Happy 1st Birthday

This week our little girl turned 1! Grandma and Grandpa Partridge were able to come to town, so they came over for the evening, along with Brett and his boys (Stephanie was at Girls Camp).

We had a yummy deli tray for dinner, and then it was time to open presents.


I try to make a fun cake for each kid birthday. This year I tried something a little different and I did cupcakes. I found a really cute decorating idea on Bakerella's site and a frosting recipe on Our Best Bites. I've never made the "fancy" cupcakes with the big icing before, so I wanted to try to get a recipe that would work well for it. The frosting scared me because you have to cook part of it, but now that I've tried it I will be using this recipe a LOT -- it was so light and fluffy!

The flowers are made out of molding chocolate

Elizabeth played with the frosting a lot. But she really didn't want to have anything to do with putting the cake part in her mouth, even when we tried to help her.




Later in the week she had her doctor's appointment. We learned she is still in the 1st percentile for her head circumference. And her percentiles have dropped for both height and weight. She is in the 10th percentile for height (27 and 3/4 inches) and 1st percentile for weight (16.2 pounds)!

Happy Birthday to our little princess!

My cutie

I love this picture for 2 reasons:

1. She crawled in there all by herself and had a ball playing . . . so cute!

2. In this picture, she looks just like me in my baby picture. FINALLY one of my kids kinda looks like me!

Cousins

Jacob (my brother), Barbara, Ella, and Jack were in town this week visiting some family, and we got to see them a few times. Ella, who just turned 2, had a lot of fun playing with our 3 boys.

Ella and Joshua hugged about 5 times when it was time for them to leave . . . so cute!

Fat Cats Fun

After our long 4th of July weekend, Ryan's family (most of them) was able to stay in Utah for a few more days. Bradley had BYU soccer camp in the mornings. We loved being able to see them longer, and to have time to just "hang out."

Amy playing with Noah

Elizabeth found a sucker and tried to enjoy it with the wrapper still on (until I took it away from her right after I took the picture)!

One of the evenings, we met up at Fat Cats for a little bowling. We divided into 3 teams:

Team Trouble: Nathan, Bryson, Bradley (and Grandpa)

Benjamin, Katelyn, Blake (and Amy & Brock)

Joshua, Megan, Brett, and Hyrum

After a few turns, Joshua decided that instead of just pushing his ball off the stand, he should get a running start to do so! He proceeded to get a strike from it, and so he taught Megan that that was the way to do it!
Bradley also had a strike!
Elizabeth and I enjoyed watching everyone.

Elizabeth and Adam -- I love how they are in their own worlds and yet still "interacting"

We loved having everyone here for the week! We can't wait for you to come visit again!

Another project finished!

One of the many projects I've been working on this summer is a chandelier for the living room. As with most of the furniture in the room, this chandelier is an antique that has been in the family a long time. It belonged to my dad's great uncle, then to my dad, and now to me!

I have so many fond memories of it hanging over our dining room table when I was young. It was brass, and when I got it home it did not look as pretty as I remember it. But I was confident that I could clean it up, paint it an antique bronze color, and it would look gorgeous.


When I first started the project, I naively hoped to have it finished within a week. It turns out that cleaning, taking off all the crystals, sanding, priming, painting, waiting 2 days for the paint to dry, painting another coat, waiting, touch-up painting, waiting, more touch-ups, waiting, reapplying the crystals, and figuring out how to hang it takes a little longer than a week! I have never re-finished anything, so I was hoping I was doing it right.

My brother, Jacob, was visiting yesterday and started to figure out how to hang it. But he ran out of time and didn't really make visible progress (although we figured out some of the logistics of everything -- thanks, Jacob!). Today Ryan started to work on it, but was running into problems of how to support it enough in the ceiling -- the chandelier is HEAVY. I left to run a few errands for the evening. When I came home, the kids were in bed and . . . SURPRISE: the chandelier was hanging beautifully in the living room!

These pictures don't come close to showing how beautiful it looks. The crystals (there are over 45) sparkle so much!

poetry

Red
by Nathan
(written for Mom)

Red is as sweet as a rose,
Red is the color of burned toes,
Red is the color of a shopping cart,
Red is the love in one's heart.


