Annie's First Birthday!

We had a truly wonderful day yesterday, celebrating Annie's birthday.  Toby and I truly indulged by taking the day off work and spending the whole day with Annie.  We went to the park THREE times, Skyped with our English family, tried twice to get Annie to eat cake, had family photos taken by a photographer, had lunch with my parents, took a nap, and finally crashed on the couch with pizza and tv.  It was a really great day.  I only cried once about Annie's transition to toddlerhood.

Below are a few photographic highlights.  I'll post the professional photos when we have them back.  My expectations are low, since Annie didn't really want to perform on her birthday.

Speaking of non-performance, Annie completely refused to touch her cake, much less eat it.  She really only touched it when trying to push it off her tray.  Hence, you will note a lack of cute-baby-with-cake-rubbed-all-over-her-face photos. 

Here we are, setting out for the first trip to the park - with Annie on her brand new SmartTrike.  She loved it!  She laughed and laughed the whole way.  It was such a trip!

This is the cake.  I promise it was really tasty and took quite a while to make. Don't look to close, I am far from a professional. I hear that each year you are a mom, your decorating skills improve.  

This is our second attempt to get Annie to try her cake.  Ain't happenin'.

We don't have any photos of Annie is the cute dresses she wore most of the day, but hopefully the professional photographs will come through.  These last photos are from our last trip to the park of the day.  Annie doesn't particularly care for walking in shoes, or on grass, or on the grass while wearing shoes.  She stood there under that tree for a rather long time until I rescued her. :)

   

 And now, giving her very stern face and pointing toward her intended destination - the playground.

Annie is really into slides these days.  She loved going down big slide with her daddy -

And the smaller slide - nearly all by herself.  Look at that face!!!

I hope she had as great a day as did Toby and I.  It was an awesome bookend to an awesome year.