2.27.... a year later.

This picture melts my heart... this moment, a year ago, is something I can't put in to words, all I can come up with is "how were we so lucky to get her?"  She has brought so much joy, expanded our hearts to love in ways we never thought possible and has challenged us in ways that we never thought or expected, all for the good of course!  So we decided to start a tradition of taking off work the day of her birthday, and it was a wonderful day as a family... 

I forgot how amazing it was to wake up in the morning in the middle of the week and not have to frantically get myself ready, get Stella ready, get Jack outside and finally get out the door at a reasonable hour to get to work before lunchtime!!  I think Stella was legitimately concerned at how excited her parents were coming into her room in the morning singing Happy Birthday!  We spent the morning playing around the house and then ventured to St. Paul for lunch and an afternoon at the St. Paul Children's Museum.  She LOVED it.  

Clapping for myself now that I am a toddler!

It's my birthday!

Family self pic - Stella's WOW WOW WOW Face

she's concerned we're her parents.

practicing her fishing skills for the cottage!

February Fun... Weekends of visitors

Stella was so spoiled in the month of February with company every weekend!  It started with a visit from her BFF Lucy... Their favorite thing to do was to play at the big window and look outside.... in their jammy's of course. Annnnnnnnd they took an AMAZING nap so Meaghan and I could catch up for more than 10 minutes!

Loved reading all about Elmo!

She also had a brunch date with Tommy Durkin at our favorite little restaurant, Good Day Cafe.

And for her first Valentine's day... she got a special visit from Benjamin!  We were lucky enough to have Erica and Ben visit us for a few days during the week so they got to spend their first romantic holiday together.  We had such visions of a cute photo shot session... well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Maybe the couch will work better??

TOTAL MELTDOWN

But, they sure did love bath time!

What a ham!  Ben you are smart to cover your eyes!

"Stell give Ben kisses"

And to cap off such a fun few weekends of visitors, Stelly was lucky enough to have some more friends visit for a little early birthday celebration!  Auntie Tammi flew all the way from San Francisco, Auntie T + Uncle Scott came up from Madison and a few more friends from Minnie stopped by!

Practicing walking with Auntie Erica

Entranced with Elmo, Tera and Scott

So for her practice session for her family birthday we tried out a cupcake... it was a hit!

Merry Christmas.... Love, Stelly

10 Months + Snow + Santa + A New House

Man we are late on this one... I blame it on the new house, but Happy 10 Month Birthday Stella Susan!

So many fun things happened this month::
- Crawling everywhere and putting everything in our mouth
- Pulling herself up onto everything
- Babbling just like mom did when she was little when she ate.
- Saw not one, but two Santa's 
- Watched her first snowfall with Dad
- Moved to 100% "human" food at daycare - although she still isn't so sure about that Tater Tot hot dish.  She loves her avocados though!
- Went sledding
- Made her first Christmas ornament at daycare
- Celebrated her first Christmas three times... and what she loved the most was the bows and wrapping paper {and great grandma Olson's sled!}.
- Celebrated her first new year with her boyfriend Benjamin.  They had their first sleepover!
- Lowered our crib to the lowest level because she is getting so tall!
- Painted her first "art" project at daycare... most went all over her face
- Saying Jackie and getting SO EXCITED every time she sees her furry brother, especially in the morning

Slideshow to come of all the fun pictures of December!  

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Stella + Santa had a stare down with the Santa at the Mall... 

then, she saw Santa again at school, this time with his lovely wife Mrs. Claus, and she was still incredibly amused.