wordless | Loretta's 1st birthday morning to night

a birthday cake picnic

Loretta's birthday yesterday was a day of many sweet firsts. First birthday. First unassisted steps (yes, really!). First taste of cake. My mom flew from Arizona to be here for the weekend (thank you, Nana Lee) and we kept the day sweet and simple. A quiet present opening in the morning. A trip to Target and then to a local dessert bakery to find just the right cake (confetti semi-sweet cream with real strawberry mousse filling - so pretty and honestly my favorite cake I have ever, ever tasted). Naps all around! A picnic in the yard with lots of chalk drawing and walking up and down the sidewalk with a new walky toy (she ruined her socks, it was the sweetest). Soup and toast dinner for the kids and then Rob and I took a mini date out for a beer while Ot and his Nana watched Curious George and snuck potato chips. A lovely end to Loretta's first amazing year and a sweet way to Spring forward into the next with our little one year old ♥

currently link up | we only talk about colds, ever

If you have been reading this blog lately and you are back then I need to call you out for having a weird "reading about boring people with colds" fetish. You are odd! And in luck! Because the saga continues. This week: healthy again, but for how long??? Dun, dun, dunnnnnn...

Currently is a weekly link-up hosted by the amazing, adorable, and crafty! super mom ♥ Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am super happy to be co-hosting the series with her. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. This week, around these parts, we have been...

Eating mashed potatoes. We have a ridiculous box of mashed potato flake packages from CostCo and with a house full of "off" stomachs it's one food that we all seem a-ok with. Bread and potatoes and apples and pears, I feel like I should write a diet book because somehow even though we're all carbing out we (at least Rob and I) are both about 4 pounds lighter than we were last week. Getting stomach bugs pretty much equals the Hollywood Diet. Cool? Nope.

Drinking fountain soda! I don't give an eff if it's just a mix of delicious carcinogen chemicals and fizzy water it's the only thing I wants when I'm not feeling good. I love that shit.

Listening to the slowwww jammmm station again this week (Sade, Al Green, Whitney, Lionel, oh yeahhhh). It's Loretta's favorite and she loves to cuddle and dance together, especially when she's feeling edgy like she was on Tuesday. That's OK because smooth grooves are pretty alright sometimes and cuddle-dancing with that girl is one of my favorite things.

Reading about super heroes and also making up our own stories with Otto. At bedtime lately he's been wanting to make up our stories about the Ninja Turtles...

Sooooo... Otto just came out of his room and threw up on me :( so here we go again. Can't make this stuff up. 

Update: Otto is fine. He seems to have gotten this flu-like super vom headache party 24 hour thing that Rob had, then I had, then Et had... so he's staying home with Rob today. And then hopefully we're all done with "catching things!" this year because oh emmm geeeee.

That was this week. Here are next week's themes:

watching, craving, looking, loving, planning

we're not dead yet

But this flu and cold season is trying really hard to do us all in. Just when we thought we were over the hump... our stomachs turned. We thought Rob had food poisoning last week and that I had overdone candy over the weekend (yup, since I don't have a gallbladder that can make me really sick if I overdo it, so lame getting old eh?) until last night when poor Loretta lost her lunch. So now we are thinking this must be a thing that is working its way through our poor family. I cannot remember a time before one of us had a cold or other condition. I'm ready for general health again. Do you hear me, Health, you SOB!?!? I'm ready for you to come knocking! Knock already. Ugh.

She was feeling pretty great as my shopping date last week. Can you believe this little sprite will be 1 year old on Saturday? Because I cannot believe it.