Happy Birthday to Ellie!

Nauvoo Reunion, Day 1

First of all, can I just say that I absolutely just set myself up for unrealistic expectations? You know how a lot of people have videos of their child's first birthday? You know, the party hats, blowing out the candles, and the cutest pictures of having your baby-turning-toddler faceplant into chocolate frosting? Well I've been waiting for that day to come for a while.

We get to Nauvoo in the afternoon and we're staying at 'Grandma's House', which is an old home that's been converted into a reunion/gathering place you can rent. I think we had about 60 people there (all of the original Briscoes, I was the oldest of the "cousins" there). Anyway so the first day we're all giving hugs and getting reacquainted and we have dinner and I decide to gather everyone up for birthday cake time.

I made Ellie's cake into a basketball, which is awesome -- but cakes don't travel well, so it looks kinda ghetto but who cares, really?

So then they sing happy birthday and I go to blow out the candle for her and it looks like she's reaching out for a handful of yummy sugar when . . . . yikes!!!! She just touched the candle I had just blown out and it was still hot!! So now she's crying!! (of course Nana is capturing every moment of this chaos on her video camera). In front of all the numberless concourses of cousins and relatives . . . Everyone gathers around to partake of birthday cake and ice cream as it takes me about, oh, 30 minutes to calm ellie down enough to come back and try the cake. She put in her thumB a few times and licked it. It was like she was trying to be so clean and so petite about it. But I think she just quickly lost interest. Over the next several days Darik and I many times tried to shove the cake in front of her, oh so non-chalantly position our cameras, and catch our 'Kodak moment' we were so desperately hoping for . . . . but ya know, that's just not the way the ball bounces . . .






Serves me right -- just be happy with what I get and quit thinking it's going to be some great fabulous, publish-able moment. Yes, quite the reality check; and yes, still quite memorable!