so this year we had christmas, started getting ready for hayden's party and then headed off to grand rapids for the day on saturday, december 29th for rainah's first birthday party. the theme was "winter ONEderland" and it was so cute. jenn had a snowman cake on top of cupcakes and little snowflake cakes (one of which rainah ate almost the entire thing herself!). she also had a huge hot chocolate bar that had all sorts of fixin's and she made chocolate dipped pretzels that looked like snowmen.
besides us, mom, dad and jessica drove out and don's sister lynn had flown in for the event. jen, joel, anna and simon zwart were all there too and it was great to see them. hayden had a friend to play with in anna which was wonderful. they were playing quietly in the basement riding on rainah's little roller coaster until hayden came up and when asked where anna was he stated "he's dead" (everyone is a he). we went downstairs to find anna laying on the ground crying because hayden wasn't playing with her anymore. i feel bad about that, but i feel more relieved that that was the reason she was crying and not that he had punched her or something. anyway. hayden got bored upstairs and started playing with her again and all was well.
rainah really didn't care too much about opening presents but she loved looking at all of her books and pressing her talking farm animal magnets that drove jenn insane. and that made me laugh. jenn somehow hasn't been able to tune out all of the loud obnoxious children's toys. i, on the other hand will sometimes not even notice when 5 toys are all going at the same time.
unfortunately, rainah didn't take her morning nap and was exhausted by cake time. she had no problem eating but then slowly started fading away. she went upstairs and took a great nap before coming back down to play with all of her new toys again.
dave slept the majority of the afternoon as he started feeling like he was getting sick. fortunately, he woke up the next morning and felt fine so hayden's party could continue as planned.
the party was great but we had to get back home so the boys could get to bed and rest up for another busy day on sunday (see hayden's page for his birthday post). hayden played his video game in the car most of the way until he started complaining that if he had to sit in the car any longer he was going to die. (if you can't tell, that's his new thing even though he really doesn't even know what the word means...the other nite he was afraid of the dark because he would die.) but he eventually fell asleep shortly before arriving back in beautiful redford.
thanks for all the cake and pretzels and hot chocolate. and happy first birthday, rainah! we love you!
thanks for the toy, but i'd rather just look at the instructions:
jenn helping rainah out:
"sooo big":
rainah driving jenn crazy by constantly pushing the magnetic cow:
she loved her stuffed rocking dog:
the spread (thanks for the photo, dad):
the cake eating begins:
the zwart clan. anna, simon, jen and joel:
talan was there too:
this is what dave did:
the cake is almost gone and so is she:
this was all hayden's idea, obviously:
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