Baby Shower and Birthday Party

It was a busy week around here.  On Sunday, March 6th, my friends from work had a shower for me.  It was a great time with cute decorations, great food, lots of laughs, and adorable gifts.  Ariana received some fabulous new toys and books and is going to be quite the fashionista.  I would squeeze myself into some of the cute outfits if I could.

Thank you so much to Kristin(left) for hosting. Everything was just perfect.  This is her cute place and she made the ducky and fortune cookie cupcakes.  The theme was Chinese with touches of purple and green like Ariana's room.

I will need to do a separate post sometime with all the gifts. Everyone was much too generous.

On Wednesday, March 9th, we celebrated Ariana's first birthday.  I was a little sad knowing we couldn't be together, but we'll celebrate again when she gets home.  One of my students pointed out last week that her birthday was coming so I told them I would bring cake.  On Tuesday they started conspiring and making decorations to surprise me with.  They weren't exactly discrete so I knew what was up but pretended not to. Some of the girls spent two hours decorating the room after school on Tuesday and everyone hid in the room Wednesday morning.  There was ribbon, handmade cards and decorations, music, and lots of glitter.  They were so proud of themselves and so sweet. I brought a cake and ice cream and we had a nice little celebration.  The cake was really pretty but didn't photograph well.

Steve and I had Chinese take out for dinner that night.  We wanted to start practicing with chopsticks again. There will most likely be forks at our motels, but we read that it's a sign of respect to use the chopsticks so we wanted to make an effort. I was pretty good 5 years ago but seem to have lost my touch!