Violet had her first birthday party this weekend, even though she's not officially one year old until Tuesday (the day after St Patrick's Day - always easy to remember).
Melissa and Jamie went all out on the party theme - decorations, barbecue buffet, cupcakes, and even little hostess gifts to take home. They won the barbecue buffet at one of those half-time contests at the hockey game.
I think they originally hoped to have the party in their new house, but since it's not much more than a concrete hole in the ground, they had it at their new club house instead.
Violet made quite a haul in presents...
but I'm not sure if she or Melissa was more excited about opening them up. But once she started tearing the wrapping off the presents, it was like the Pied Piper tooting his horn. All the little kids started running up to the front to "help" unwrap presents. It was the funniest thing I ever saw.
Some were taking presents off the table, some were taking the presents that were just unwrapped, and others were just playing with the wrapping paper. Mom's were trying to pull their kids away and re-wrap the presents.
My sister, Janet, was frantically trying to write down the names of the gift givers so Melissa could send out thank you notes later, but she might have missed a few names in all the chaos. Good thing they had those hostess gift bags of bubbles to give out to the kids on the way home. That was a good trade to get back all Violet's gifts.
