What Ayla got for her birthday!

As I promised, here is the post on what Ayla got for her birthday. She got quite a bit and was very loved by everyone at her party.

This is what her Aunt Suz and her family gave Ayla.

It was perfect because Ayla loves dogs and now she has her very own 1st birthday dog with a little note from everyone who came to her party. Thanks Suz, Chris and Brooke. That was such a thoughtful present.

Next, these are the cute clothes she got.

Grandma and Grandpa Perry bought her the 2 outfits on the far left. Jolene got her the yellow set in the middle. Amy and John got her the cute flower dress. And Cori got her the other cute pink dress. Love the clothes everyone, thanks.

Here is Ayla modeling her clothes.

Melissa got Ayla a Baby Einstein book with a CD and a Baby Einstein DVD which is about Noah's ark animals. Perfect, Melissa. Noah is her best friend's name.

Amy and John also gave her this cute teddy bear that has a blanket rolled up in it's arms. I love that the blanket has a place to be put and a cute place at that. Thanks Amy and John.

Grandma and Grandpa Perry got Ayla this nice Mega Bloks set. She loves it and I love it. She can even take a bath with these puppies.

Grandma and Grandpa Perry also got her these Alphabet wooden blocks. Ayla and Kurt love these. Kurt loves to build towers with the blocks and Ayla loves to knock them down. In the picture, Ayla is trying to build a tower of her own. Smart girl! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

This is what Mommy and Daddy got her. This is what was in the green wrapping paper on the last post. I got her this steering wheel because whenever I took her somewhere where they had a toy steering wheel, Ayla always wanted to play with it. The only problem is when you honk the horn, it honks but then it says "OUT OF THE WAY!" I not so sure I like that because I hate horns for that exact reason. People use them to tell you that you are doing something stupid. Anyway, Ayla loves it and I guess I do too.

Aunty Marion and her boyfriend, Monty got her this Elmo Up Up. It is really cute. Elmo will ask you to pick him up and then he will sing a cute song. He says a lot of things but I think what I love about it the most is that he laughs and that makes Ayla laugh. Thanks Marion and Monty.

Uncle Robert and Aunt Carolyne and Lane got her this frog puppet.

Of course it makes her laugh. Thanks you guys!

And last but not least, my parents got her this trike.

Doesn't she look so cute on it? We are trying to work with her with it. That is why it looks like she is riding it herself. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Wiechert!

Also Leah, notice the shirt she is wearing? It is the onesie that you guys gave her that says, Tennessee. Yes, she still fits in it. I think it is a 6 month. She is a small gal.

We have a lot of fun playing with her toys with her. I built this T-Rex out of her Mega Bloks. Can you tell it is a T-Rex?

Oh no! Here comes Ayla! AHHH!

Dead dinosaur!

Notice Kurt is playing with her with her Alpha blocks?

One more thanks to everyone for being so giving and loving our sweet little girl!

Also below, I wanted to share some funny things that Ayla has been doing lately.

I always find thing inside her boppy ball machine. It is usually these farm animals. I guess she wants to see other things besides balls come boppy out.

She did this last night. 

She stood inside her train for a while. She cracks me up.

I love this one. LOL!!

She has been smashing her face against the pack and play. We keep her toys in there, so there isn't a huge mess around the living room all the time. She loves to look inside at her toys. I actually started to cover it because Kurt requested I should because he felt bad that she could see her toys but not get to them. What a great Dad!

Another thing she has been doing is what I call strutting her stuff. She will walk and try to dance at the same time. I couldn't get a picture of it but maybe later or, even better, a clip of it.

Ayla's Birthday Party!

Well it has been a while since my last post. Kurt has been on the main computer, doing a lot of work. So I haven't been able to get the pictures I wanted from the desktop until today. Anyway, I got them and I am posting from our laptop.

This seems like a very long post but it will be mostly pictures, so it shouldn't be too long.

Anyway, this is how Ayla's 1st birthday party went:

Here is the invitation I sent out. I made them myself with material from around the apartment. I found the Kermit the Frog image on google images. It was on a t-shirt. I photoshoped him out and used this image for everything. Kermit was the theme of the party because Ayla loves the clip, disco frog. Kermit is singing and dancing in it. If you want to see it, it is on my sidebar with the links.

The invitation reads "Hi, Ho, Kermit the Frog here, wanting to announce that you have been invited to Ayla Dawn Perry's 1st birthday party!!" Cute huh?

The Decor:

Here is the large cake I made for the party. I had to draw him on with a toothpick and then fill him in because I didn't have a large enough freezer to do a transfer. So I free handed him. I think it turn out great.

I also did a small 6" round cake just for Ayla.
I was able to do a transfer on this one. Then I filled him in.

Here is the picture I took for her 1st birthday.
I made the T-shirt and had her pose with Kermit. I had to take 50 pictures to get this cute one!

I put the picture in a frame for decoration with the cakes on the cake table.
We had the party at my church because there was no way I wanted to cram everyone into our small 2 bedroom apartment. I thought the cake table turned out cute.

Here is the gift table.

Kermit is sitting on top of the gift that Kurt and I got her. I have 2 of these Kermits because I love Kermit. I gave one to Ayla though, because she loves him too now. The Kermits were great to have on hand to use for the decorations.

Here is the gift table when it was filled up after everyone had arrived.

I put Ayla's high-chair between the cake table and the gift table. It looked cute. I wish I had a picture of that but I don't.

Here is what all the tables looked like. I had 5 set up with white and green table clothes and white and green balloons as their center pieces.

This was my first party that I had planned all by myself. Speical thanks to al those who helped me set up. I was very proud of how it turned out.

