Is 3 posts for 1 birthday to many?

NOT WHEN THE BIRTHDAY GIRL IS THIS CUTE!!!!
( I made that hat, by the way)

After seeing how cute Claire was as a bumble bee on halloween I decided to go with a black and yellow bumble bee theme for her paty.  It was a lot of fun, Billy and I stayed up way to late the night before decorating cakes and making the bumble bee cake pops (that I loved by the way) I made them lemon flavored just for a change, yummy!! 

I wishI was a better rememberer, thats a word right?  I wish I had thought to get pictures of everyone who came but I didn't so here are the ones I did get. 

It is impossible to get a good picture of Claire now that she is mobile.  She does not sit still for a second so everything is always blurry. I tried.

The pinata.  I bought it and recovered it to match the theme. I just counted 16 pictures but I am pretty sure that one of the twins missed out on a picture somehow (Sophie, however, was pictured 3 times while hitting the pinata, I wonder who had the camera???) so there were 17 kids hitting that thing!  We started with Claire and went through all the kids there then finally let Jason hit it open!

The presents!  We got Claie that cute little chair she is sitting in an she was so cute in it!  She sat there and opened every present and really looked so interested in everything she got. She got way to much stuff but she really ddn't have any age appropriate toys so she is loving life now!

Ok, this was the hardest part.  I really have about 75 pictures (thanks again Joni) of Claire eating her cake and they are ALL cute so it was tough to chose.  If anyone feels like they missed out just let me know and I will post the rest.  Here are some cute ones...

She was dainty about it at first but she wasted no time.  Dove right in.

A little messiness did not bother her at all.

She was noticing the big crowd watching

She got a little more serious as time went on

see.

told you

I love this shot because it shows her frosting mascara :)

She finally picked it up

Yes, that is like half the cake stuck to her face. She totally did not even care.

I have really never seen a baby go at a cake like this girl did.  It just got more and more funny the more she ate.  I had to keep stopping her to clear a little airway for her to breathe, her nostrils were plugged up with cake.

We finally ended it and rinsed her in the sink before taking a full on bath.  Even while we were rinsing her she was rying to lick cake off her hands.  Cutest thing ever.  We all stood around laughing at her and she didn't even care, as long as the cake didn't go away.

The after party. 

Claire's B-day celebration (not party, that comes later)

This will be a mostly pictures post.  It's pretty self explanitory.  We met up with some family at 25 main to have cupcakes for Claires birfday.  It was good times and Claire did an awesome job with her cupcake.  I fed her at first then I handed it to her and she stayed surprisingly clean.  Turns out she loves cake and frosting and didn't want to waste any of it!

Sophie came in wearing her birthday girlshirt which I thought was a little strange at first but upon further inspection...

I realized that it had been altered to say "Im with birthday girl"  It was pretty funny.  Only Joni can figure out a way to reuse a birthday shirt!

I LOVE MY BIG ONE YEAR OLD!!!!!!!
(actually she's my little one year old.  She went to the Dr today and we found out she is in the 5th percentile for weight!!)

Day 2 in THE BIG APPLE!!!!!!!

I am a little less confident as I write this post, I have a horrible memory and I am just not certain what things happened on what days anymore.  I have a basic idea but theres a good chance I will get something wrong!  That being said,I'm pretty sure this was our first ride on the subway! We were super excited to ride the subway and might have made fools of ourselves trying to figure it out.  We were headed to battery park to catch the staten island ferry and we survived! 

Proof that we survived!  Well I guess I am here typing too so thats pretty good proof. This is the ferry station,I made that up, I don't know if it has a real name.  The date was 11-11-11 and our boat left at 11am and someone (not Karen) was freaking out about our safety.

See how scared we were.

Its really hard to get everyone in the picture, next time we should hire a professional photographer.
Fair warning:  There are some not so pretty pictures of me coming up but Im a trooper and I'll post them for the enjoyment of others.

We ventured outside on the ferry for a very short time because as you can see it was seriously windy.  Like it made me think of home kind of windy.  Everyone else had a hood to wear but I only had a scarf so Joni fashioned me an awesome hood out of my scarf!  Thank you Joni!

Joni didn't bring her camera she brought a video instead, so now we have this awesome video of everything we did!  It was so fun to watch it with the girls after we got home.  It's only an hour long if anyones interested I will totally have a viewing party, with cheesecake.

Lady Liberty.  It was really awesome to see the real deal but I do wish we could have climed up in there.  It was closed for rennovation when we were there.

Here I am in all my glory!  After Joni so kindly took this picture of me she started laughing uncontrollably.  Then she told me I kind of looked like one of the original immigrants! Hahahaha.  We got a kick out of that one for quite sometime!

The plan was to walk across the brooklyn bridge after we rode the ferry but instead of doing that I had to go back to the hotel and take a test.  It was the best part of the trip.  I did get an A  but still it was pretty lame.

Awesome little Bryant Park.  We got a recommendation from a close family friend, Kelly Rippa, to go check out Bryant park so we did!  It was very cute and fun.  Little shops set up and the skating rink in the middle. We didn't get to stay to long because we had things to do!! 

This picture is one of my favs.  Not only because I am not in it but because right before we took it we were talking about the strange urine oder we could smell then right after we took it we realized there was a homeless guy right behind us and could have very easily been standing in his bathroom.

Or sitting in it.

Remember the "other things" I talked about??  THis is it, WICKED!!!!!  THE MOST AWESOME BROADWAY PLAY THERE IS.  Well it is the only one I have seen but I still think I am right about that.

Cute tree lined streets.  I have to write about our horrible ride to the theatre. I couldn't find any pictures of it because I think we were all to scared for our lives to get a camera out.  We hadn't yet rode in a cab and we had no way of knowing how much it wouold have cost us to get there in a cab. (but now I know it probably would have been 8-10 dollars split four ways)  This "driver/thief"  pulls up and tells us we will never get a cab and he will take us for 40 bucks.  Holy Moly, I guess you have to get ripped off at least once in NYC.  Believe it or not, that was not even the worst part, this guys driving was HORRIBLE.  Scary and sicky.  I was on the verge of barfing the entire way there.  Then to end it on a high note this guy drops us off like 4 blocks from the theatre.  SO after that experience we stuck with yellow cabs the rest of the trip!  

waiting for the show!

Here's the guy who ripped us off, I mean sold us our souveniers.  It took us about an hour to decide and he was very tolerant of our horrible decision making skills.

Im going to try and see how many pictures I can post of Joni eating.  We went to roxys or roxies after wicked for a late dinner and CHEESCAKE!  The food was so so and the cheesecake was cheesecake but we sensed that there was something more out there so we continued to look..  We walked back to the hotel and were amazed at all the stores that were open until 2-3 am.  It was so awesome, I wish St. George was more like that!  Oh well, at least we have walmart.  I remember looking for a head wrap/ scarf or anything  to keep my ears warm pretty much everyday but never actually buying one.   Stay tuned for more, I will try to make it in less than 2 months this time :)