Gemma's First Birthday

This past Saturday, my sweet baby girl turned 1 year old.  It is incredibly hard to believe that it has been an entire year - I can't even really remember what life was like without Gemma.  But I'm not the type to get all weepy and nostalgic and sentimental (not that there's anything wrong with that), so I'm just going to move on and describe the big party.

We had been so excited about this little girl's birthday for such a long time that we had ordered decorations well in advance.  We had a hard time choosing from all the cute themes available (except the pink John Deere stuff; that was easy enough to rule out) but eventually decided to go with the "lil cupcake" theme:

We even found an "I'm the Birthday Girl" shirt with a cupcake on it for Gemma to wear:

We decided to keep the party small with just close family, so we invited Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt Rachel, Nana and Pops, Uncle Wes and Aunt Kelly, and Noah and Liam.  Everyone (okay, almost everyone) was a good sport and wore the super cool party hats.  Gemma and Liam totally looked like little garden gnomes in their hats:

We ate pizza and then, since it was a cupcake themed party, we of course had dessert from Cupcake.  Except Gemma, who had a special milk and egg free cupcake that I made her because of her food allergies.  She was pretty indifferent towards the cupcake:

After cupcakes, we opened presents.  Gemma pretty much crawled around and ignored this part of the party.  She was more concerned with keeping an eye on Liam.

But everyone was extremely generous and Gemma got tons of very nice gifts, including this Disney Princess ride-on toy which both Gemma and Liam absolutely adored:

We are so thankful for our precious little girl and it is such a blessing to watch her grow.  She has such a sweet little personality and is a little bit too smart sometimes.  She enjoyed her special day very much, and we were so glad to be able to share her special day with family.