Birthday extravaganza

As the capstone to a week-long celebration of Elizabeth's first year of life, Grandma and Opa hosted a truly memorable doggy-themed bash, including Elizabeth's favorite foods (ribs, roasted red peppers, bread) presents, balloons, and a personalized birthday banner.


We then followed it up with a puppy-themed cake (Elizabeth enjoyed one of the cupcake paws).


Elizabeth went into a sugar shock, but could thankfully remember some commands.

We had to go for a walk the next day to work off the calories.

Elizabeth's birthday bonanza

As today is Elizabeth's first birthday, we did the traditional thing by allowing an sweet indulgence - banana bread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

At first it was cute.

Then it was endearing.

Then we realized we probably overindulged our doughy munchkin.

Yup, she's gonna be a fatty.

Birthday weekend - the fun begins

Tuesday, Oct. 20, is Elizabeth's first birthday. Really, though, it's like a weeklong celebration. Maybe even longer.

The festivities started this weekend, when we had a few photo shoots with the birthday girl. Here are a few of the best shots.

More pictures, as always, here: elizabethward.shutterfly.com

Umbrelievable Umbria

Just wanted to share a few photos from our recent trip to Umbria (in central Italy), which involved sleeping, eating, napping, eating, driving around a bit to look at some rolling hills and the hill towns that dot the countryside, and watching Elizabeth eat rib bones.

We stayed one night in Pescara (which did, indeed, smell a bit fishy), two nights outside Norcia (home of truffles and smelly hog heads), and two nights outside Deruta (home of famous pottery which, thankfully, we didn't dote over).

Seriously, the rib bones were great. More pictures here: elizabethward.shutterfly.com

Thanks to Jay and Linda for planning a wonderful and memorable adventure. Molto Bene! Grazie Mille! Viva Italia!

Alpenhorns!

Kate is normally not a very demanding person. But a few weeks ago, she was driving me crazy.

"Why aren't there any good places around here to hear some alpenhorn music?" she would ask.

Or, "How come we just can't seem to find any good alpenhorn CDs? It just sounds better in person." On and on it went.

A few days went by when I realized that we were thankfully only a few hours away from

alpenhorn central. So we made plans for a musical weekend in the Swiss Alps where we could hopefully find some melodic mountain dwellers (as well as some cheese and good hiking paths for me).

And boy did we succeed!

Here's our attempt at a family photo on our first hike to get to those heavenly horns. The best part is not the ridiculous looks on all of our faces or the fact that we completed missed getting the mountains in the background. It's that Pecos is being squished and poked ... and yet manages to keep it together for the only nice smile in the bunch.

And here they are!

Not impressed? I guess you had to be there. Or not. They really weren't that impressive.

We also tried to get Elizabeth in front of a background that looked fake...just for her Gigi, who still thinks the photo we took in front of the Picos de Europa was fake. Here's our best shot, on the train up to Kleiner Scheidegg.

Here are some other attempts.

Oh and here's Elizabeth's first taste of sauerkraut.

And finally, here's a family photo outtake.