To all you who have checked my blog regularly, and skimmed over my regurgitations and musings from one of my many coming textbooks, I give you a break between them, a pictorial stroll down family history past. 
There was a big present that first year: Big in size at least. As you see below it was a rocking horse, one that got a lot of use over the years.
Carly was first to try it, but her cousins and later her sibling, would find hours of enjoyment riding that horse nowhere — and everywhere — on adventures big and small.
And what would be a first birthday without a cake…
Or the traditional cake in the face picture:
At The Rainbow 