.  When I was little, I was able to chose what I wanted to eat for breakfast on my birthday (almost always chocolate chip pancakes) and for dinner (almost always steak and mashed potatoes - I'm a mid-west girl, what can I say). I also probably got to chose what I wanted for lunch but I don't remember that as much (probably because I ate the same thing for lunch for the first 15 years of my life - peanut butter sandwich, no jelly and potato chips).  And dessert was almost always yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  We were fortunate that my aunt and uncle and cousin lived down the street from us and my grandma just lived about 20 minutes away. So every birthday, meant a very fancy dinner in the dining room surrounded by family - what wonderful memories!

And so this last weekend, my mom and dad flew into town and my cousin Kerri and her husband Mark (who live in DC) came over to celebrate the monumental 1 year birthday.  We gathered around the dining room table (although we didn't have what I would characterize as a "fancy dinner" - but it was delicious nonetheless).  I didn't know what kind of cake to make for Abigail.  I really wanted to make her the Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" chocolate cake recipe but I wasn't sure chocolate cake would be such a great idea for a one-year old. 

So I decided on a heart shaped cake with a big surprise - rainbow colors on the inside.  There are a lot of recipes out there for rainbow cake, but I got my inspiration from Dinner Cakes.  Now I know I probably should have made the cake from scratch but I didn't want to take away time spent with my mom and dad to make a cake... so I resorted to the box mix.  My mom, Grace and I had a lot of fun making it.  I didn't turn out quite as pretty as I had hoped but it looked pretty cute.

Abigail was not very in to the cake - maybe all the colors scared her - ha! 

After awile, she did start to put her hands in it and ate a little bit.  And she loved opening up her presents and playing with the toys, and the boxes they came in and the wrapping paper. 

"Ok - where is my cake!"

"What in the world is this?"

"Ok - This is pretty good!"

Bruno and my dad have the same birthday so we celebrated their birthday as well.  And since I was late getting Kerri her birthday gifts, we celebrated her birthday too... we have a lot of September birthdays in our family... Len's was earlier in the month too!

It was a wonderful weekend.  My mom and dad are such a tremendous help with the kids and my mom is particularly great at helping me organize my disorganized house!  We created some more wonderful birthday memories that I will always cherish!