1 year later

We celebrated Reese's first birthday on Friday and it's hard to believe that it's been 1 year since our family changed in such a big way. She started out at 7lbs 12oz 19.7 in long and now she's 20lbs 13oz 30 in long, and as the doctor told us at her 12 month appt "she's still got a big head."Reese has changed our lives in so many ways and even though it's only been a year we can't imagine our lives without her in our family.

We've been celebrating Reese's birthday for pretty much the entire month. Since Nate was going to be deploying before Reese's birthday we had a party in Germany on the 9th so that we could celebrate with him and with our friends who have gotten to watch Reese grow over the past year. We had a BBQ and our friend Stephanie made a wonderful fish themed cake that not only was gorgeous but also tasted like a giant sugar cookie. Nate was glad that he got to see Reese dive into cake and open presents.

On May 19th, after trying for about 5 days, Reese and I were finally able to get on a military flight back to the States so that we could celebrate her birthday with family since Nate would be gone. Even though it took us so long to get out it actually worked out really well because we left the house at about 8am to head to Ramstein and Nate left that afternoon to head over to Spangdahlem for his flight so we were able to spend time with him up until he left. Reese and I had a long flight as usual but once again everyone on the plane was so sweet and everyone was offering to help us carry things and wanted to play with Reese, I love flying space-a because of all the space Reese has to play. Even when we landed in Newfoundland, where the airport was competely empty except for the 8 passengers from our plane, the airport employees came over and were playing high five with Reese while we waited for our plane to refuel.

On May 22nd, Reese's actual birthday, my dad went out in the morning and got donut holes for her birthday breakfast which she devoured and loved and then I took her and Ava to Fairytale town to play and then on to McDonalds for happy meals. Nate didn't think he would be able to call but luckily he was able to get through for all of 2 mins which was plenty long for him to wish Reese a happy birthday. That night we went to Crepeville and got dessert crepes which Reese devoured with the same enthusiasm that she did in Paris, I barely got to eat any of the crepe we were sharing.

The next day was Reese's big birthday party that I had been planning for since we were home in March. It was a fish themed party and we had blue chiffon hanging from the patio ceiling to look like water and then we had seaweed and fish hanging from there as well. We had a great turn out of family and friends there to help us celebrate Reese's first year. I think Reese's favorite part was diving into her cake, which was a cupcake cake which I had never heard of but actually worked out very well because we still had the big design on top of the cake but then you could just pull apart the cupcakes instead of having to cut and dish cake.
It was a very exciting weekend for us and now I officially have a one year old, I'm still trying to figure out if that makes me old.