The Polley Holiday

This past week we had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate both Tom's and my 3rd wedding anniversary, and Ann's first birthday - on the same day.  My mom joked that we should just call the day the "Polley Holiday" (hence the blog post title).  It was a great day, and it was fun getting to celebrate two occasions at once.

We started the day by getting up and ready to head up to the St. Paul, Minnesota LDS Temple.  Tom's mom was in town for the week and so we took advantage of having a very available and willing babysitter.  It was absolutely wonderful getting to be inside the temple and remembering being sealed for all of time and eternity in the Las Vegas temple three years earlier.  We took some pictures in front of the temple after we finished.  It was a beautiful day!

(Warning, there are a ton of pictures :)

Our family of 3! 

We love this little girl so much!

We really enjoyed having Grandma Polley come to visit!

Tom's mom was trying to get a picture of Ann standing in front of the flowers, but all Ann wanted to do was walk towards her!

Ann's favorite thing to do is walk :)

After leaving the temple, we drove to a Korean restaurant that Tom and I had been to before with my parents.  We really liked it so we wanted to go back.  The food was delicious, and Ann happily played with the menu that the server let her hold on to the whole time we were there (she did play with some other things as well).

We drove back to Rochester and soon my parents came over for Ann's little birthday party.  We opened presents and then let Ann eat some cake.  The adults ate some pie that Tom and I bought from Baker's Square (Tom much prefers pie over cake, and I was totally okay with the idea of having some).

Practicing standing up on her own as she pulled out the tissue paper

Caring more about the wrapping paper than the actual present :)

Looking at a new book with Grandma Polley

Looking at another new book (while holding onto that wrapping paper!)

Oooo, pretty bow :)

Her present from Grandma and Grandpa Barrett

Here's the cake I decorated for Ann.  She has definitely shown a preference for the color yellow, hence the yellow decorations on the cake

Another angle of the cake with the candle on it

She wasn't so sure about this whole cake thing

It is a Barrett family tradition to smash the child's face into his/her cake on the child's first birthday.  I've seen video of this happening to my dad when he turned 1.  My parents did a nicer version of this to me and my siblings by just sticking our noses into the frosting.  We tried to do that to Ann, but she wouldn't let Tom get her face close enough to the cake!  Oh well :)

She picked off some of the frosting and immediately decided it was too sugary for her liking.

Since her cake was a small one (made of two 6" rounds), there was a little batter left over, so I made a dozen mini cupcakes.  So we gave two of those to Ann to eat instead of a piece of her actual cake.

She decided that maybe this cake thing is okay after all

Yum :)

All in all, it was a wonderful day and I don't think I would have wanted it to happen any other way.  Things just fell into place and went smoothly.

I love Tom and Ann so much.  I feel so blessed to have both of them in my life.  Tom is the best husband I could ever have.  He is perfect for me in every way.  

I commented to Tom about how I'd started to focus more on the 9th being Ann's birthday instead of our anniversary, but I felt okay celebrating our anniversary on another day.  He said that celebrating Ann's birthday is, in a way, celebrating our anniversary as well.  If it weren't for us getting married, we wouldn't have this precious little girl.  She brings so much joy and happiness into our home.

Alright, I've stayed up way too late getting this post done...time to get to bed!!