Weekend Festivities...

BEWARE, this is a long post!

Wow what a long and exhausting weekend! It was wonderful to spend so much time with our families this weekend but we definitely had our ups and downs.

Wednesday, Gracyn and I had a special lunch with Aunt Kate at the Rainforest Cafe. We spent almost 2 hours there and by the time the food arrived Gracyn passed out. It was amazing she could sleep through all the noise there!

Thursday started off great, we had a lazy morning then got dressed to head over to Greg's parents house. We had a delicious meal with all the family there, including both Great Grandma's which was a special treat since they have both been ill. I love that Gracyn gets to know and spend time with them! Gracyn refused to eat and throughout the meal got more and more fussy. By the end of the meal she was starting to feel warm. When we got her home, her temperature was 104.3! We gave her some tylenol and fluids and put her to bed. My family arrived a few hours later to stay with us for the weekend and celebrate Gracyn's birthday with us. That night Greg and I made Gracyn's favors for her party. We made chocolate covered oreos and pretzels with chocolate molded in rows of flowers. It was a fun and easy project for us to do together for our little girl's big day.

Friday, Greg and I went grocery shopping while Gracyn spent the day with Grandma and Grandpa. Her fever was down by the morning and kinda fluctuated most of the day from 101-102ish. By the evening she developed a rash over her back and stomach and was still refusing to eat most foods, but would still drink and eat cold things. Friday night we got everything ready for the party, I made a lot of food and Greg made Gracyn the cutest strawberry cupcakes.

Saturday came and Gracyn woke up with 102.3 fever and a rash over her whole body. So now I was really worried about needing to cancel the party. I got her in to see the pediatrician, hoping all of this was just a reaction to her one year shots she got the week before. He took one look at her and said it was a typical viral rash and that she had some patches on her throat which explained the not wanting to eat. He said she was probably still contagious, so we had to call all our friends that were coming with kids and tell them not to come. I was so disappointed to not have any of Gracyn's little friends at the party! We still had a good time celebrating with our family and a few of our friends that could still come. Gracyn was really clingy and wouldn't let me put her down most of the party, but she warmed up when it was time to open presents and she saw all her new toys! We really are blessed to have so many wonderful family and friends to love her and spoil her!

Here are a few pictures that I have loaded so far... I'll probably put her birthday ones in a post on their own since this one is so long! Thanks for reading all of it if you did!

Some of these are poor snapshots, we need a new small point and shoot camera (hint hint Greg)

all dressed up and ready to go!




a rare photo of the 3 of us...


grandma sanders and her 2 crazy brothers...


gracyn's great-grandmas


eyes are starting to look sick here...


lazy mornings...