Aria's Blessing Day

We had a lot of family come to visit to share the experience of this special day (Sunday the 24th).

Aria looked so cute in her blessing dress. My aunt made it out of my wedding dress. Melodie wore it as well. It was so big on Aria that it needed to have a few inches taken in. Huge thank you to Eva!

Unusual Baby Shower Theme

Generally I'm not a fan of baby showers for babies after the first one. After all, you probably have most stuff left over from the first. I don't think each baby needs their own new things. I love hand me downs! There are exceptions to my feeling on this like having a different gender or multiples perhaps. Turns out having your second one 6 years after the first is an exception too. I didn't think so, but turns out a lot of stuff just didn't make it through 6 years of storage. It took a little convincing, but I warmed up to the idea of a shower.

And my new thought is that it is just fun to celebrate a new baby.

I'm blessed to have fun friends in my life who threw a shower with a GREAT theme. Cars! Unique to little Aria who arrived in our vehicle.

The cake was my favorite:

Behind the van it says "Welcome Baby Aria". So clever! (And it tasted soooo good.)

The tables were fun too:

The tablecloths looked like streets! Fabulous idea from pinterest.

I was touched by the generosity of everyone.

The happy big sister

The honoree slept through most of the shower

St. Patrick's Day

 Because St. Patrick's Day was on a Sunday this year, Melodie wore her green clothes and shamrock hair to school on Friday. She looked adorable and the hair turned out great! I learned how to do this hairstyle here.

 

On St. Patrick's Day, we dressed in our green and went to church.

For dinner we had corned beef, colcannon, Irish soda bread and pistachio cake. These are all recipes I got from Sherry Jones (check out her blog here).

We only started eating Irish food on St. Patrick's Day a few years ago, but it is now a fun tradition.
 Since it was Aria's first St. Patrick's Day, we had fun taking pictures of her (and one of the puppy just for kicks).