Who was there:

Arron, Melissa, John and Amy - some of my close friends.

My sister-in-law, Carolyn and my brother, Robert.

Notice the hot dog Robert is modeling? We had hot dogs for dinner.

Lane in front, my Mom, my Dad, my great uncle Monty, my great Aunt Zora and my little cousin Jasmine.

Chris holding Baby Kurt, Brooke, Suzanne, my Father-in-law and my Mother-in-law.

I like to refer to them as my other Father and Mother, not just my in-laws.

My uncle Ernie and my good friend Cori.

And of course, the guest of honor, Ayla, with her Daddy and Mommy.

This was the only picture I got of the 3 of us together and the green balloon is in front of my face. Oh, well!

Kurt with Baby Kurt.

Ayla with her Mommy.

Aunt Marion came too.

Her boyfriend, Monty came too but I don't have a picture of him there.

Plus our good friend Jolene came too but was only there for a little bit. So I didn't get a picture of her either.

Here is my niece, Morganne playing with a balloon and in the background is her mother, Krista. This was the only picture I got of Krista.

Well that was everyone.

Now some pictures of the kids having fun!

They played on the stage a lot.

Love this picture of Morganne.

I had to take Ayla's shoes off because she kept tripping on her pants with them. So I rolled up her pants too. She looked so cute in her Kermit shirt.

She loved playing with the balloons

Cute!

Cute again!

And here is Morganne and her playing together.

Totally cute!

Next we let her open presents.

She loved the paper of course.

She had a lot of fun!

She got a lot. Everything was everywhere.

I will show what she got in a different post.

Then we sang "Happy Birthday" to her and let her eat her cake.

She started to dig into her cake when we were still singing. LOL!!

She loved it.

This was when she was nearly done.

Top view.

My dad leaned into her and she actually started to poke his face with her messy fingers. It was so cute.

After cake and after being cleaned up.

Hanging out with her Grandma Perry. She loves her necklace.

We all had a wonderful time and I was pleased at how the party went. It was fun to plan and see it come to life.

Below are two clips from the party.

The first one is Ayla and Morganne playing together with balloons. It is so cute to listen to Ayla trying to talk during the clip.

Wasn't that cute?

The second one is when we were cleaning up after the party and Kurt was dancing with Morganne on the stage. Krista was filming them with her camera. She took a couple of clips of them dancing and made one clip, to music. It turned out so cute.

Wasn't that cute? Kurt always dances with Morganne.

I hope you enjoyed the clips. Thanks Krista, for filming them.

I also hope you enjoyed the post of the party and felt like you were there.

Kurt's Birthday and Beard!

Kurt is in a sign language class and his last assignment was to sign about a life changing experience he had. He didn't want to talk about anything serious in front of his class so he decided he would grow a beard for his first time and sign about that.

Here is a picture after a couple days of not shaving.

And another couple of days later.

Kurt's work's "Kick Off" meeting theme is Access Rocks. So they gave T-shirts to their employees and they were packaged like this.

So here is Kurt rocking the guitar and rocking the beard.

Now for Kurt's birthday and what we did. 

Ayla and I started the day at her one year check up. I found out that I was right about her not growing the past few months and that I should be feeding her more regular food to help her grow. She has been eating baby food. I had given her food in the past but she choked so I was afraid of giving her food because I didn't think she was ready. But then her doctor told me it is okay if she chokes a little because she needs to learn how to eat.

So after her appointment, Ayla and I met Kurt for lunch for his birthday. We went to Cafe Rio because we had a free meal from winning it at our ward Valentine's party, playing the Newly Wed Game. While we were there, Kurt and I started to feed Ayla our food.

After Cafe Rio, we stopped over at Smith's to pick up some real food for Ayla. Then we took Kurt back to work.

Here she is trying Vienna Sausages. 

I have discovered she doesn't like them. What a shame. That is another problem with Ayla and food. She doesn't like many different foods. I guess we will have to keep trying.

And this is what Kurt got to come home to.

Of course I made him a cake and a card. The card said "I didn't have enough time to make you an awesome birthday card." And on the inside it read "But then I thought about it. It wouldn't matter how much time I had. I couldn't make a card awesome enough to match your awesomeness! Happy birthday Kurt!" I know I am cheesy but he is awesome and he did like the card. I also got him the Back to the Future trilogy.

Also, while we were at the Ayla's doctor appointment that day, she told me to introduce dairy back into my diet to see if Ayla still had the milk allergy. You see, I breastfeed and I love milk. I never would have thought that I would stop drinking milk ever in my life but I did for Ayla. The things we will do for our kids. Anyway, I hadn't had any dairy since June of last year and so when she told me to introduce it back into my diet, I was pretty excited.

So I bought my favorite Ice cream and a gallon of milk while we were at Smiths.

I finally was able to have cake and ice cream. It felt like my birthday.

Here I am taking the first bite of ice cream and I loved it.

Here is my first glass of milk.

My first drink. I was in heaven. 

I regret to inform you that I think Ayla still has the allergy, so dairy, once again, is being put on the back burner. This time it won't be as long though. I will be weaning Ayla soon.

Here is Kurt opening his present.

Here is his reaction.

He was pretty stoked.

He had wanted that trilogy for a long time.

And here is Ayla looking at his reaction to his present. She is so cute.

Well, we all had a good time on Kurt's birthday and Kurt finally shaved his beard the next day because he was going crazy with it and he had passed off his assignment on his birthday.

Plus, Kurt's parents took Kurt and I out to Sizzler on Saturday with his whole family.  We had a good time. We got to see his family twice that day because we had Ayla's birthday party later that evening. Which I will post about next.