Blue
by Nathan
(written for Dad)

Blue is as refreshing as water,
Blue is the color in the eyes of your daughter,
Blue is what they say when you're sad,
Blue is as rad as my DAD!

Independence!

Elizabeth celebrated Independence Day by showing her own independence -- she took her first unassisted steps!

Since then she has been standing and walking whenever she can. She can stand up wherever she is without holding on to something. With 2 weeks of practice under her belt, Elizabeth will usually now take 6-12 steps before falling.


She gets so excited while walking, which often causes her to lose her balance. But then once on the ground, she will smile and clap!

She has also discovered a new trick -- the boys always comment that she must like yoga :)
Here is video of her in action . . .
sorry that I am technically challenged . . . you'll have to turn your head to the side to watch, and now I know to hold the camera horizontally from now on when I use it to take video!

July 4th Celebration -- Day 4

Monday, July 5: Freedom Festival Parade

Wow! The Independence Day holiday just keeps going! This morning began early for Benjamin and me. In the 10 years I've lived in Provo, I have never been to the 4th of July parade. Since it is the biggest parade in all of Utah, that is pretty sad! I wanted to go this year, especially since the weather was a little cooler than most years, and Benjamin is the only one I could convince to come with me!

We live about 9 blocks south of the end of the parade route. I figured that parking gets crowded, and since we walked about 30 blocks on Saturday night, we could handle walking less than 10! We were out the door around 7am, wearing our jackets as we walked. I enjoyed seeing the hot air balloons in front of us.

Smokey the Bear

We were almost halfway when a neighbor drove by and waved hello -- then they stopped and offered us a ride. They were on their way to see the balloons up close, but dropped us off at the parade route on their way -- thanks Brimleys!

Since it was just 2 of us, we were able to easily find a seat right on the curb. Benjamin sat in his chair and played his V-smile video games while I cheered for the runners of the 5K that were going by.
A little while later the pre-parade started.
It took Benjamin a while to realize he could get up and out of his chair to get the fliers that some of the groups handed out :)
When that was over, he said he wanted to go home. I had to tell him a few times that the real parade was about to start and that it would be a lot better than what we just saw!

This was the first float, which he loved. He looks unhappy because he was caught off-guard when I asked him to turn around for the picture.
We were located right before the round-about in the street, so a lot of the parade got very close to us as they got ready to go through it. This one was VERY cool up close!

Our neighbor, Izzy, won the baby contest and so she and her parents got to be in the parade!

When the military walked by, Benjamin really got into giving them all 5. So when the Provo missionaries came by, he did it with them, too!

We had a great time (although I was disappointed that there was no candy-throwing like when I visited Hyrum in the summer as a child!), but left before the last few parade entries went by. We walked only 3 blocks before Benjamin was done with walking. Thanks to cell phones, Ryan came and picked us up at about the half-way point :)

We then drove up to Brett and Stephanie's and met up with the rest of the family to celebrate Hyrum's 3rd birthday. How perfect that we went and saw Toy Story 3!

Whew . . . it's been a long weekend of festivities, but it has been SO fun!

July 4th Celebration -- Day 3

Sunday, July 4: Family Dinner

I loved that the 4th of July was on a Sunday this year. Not just because it spread out the fun over the long weekend, but also because it made singing the patriotic hymns in church even more meaningful.

The Partridges sure know how to dress -- everyone was in their red, white, and blue; tastefully done of course! For our big Sunday dinner together, I came up with a Red, White, & Blue theme. We had a pasta bar with 3 types of noodles, red sauce, and white sauce. There was blue jello, rolls, and a mix of strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries.
After dinner, everyone sang Happy Birthday to me and I got a gift from all the siblings/spouses. It was a gift certificate to Sunglass Hut, which I used already when I was at the mall Tuesday night! Thanks!
For dessert, I went a little crazy. Ice cream was on sale, so I had purchased 5 containers (and we had 1 container of sherbet already)!
Plus I had to make the perfect 4th of July cake that I found here. The top layer fell apart on me when I took it out of the pan, and I had a hard time salvaging it. So it doesn't look as pretty as the one on the blog, but it was still a big hit!