ONE Big Birthday Bash!

Every good party starts with one killer-diller outfit...and one cutey to wear it!

And here are a few of the decorations displayed at Elli's shoe-themed fiesta...

Before Elliot got to attempt to blow out her candle Melissa had to photograph the cake she made...

...the box is just cake with fondant and the shoes are twinkies covered in fondant. Melissa was just slightly ecstatic about how this dessert turned out...she had never made fondant or decorated with it before. Thank goodness for unfailing plans!

And here Elliot got to see her cake lit, at last!

Not so into the cake, we tried a cupcake for Elli, but she seemed pretty skeptical of that as well.

Never minding Elliot's sweets-aversions, we carried on with presents and a shoe contest. The categories were the most, "fun, fierce, flashy and fashionable." (It was an alliteration. So clever!) All of the winners were more than deserving!

For the next day and a half we had Melissa's cousin, Heather, her husband, Phil, and their two little cuties, Cozette and Lillian with us. Look at those sweet, smiling faces!

While at the park with our cousin-friends we learned that Elliot will crawl in a very strange fashion, (well...only slightly more strange then her eerily speedy army crawl), in order to not touch her hands to grass.

And apparently our daughter is more daring with her standing abilities these days, (she even got down from that chain link by herself!) We suspect that Lillian's unstable, yet effective walking inspired Elli to try harder!