our sweet phoebe has been with us for a full year, and to celebrate that milestone, molly made a cooler full of cupcakes and plenty of homemade icing, and we headed up to pennsylvania. all of her fellin-side cousins, aunts, uncles, and nana and pop pop, came to eagle rock for a cookout, swimming, and eating, of course! what a beautiful day – the weather was perfect, the food was yummy, and the company was awesome. phoebe had such a good time, especially once she finally got her hands on her special strawberry “smash cake” with strawberry icing!

we had two kinds of yummy martha stewart cupcakes — devil’s food (chocolate) and strawberry. some included plain white buttercream icing and others were topped with a strawberry buttercream, created with strawberry preserves from jill’s freezer! awesome.

but phoebe wasn’t the only one we celebrated that day. her godfather, colin, turned 16 on aug. 2, and so we all got to tease our favorite teenager by singing the happy birthday song to him, too! (how about those awesome cupcake toppers? another super-fun etsy find!)

in case you couldn’t tell, the “theme” for the party was ice cream! the kids’ favors were ice cream bowls, phoebe’s headband had a cone on it, and we all enjoyed some awesome homemade ice cream that jill brought along. afterward, phoebe tried out her pink howdy cow, which we found at our favorite toy shop, dancing bear in downtown frederick.

our little princess enjoyed all the attention!

big brother jackson couldn’t wait to show phoebe the present he had picked out for her. his love for his little sister just keeps growing, and it’s a joy to watch.

thanks to everyone who made phoebe’s 1st birthday so special. here’s to many, many more lovely birthday celebrations for her!

at the end of february, we all took a wonderfully relaxing trip to florida to visit dave’s parents. we spent about a week in stuart, in mostly sunshine-filled weather. it wasn’t warm by florida standards, but it was warm enough for us, after surviving the blizzard(s) of 2010!

we had a great trip full of experiences! phoebe took her first airplane ride. jackson, dave, and kurt enjoyed circus sarasota. we visited the palm beach zoo and reconnected there with the limberts (who used to live in frederick). jackson got in a lot of swim practice. marcia helped molly begin to learn to sew. we visited jensen beach, the children’s museum of the treasure coast, and checked out rescued sea turtles at the loggerhead marinelife center of juno beach.

we had such a wonderful time, in fact, that it’s taken us almost a full month to go through all the photos and choose our favorites! so, our apologies for not updating this blog sooner. but we think these photos were worth the wait!