the big day

For Arissa's actual birthday, we had cake and opened the gifts from her sisters and me & Jesse. Jesse bought her our gift about a month ago and could not WAIT for her to open it!

But first, the cake (which, I'm proud to report, I managed to NOT drop or destroy in any way!):


And here's a slideshow to best show the process of Arissa trying to open the gift we gave her. Jesse stayed up till 3am Tuesday night, wrapping this little tiny thing in like 6 different packages. It was so fun to watch Arissa start with a big old box, and then laugh hysterically as she kept ripping them open only to find more packages!

The final result, which was worth all the work, was an ipod. She, of course, freaked out and was SO happy. We had it all loaded with music already so she got right to work and put on the headphones and went into her own world. The next day she wore down the battery from listening to it all day! It plays video too, so we put a few episodes of Hannah Montana on there too. Later she said to me: "now all i need is a laptop. well, I guess a cell phone is next. Those aren't too expensive, right?" :o)

It was also hilarious to see my grandma's reaction to the gift...she watched and laughed w/ the rest of us as Arissa opened package after package, but then when she finally unwrapped the ipod, my Grandma didn't see what all the hoopla was about....she had no idea what it was or what it did. So we had to explain: "It plays MUSIC, Grandma..." :o)