Busy Ball Popper

Uncle Lorney, Auntie Laurel, and Willy got Azalea a Busy Ball Popper for her birthday. Many of you may have seen these before and yes, they are as fantastic as you imagined they would be. It has taken Zayley a while to figure the whole thing out. She still makes a screeching noise when we turn it on and we can't tell if they are screeches of glee or screeches of anger that the balls are flying all over the place. Observe:


Busy Ball Popper from Miranda Walker on Vimeo.

Meathead

For her birthday I knit Azalea the Meathead Hat out of the book Knitalong. I'm beside myself over how adorable it is.

The yarn is soft, affordable, and the pattern knits up quickly. The directions say to knit the hat flat and then sew up the seam but there's really no reason to. I knit this hat in the round easy-peasy.

Oh yeah, and here's a random picture of Z being silly/adorable because this is my blog.

And Now...It's Time To Party

We decided to have Azalea's birthday party on her actual birthday with a handful of close friends. I had a hard time figuring out what to do for Zayley's first birthday because on one hand, I spend a significant portion of my life reading blogs about parties and parenting (clearly they go hand in hand) and I wanted to throw a fancy-schmancy party. However, on the other hand, I get that she's one, and that she's not going to remember any of it. Personally, I thought it turned out to be a pretty fantastic party...if I do say so myself.

And now, on to picture of the birthday girl. Here she is in her tutu that her lovely Auntie Laurel gave her. Does she love being in her tutu...meh...not so much. But she's dang cute in it. Plus, it's like having a little decoration walking around.



Nate and I got her Duplos after she couldn't get enough of them at the Stamps' house. Currently, she enjoys throwing them in and out of the bucket.



The picture above was stolen off of Brian's flickr page. Now that I've mentioned his name I'm pretty sure I can post it here legitimately without asking for his permissioon...even though he's sitting across the room from me.



Ben and Rachel got Zayely bath toys and she loves them. She also loves that they are magnetic because she carries magnets around the house trying to get them to stick to things other than the fridge. She seems to be pleasently suprised when she's able to successfully stick them to these boats.



And of course, none of Azalea's milestones would be complete without some Skype. We called both sets of grandparents so that they could see Azalea open some presents, look confused while we lit candles, and suck the frosting off the top of a cupcake.


I like to think that Azalea is training for a cupcake eating contest where hands are not allowed. She has a lot of work to do though because it took her FOREVER to eat this thing. Thanks for this picture too Brian!

As I'm posting this, I'm realizing that I just took down the last of the decorations without taking any pictures of them, and I'm pretty ticked off about it. I especially wanted to post a picture of the birthday banner but you're going to have to trust me when I tell you it was awesome. At least we got a picture of the cupcake presentation.

The Winner!

Remeber this post when I told all of you to go vote for Azalea at Happy Cakes? Well, SHE WON! We want to thank all of our wonderful friends who voted for Azalea and we hope you enjoyed the prize cupcakes as much as we did. (If, for some terrible reason, you voted but didn't get a cupcake...we're sorry...but they're all gone now.) Keep on going to Happy Cakes everybody! I hear $2.00 Tuesdays are back!

Free Advertising

The morning of Azalea's birthday we needed to go to the grocery store to pick up a few extra supplies. The woman in the flower department thought Azalea was so cute that she gave her a balloon to play with. Now, not to sound snotty here, but I didn't see any OTHER kids at the grocery store with balloons so I can only assume that Azalea was the cutest baby the lady had ever seen. We didn't even mention to her that it was her birthday! I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, I don't know why I didn't anticipate the fact that Azalea would have the time of her life with this balloon. I'm considering buying her a balloon every time we go to the grocery store from now on. Apparently the urge to hold the balloon by the string and bounce it off of yourself and off of things around you like a maniac is instinctual.

I'm posting these pictures as a bit of free advertising for King Soopers. I'm sure they'll be contacting me soon because they'll want Azalea to be the new face of King Soopers. Let me know if you know of any good agents.

Sorry About That

Wow, look at that. Our last post was on January 31st. That's cool.

Since then, Azalea turned one and we took a vacation to Seattle. I will now commence with the picture posting. Here we go.