An A-DORA-BLE Birthday!

Our baby girl is officially a year old today!! I can't believe it! Where has this past year gone? It has flown by so quickly!! We decided to have a Dora party for her this past Saturday with some close friends and our parents. Here is the birthday girl! I ordered this cute Dora transfer from Ebay and ironed it on to this little white shirt, I was really happy with how it came out!

Here is her yummy Dora cake!

Thank you to my mother-in-law Victoria for making the terrific beans, rice and homemade tortillas!!

and to Robert for making some delicious fajitas!!

I found this great Dora pinata that has pull strings so that little kids can pull them instead of hitting it to make the candy and treats come out! It was perfect!!

Filling up the pinata!

Check out these cute labels that I found for the mini candy bars!

It was really hard to get the kiddos to pull on the strings!

Robert and I had to finish pulling the string to make all the goodies fall out - then the kids were in heaven!

Time to open presents!

How cute is this picture? These are Elena's two friends Skylyn and Drake sitting in her Dora sofa that we got for her! So cute!!

She got some great gifts!! Check out all her Dora presents!

Then it was time for the cake! I was very interested to see what Elena would do with it!

She started off just licking the icing at first but then she really started to dig in!

The aftermath~

Since today was her actual birthday, our parents, Robert and I threw a mini-party for her.

Of course there were more presents to open!! :)

Elena is helping mommy put together her new shopping cart!

It even has a place for a doll or stuffed animal to ride in the front - too cute!

One more cake! This time I made it so it wasn't near as cute as her Dora one, but it was definitely very tasty!!

Happy Birthday Miss Elena!

Flashback Friday - Elena Rae.

Ok -- so it is Monday, not Friday but this weekend was super busy so you are getting a delayed flashback. Usually I would just skip it but I already have one planned for this Friday so I can't just waste one! :) Especially when it concerns my beautiful baby girl! Almost exactly a year ago our little sweetie made her way into the world. What an amazing and life changing experience it was! Here are some pictures from that day:

This last picture really shows how alert she was - this is only about 20 minutes after she was born and she is wide awake and ready to go!! That is definitely still how she is -- go-go-go, she hardly every slows down! It is so crazy to look at these pictures - it just does not seem like a year has passed since they were taken!!

Vegas.

Lindsay, Kylie and I took a trip to Vegas to celebrate old friendships, birthdays and also to just get away from Wichita for a little bit. I am going to give you a taste of some of my favorite pictures and moments from the trip. If you would like to see what Lindsay and Kylie thought you should keep checking out their blogs to see what they had to say about this awesome trip! We were very excited once we got on the plane. I think it finally set in that we were really going to Vegas!! :)

We stayed at Caesar's Palace which was gorgeous! It was also where the Hangover was filmed so there were many references to that the entire trip! (It is hilarious if you haven't seen it!)

Since Linds had never been to Vegas we had to have her give the slots a try for the first time! Too bad there was no beginner's luck here! :(

Next door to our hotel was the Bellagio and they have a beautiful Fountain show that I missed on my last trip here. I was so glad I got to see it this time. They change the music every show and we caught the one that was set to Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American" -- pretty amazing!

Across the street was the Paris Hotel. It is gorgeous inside and out!

While we were walking down the French "street" from the picture above we came across a dueling piano bar. So of course we had to go in, it was so much fun!! The musicians were amazing and we loved the variety of songs they played! When definitely didn't leave until the music stopped!!

The pool at our hotel was huge and beautiful! We enjoyed laying by it for several hours!

There just happened to be a swim up blackjack table so I just had to give it a try. I was so focused on my hand I didn't even hear Kylie yell my name to try to get a picture of me looking at the camera! Too bad that even with all of my focus there was no luck here either!

The Wynn hotel was being built the last time I was in Vegas, so I wanted to take a look at the inside since the outside is pretty awesome.

It looked pretty much like all the other nice casinos inside but there were these little garden areas covered in lights that I thought were absolutely gorgeous!!

Getting ready in the same room together totally reminded me of my college days! :)

We even mixed up a couple drinks, which we decided to drop a couple of Skittles into so that we could tell them apart. Does that remind anyone else of Zima?!

Diablos Cantina was also a favorite for me. I love to dance and this restaurant/cantina was great!! The DJ only played about 1/2 of each song before he mixed into the next one which was perfect for me because I totally have A.D.D. when I listen to music! I seriously can never listen to a whole song ever, so I loved this!!

Lindsay caught me doing some sort of cowboy dance move here apparently. I thought it was pretty funny so I might as well share it with you!

We ate at Margaritaville which had pretty good food, a cool atmosphere and a pretty tasty "Pink Cadillac" margarita...

But the reason I chose this for you to see this place is because they have this little hook and ring game that you can play while you are waiting. The ring is hanging on fishing wire and you have to swing it towards the hook and try to get it to stay. After trying this for several minutes I had decided to give up. Then an old man came up and hooked it on the 2nd try!! Hmmm I thought...maybe I should give it another go? I opted not to try again, but then another person came up and hooked it on their 1st try!!! Now I was not very happy that I hadn't been able to hook it, so I started trying again. Shortly after this finally happened!

Woo hoo!! No-I am not competitive AT ALL! ;)

My job this weekend was fixing Lindsay's ponytail when she wanted one. I apparently am the ponytail queen! This will be good for Elena, when she has enough hair for that someday! I opted for a high pony this night and Kylie got a pic of us in action.

This is in the hotel lobby (notice the perfection of Lindsay's ponytail!).

Cirque Du Soliel's "Love" show was our big event that we did on Sunday. It was so awesome that I am sure you will hear about it from Kylie and Lindsay too, but when something is that good it deserves more than one blog post I guess! The show is choreographed to all Beatles music and we got passes to check out the Revolution lounge before the show. Pretty sweet entrance - you can also walk through the letters to get in and out!

This lounge was very hip and we definitely felt like V.I.P.'s!

Check out our table - very trippy!

The show was absolutely amazing!! It is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life!!!! If you ever have a chance I would recommend that you go see it - it is so worth it! I'm afraid that you aren't allowed to take pictures inside so I don't have any to show you just how awesome it was. This is after the show with all the other people coming out of the theatre!

These are some of my favorite 'solo' photos of us from the trip! Lindsay is reading "the book" to help us decide what we needed to check out while we were there. If you have no idea what I am talking about she has the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, and there were plenty of options about what to do in Vegas!!

I definitely put away my fair share of drinks this weekend - this pic pretty much sums that up!

And this just cracks me up!! Who really buys beads that are this big? Really!?

Well, every good thing has to come to an end so here we are in the Vegas airport ready to head back home.

On the plane there was a lot of this going on!

There were many other great memories too but you know the saying! (I have to leave some things there!!) What a great trip with two great friends! This is a trip that will be remembered forever!! :) Thanks for a wonderful time girls!!