Sunday was a pretty special day ’round these parts…it was Maddie’s first birthday party!

         

After Maddie’s often trying first year it was so wonderful to be able to celebrate her life and what an amazing little girl she is. In order to do that the correctly it was imperative that we throw her a kick-ass post Halloween costume party! May I introduce the Flintspohrs? 

          

Yep. That’s me as Fred, Heather as Wilma, Maddie as Pebbles, and even Rigby the dog as Dino! I was a little worried about wearing Fred’s oversized loin cloth in front of, well, anyone, but despite being a bit cold it worked out. It might not have worked out quite as well, however, if I hadn’t made the last second decision to wear work out shorts underneath. This became abundantly clear when my nephew said “I can see your shorts!” If not for my last second decision he would have said he saw…something else. And, well, lets just say there would have been a lot of crying children.

The party was held at Heather’s parents’ house, and Kirk and Linda did an amazing job as usual. The turnout was also great…so many people clearly wanted to show their love for Maddie including a large contingent of Heather’s family and many of our friends.  I was especially happy that my parents, sister, brother in law, and nephews came all the way up from the Bay Area sporting awesome costumes:

          

                       Above: My sister and brother-in-law as wine drinking pirates.

                  

                                      My Dad as an old-timey ball player and Mom as a bee!

                

                          Spencer and Danny as Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story!                                    

One of the coolest things about the party was being able to look around and see not only all of our amazing family and friends we have known a long time, but the friends we have met in the last year through Maddie. Nurse Nancy, who took care of Maddie when she was in the NICU and so frail, was there with two of her kids. Mumtaz and Efram came with their son Mika, who was one of Maddie’s roommates at the hospital during her third (and hopefully last) hospital stay. Some new awesome blogging friends were there too – Meghan and her cutie-pie son Zach, and Stefanie who brought her daughters Elby and Sadie.

All in all it was an amazing day and I can’t wait to spend many more days like this with Maddie. So happy birthday, little chicken muffin love bear. Daddy loves you!!!!

P.S. I kept this post sort of short because I know Heather is going to do a longer write-up about it too. If you’re interested you can check it out here.