Spoiled Rotten

So as mentioned below, Thursday was Olivia's 1st birthday. We decided to invite our families over for dinner and have a little birthday party for Livi and goodness gracious this girl is so spoiled. She is also very loved. Dallas and I try not to go too crazy with the presents - we bought what we thought would be an appropriate amount of presents, but for some reason we didn't factor in all the other gifts our family would be showering her with.

This was my first attempt at decorating a cake other than just frosting a sheet cake. Its no where near perfect, but at least you can tell its Elmo.

The princess with all her toys. Dallas was especially happy to give her the pink and black baseball glove.


She started out pretty delicately with the cake...

And then did a good job of destroying it.

She loves to dance to the music that this thing plays.

The balloons were probably her favorite gift for now. She carts them all over the house with her.

And I'm not sure where I'm going to store this princess tent. Until we have a house with a toy room this may have to be something that is set up for the weekend every once in a while.

Thanks to all the family that joined us for her birthday. She is very blessed to have such great family in her life. And I hope you were able to remove your Sesame Street "temporary" tattoos ok. Dallas' cookie monster tattoo is still lingering on his arm. It might help if he showered though : )

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVIA!

This year has gone by so quickly. I cannot believe that one year ago our sweet little girl was born and two days after that we got to meet her and bring her home. It is amazing to me how quickly kids develop in a single year.

We love her to pieces and cannot imagine our lives without her!

This photo was taken the day we brought her home from the hospital.

More Mexico Pictures

I've been waiting for the blog fairy to come and magically create a new post on my blog, but she hasn't shown up yet so I guess I'd better do it.

We came home from Mexico on Saturday and when we left Mexico it was a glorious 84 degrees. It was such a bummer to come home to 37 degrees and snow. We had a great trip and although I didn't get as tan as I would have liked, we were able to do some fun things and Olivia was a great little traveler.

I took about 120 pictures while we were there. I've come a long way in the picture taking department; we went to Mexico on our honeymoon and didn't even take a camera. Don't worry, I'm not posting all my pictures here, but here are some of my favorites.

I thought her face was too funny after tasting the lime.

Olivia sharing her dum dum sucker with me.

We went and saw the ruins at Tulum. It was really neat to see such ancient buildings and the coastline was beautiful. The temple is in the picture behind us. Many people in the church believe that this is the place where the Lamanites lived. It was really windy so my hair was not really looking so hot.

Olivia might be embarrassed by this picture later, but when she was waking up one morning her faces were way too funny so I had to capture the moment.

Olivia's favorite thing to do on our vacation was to push her stroller around up and down the hallways. She could have done that all day long. She would get mad at us when we would try and steer to keep her from running into people.

Sunrise view from our room the morning we left.

Pooped out after the day at Tulum.

We had a really fun time (other than my violent sea sickness on the ferry to and from Cozumel). Dallas even got a massage and a manicure and pedicure with me - it was included in the hotel package otherwise I'm sure he would never have done it. He definitely enjoyed the foot and calf massage that was part of the pedicure. I tried to take a picture of our freshly pedicured feet, but he wouldn't let me.

Viva La Mexico

We are in Cancun and the current temperature is 78 degrees! I know you are all completely jealous and might even stop reading at this point to avoid feeling even more envious (I would if it were me.) I know some of you might consider blogging not a very fun thing to do on vacation, but I have a terrible memory and I wanted to jot some things down while they are fresh in my mind.

After an hour delay at the airport we finally were able to board the plane and head on our way. Olivia was extremely tired when we got on the plane so a bottle at take off put her right to sleep. Unfortunalety she only slept for about half an hour (not nearly as long as I thought she should/would.) She did pretty great on the flight with only a few "freak out" moments and luckily our flight was not very full.

Our room is great and I'm loving the all-inclusive set up here. The view from our room is great, we have a view of the pool and then just beyond the pool is the ocean.

We have enjoyed hanging out by the pool the past few days. Olivia loves to splash in the water. It seems like it takes forever to get her in her swim suit and lathered in sunscreen and then she's in the pool for about twenty minutes and after that she's ready for a nap.

Vacations are a lot less relaxing with her around, but they are definitely a lot more fun. Traveling with Olivia is a lot like traveling with a celebrity. I don't think they see many black kids in Mexico because everyone we see just carries on and on about her. They are constantly coming up and touching her hair and taking pictures with her.

She's been a pretty good vacationer despite gettin three new teeth right now. And after months of cruising around the house with her walker and only taking two steps here and there our baby is finally walking. She started cruising around on Thursday and ever since then she's been walking around like a drunk person all over the place. She still falls on her bum quite a bit, but she's getting the hang of it.

We are having a great time, I'll try and post more pics soon.