Happy Birthday Addie!!!

Two days after Christmas...ah, the stress level still high and excitement still brewing!

Addie turned 1!

It's so hard to believe that last year on December 27th, I was about to give birth to a sweet angel, unbeknownst to me. Of course, most of you know that my due date with the middle of January so we were completely surprised when Addie decided to make an appearance early (although I am still convinced that she was right on time and my due date was off!).

This year, the whole day was hers...filled with laughing, playing, celebrating, cake eating, and more present opening! Here's a little clip of her playing with her present from Uncle Jake at Grandma's house--FYI, my mom was unaware that I was taking a video!

After eating her birthday dinner of pizza hot dish (the MN version of baked spaghetti), we had family over for cake and ice cream. Her party didn't really have a theme, but I stuck with brown and pink since her birthday outfit was brown and pink (which I did obsess over finding that silly fabric forever!). She had a strawberry cake with chocolate icing and pink M & M's as polka dots all over. It wasn't the most beautiful thing, but it sure did taste yummy! Addie enjoyed devouring the cake and she was quite a fun little mess in the end!!!

Addie received many very nice gifts from family and friends and we are truly blessed to have so many people in our lives who care about her so much! Thanks to everyone for being part of Addie's life. We look forward to many, many, many more years of happiness with our little blessing!

And no, I didn't make it through the day without getting a little emotional! Tears of Joy!!!

Oh and I almost forgot-- in the middle of the festivities last night, she took 8 steps in a row! And today she has been walking from place to place more than ever...this is just the beginning and I'm ready for it!

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Christmas couldn't have come soon enough this year! We were so excited to celebrate our first Christmas with Addie and it ended up to be all that we'd hoped for....Happy Birthday Jesus!

Christmas Eve service at church was wonderful and geared towards family so Addie was kept entertained by the children and wonderful pictures on the screen during the children's message. The music was beautiful and it was great to see lots of families gathered for worship. We sat in the front row so we were on our BEST behavior the entire time!

We celebrated with Chris' mom after the church service on Christmas Eve and Addie got an Animal Train toy that she loves! When we got home, she took several steps on her own just trying to follow it! Addie dove right in to the presents under the tree on Christmas morning, without any prompting from us. It was as if she had done this before! She didn't know what to do with all her new things and she was so excited to open each and every one.

Then we went to my parents' house to celebrate some more. She figured out that she was so good at opening presents, she would help everyone else open theirs too :) After a delicious lunch of lasagna (Addie loved it!), we rushed off to celebrate at Papaw Mike's house.

Presents everywhere! The car was jam packed full with gifts to and from family and we even had to leave some of the presents at our parents' houses. (We'll pick them up soon, when we can just clear out some space beyond all these toys!!!)

Even though she was sicker than a dog for Christmas, Addie enjoyed herself and can't wait until the next big celebration soon.....

'Tis the Season!

After lots of warnings and "advice" from other parents young and old-er, we took the plunge and put up our Christmas tree the first weekend in December. Now usually I am pushing Chris to get everything out the weekend after Thanksgiving, but for some reason my "hurry up and decorate" attitude was dampened this year by the little person in our house. I could only imagine how curious she might be about the Christmas decorations since she finds new things to "eat" and "play with" in my regular decor on a daily basis.

To our surprise, Addie has been wonderful with all of this. We accomplished a lot of decorating during her naptimes on that Saturday and she was SO funny when I went to get her from her afternoon nap and brought her out to see the lighted tree. "OOOOOH" she said in amazement. I stood her by the tree and asked her what she thought of it and I could just tell she wanted to touch it with all her little heart. She would reach out like she was going to touch it, then slap her hand back really quickly. So funny! Now that it's been around a few weeks, she's getting more brave and will actually take some of the ornaments off...but hands them right to me when I ask her to and we "redecorate" together. So basically I'll say "Bah humbug" to everyone who told us it was "going to be fun" in grumbly voices because we're loving every minute of watching her explore and test the waters when it comes to what she can and can't touch. Luckily, I do not have many breakables and she really can't hurt anything anyway so that makes life easier.

Here she is taking her chance at touching the tree...SO serious!
We are anxiously anticipating the excitement of Christmas morning when Addie has her first experience opening presents. I'm sure it will be so much fun and I'm also sure I'll cry with joy. She better get lots of practice on Christmas day because two days later she'll be celebrating again for her own birthday. I have told many people that I am in denial that she's already going to be 1! It seems like yesterday we were hanging out in the hotel, I mean hospital (The Women's Hosp. is SUPER nice and I had a HUGE room!) waiting for her to be born. Another flood of emotions for me on her birthday as well! Forget Mother's Day in May---my true Mother's Day celebration is going to be December 27th!!!

Along with all the other things that keep me busy during the Christmas season, I have been super busy making Addie's stocking, Christmas outfit and dress. My dear mother is giving me the hardest time about Addie's dress simply because I am the type of person who HATES dresses. I am more of a pants kind of girl myself. I harrass my mom all the time about putting me in little fancy dresses when I was younger. The dress I made for my sweetie is not fancy by any means, but it does include a built in pettycoat--(if you don't know what that is, it's just an additional layer to make the dress more "poofy"). It turned out to be adorable and it even matches her stocking. She'll probably only wear it once (maybe twice), but the fact that it's finished and was a heck of a lot cheaper to make than it would have been to buy is all that matters to me. We're (being me) still pondering which outfit she should wear for our Christmas card picture--it might turn out to be the pants outfit (that's actually a dress with pants that match underneath--she's wearing the pants and shirt in the top picture). So, I'll include some pictures here of her in her "fancy" dress incase they don't make the cut for the Christmas card.