Happy First Birthday Caroline!!!!

Happy Birthday to our favorite little girl -- Caroline May!! It is amazing to think that she looked like this only a year ago. Wow does time fly.

Caroline got a true Koller gift this morning -- she got to sleep in a bit. And then she put on her birthday party dress (with, ahem, a bit of help from Mommy). She discovered her birthday hats before we even left for the office. After checking them out, she decided that they looked fine.

Last night I made Caroline's first birthday cake. It wasn't anything super fancy, but I thought it turned out reasonably well.

Caroline spent a great deal of the day showing off her dress and how perfectly adorable she is. Here she is walking around this afternoon at the house. I took her out to lunch to Five Guys today so that she could get a hot dog. It was so cute to watch her try to offer some of her lunch to the other people in her general area. (Luckily they were all way too far away to accept).

Caroline's first present of the day came from our dear friends the Johnstons. Griffin (the young lady in this picture) made Caroline a blanket for her birthday. It is precious, cozy and warm. Caroline loved it.

We were really excited to see our extended family too. Somehow Clare got cut out of this picture (booo...) but you can see my sister-in-law Liz, her husband Russell and their three fun kids here. We, of course, had to wear the party hats to get into a festive mood. Of course Caroline refused to wear one. :-)
Caroline found the entire dinner to be extremely interesting in any case. I don't think she noticed that she was the center of attention.
Thanks to Russell for this great picture! Caroline wasn't really sure what to think about the birthday candle. She was lucky though since she had cousins knew the drill and helped her blow out her candle.
We also had noise makers. Caroline wasn't quite as proficient making sure that she made teh noise, but she thought the toys were fun anyway.
Caroline actually stayed a lot cleaner than I expected as she polished off her cake. Surprising really--no icing in the hair or ears. I'm not sure what to say about that.
Everyone was very kind to Caroline by brining gifts. Katelyn and Ruth were extremely nice and helped Caroline open her presents. But they were unbelievably adorable as they opened and then made sure everyone (and especially Caroline) got an opportunity to see what everyone got Caroline. Too cute. We are very blessed to have family so close.