Hardin's first, family and friends.

Saturday was Hardin's first birthday party and we LOVED seeing all of our family and friends! Short of my brother being there (he will be home in 19 days for a week but who's counting!!!!), we really couldn't have asked for more. The weather was a bit chilly but not cold, and that far exceeded my fears. No rain, no melt downs, no injuries. Total success in this mama's book.

The theme was goldfish. The crackers not the scaly ones. I've had everything made and ready for over a month, so I was glad to get all those little fishes out of my house. My favorite part was Hardin's shirt for sure!

Both grandmothers were a huge help and for that we are insanely blessed. Mom for helping with H while I tried to keep things moving at the party, and Mimi for helping me set up and running my errands Friday. I had a crazy end of the month and poor daddy would have been lost at Costco without his mom. I knew Becky would be with him when I made the list, although after hearing the rundown of their trip, I think it would have been MUCH more entertaining had J been wondering around trying to figure it out without her. It gets me tickled just to think about what we would have ended up with.

Mary Ellen and Ben recently got a big kid swing set for Liddie, so they brought over her Little Tykes play set after the party. I can't believe I didn't get a picture of H on it yet. He absolutely loves it! And sweet little Cawley sat outside the window in the baby swing for quite some time today. Have I mentioned I'm excited about Mary Ellen's BOY due in February?!

The rest of the weekend was spent watching football and the McTrio destroy the house play with all of Hardin's birthday goodies. Hardin absolutely adores his cousins. Especially Cawley. C is such a good big kid these days. He is the best one year old entertainer around. He can get a smile out of either of them in a second.

Oh, one last thing. My wonderful friend Faith is back from a two month work trip to Kenya. While she was there she went on many adventures and took the most beautiful animal pictures. I had never even thought about Hardin's big boy room, but once I saw them I thought they would make the perfect wall art for it one day. Long story (that I don't really know) short, after hearing that, Faith had a friend who was selling a few animal paintings and thought of H. She skyped them to me one morning and I LOVED them. They are even more beautiful in person than over a crummy Kenya to Winder internet connection.

Then the cards fell in line even more. My friend Jill who was at the party saw them and told me I had to talk to her mom about framing them. Her husband does very high end framing. Well, wouldn't you know Jill's mama was picking her up from the party to go to another event. I talked to Wanda and she's going to get them all framed up for us.

I'll post pictures of the finished product, although we probably won't be doing any other work on that room for another year. Just so I remember, they were hand painted in Tanzania and purchased in Kenya.

Finally, a special thanks to my friend Katie for taking some of the pictures below when I was too busy! And as always, I thank her for editing my blog as well :) She cleans up all of my spelling and grammatical errors. God love her, that's a busy job!

The fishing poles had goldfish and worms at the end.

Pizza went in the blue plates.

The Holder Boys, Jack and Gabe



I love the face Olivia is making at Hardin in this one!



The trips and the place mats I made and forgot to take a picture of!

Matt and Teresa!



Needless to say he LOVED the smash cake. I loved that I asked for "as white as you can get and still be orange" icing!

Isabella and her worm :)

I can not believe Jackson is 5. Crazy!

Katie!

Liddie Grace

The last exciting event of the weekend was taking Becky's Christmas card picture today. Cat and I both have a new respect for family photographers. Getting all three of those goofballs to look at the camera at the same time is quite the task. And forget getting all three of them to smile at the same time. That just wasn't happening. Truth is, we only tried for about 5 minutes, but that was enough. The finished product is a masterpiece, imperfections and all!