Stella's Birthday #1

Yummy cake!

Happy birthday #1!

Stella on her actual first birthday, while we were at Disneyworld. We celebrated a week later.


Out Stella/Stellie/Cinderstella turned 1! Oh how we love her so! Some of the things we love about Stella are:
-she is a snuggler! Her favorite place to be is snuggled up on someone's shoulder (see photo above)
-she smells EVERYTHING, and I do mean everything! She won't eat food until she's smelled it or play with a toy or snuggle up on anyone/thing without smelling first.
-she has started sleeping through the night more consistently
-she is a thumb sucker but rarely does it unless she has her blankey wrapped up in her little fist with the corner of the blanket touching her nose
-she loves to play with play food, babies, and the toy kitchen we got the girls for Christmas.
-she doesn't like tv
-she likes to line up chairs and take turns sitting in them.
-in the morning, she won't get out of the crib until she hands everything to you: her blankey, her quilt, and anything else that might be in there.
-she has 6 teeth, two on the top and four on the bottom,
-she still doesn't have much hair but oh! those blue eyes!
-loves peek-a-boo, where is Stella?, and being read to.
-I have put all of the girls outgrown shoes in the bottom drawer of her changing table and she loves to open the drawer and try on all the shoes. This will entertain her for quite some time!

and lastly,

-she is a joy to have in our family! We love her so much!!

2009 Re-cap

Since I was a horrible blogger for 2009, but want this to be our family journal, I'm going to attempt to do a 2009 re-cap over the next few days. Here we go...

Happy New Year (at 8:52 MST)

The joy of celebrating New Years with little kids is being able to have midnight at whatever time you want! For us, it was at 8:52 pm. We had the countdown, banged pots and pans, shot off little poppers, and ran outside to do fireworks on the driveway. We had a great time celebrating the past year and ringing in the new!

Here's to 2010!

Happy Birthday Dad!

Just a little shout out to my Dad, whose birthday is today. We love you so much!

Disneyworld

Our family vacation, or as Claire says, our "fun fieldtrip".

So, this is how we survived the 6+ hour flight to Orlando...


Miracle upon miracles, Stella slept nearly the entire way down, while Claire watched "Sleeping Beauty" on Matt's laptop and played with her friend Ashlyn. Blessings! :) We went down with some of our friends, who have a little girl Claire's age. The two girls had a great time together.

The first thing we saw when we arrived at the Magic Kingdom was one of Claire's favorite princesses, Snow White. They looked adorable together! (Side note: Claire wanted to take ALL of her princess dresses but I made her choose just one. She threw a fit but got over it eventually! She later told me that she didn't want to other princesses to feel bad.)

Claire and Stella loved all the rides at Magic Kingdom and so did we! There was only one ride that Claire could go on that Stella couldn't; that was the Goofy roller coaster. I think Claire went on it a total of 4 times! We were able to meet most of the Princesses, ride on Aladdin's carpet, eat yummy food, ride on the Mary Poppins ride (the Carousel), tour Micky and Minnie's homes and do lots of other fun things. All I can say is, they (Disney) have this thing figured out! Seriously, whoever planned these parks were geniuses!


The second day we went to Animal Kingdom; it was a lot of fun too. We enjoyed A Bug's life, the African Safari, and the water ride (can't remember the name) the most. Claire loved her Bug's life 3-d glasses but wasn't so sure about the whole 3-D idea. She freaked out when the bugs started flying towards her and then "spit" on her. Matt did a great job calming her down so she could enjoy the rest of the show.
The next day we went to MGM. It was rainy but not too cold. We went to Playhouse Disney Live, which is a show where some of the Disney cartoons are on stage but it's an interactive show. Claire liked it, but not quite as much as I thought she would because she was hungry. We fed her a snack and then went to see the Beauty and the Beast stage show (a shortened version of the Broadway musical - it was impressive), the Little Mermaid stage show (not quite as impressive), and waited in line for the Toy Story ride. It was like a live video game. I don't know how else to describe it but it was pretty cool.

Next year...

Matt doesn't believe me, but so help me, next year the girls WILL get Aggie jammies! Hey, it's only fair to represent both schools equally, ya know!?

Way to go Utes!

13-0 with a 31-17 Sugar Bowl win over Alabama. Check out those little girls in their UTAH jammies (a present from daddy, of course).