To My One Year Old

I can't express the joy you bring to me every day sweet Nora.

When I was pregnant with you I had no idea the amount of love I would feel for you in just a short year.

Each and every day I look at you and wonder if you could be any more beautiful or special to me.

You're so smart and independent. You've been walking for a month and a half. You adore Elmo and Baby Signing Time. You sign "Drink" and "All Done". You give Mommy kisses by coming at me with open mouth and tongue out. I love your sloppy kisses and try to get at least one a day. Sometimes you amaze me by trying to plug cords into outlets or picking up phones to talk on them.

You still don't have a single tooth and we wonder if you'll have to gum things your entire life. It doesn't seem to slow you down though. You love eating everything from fruits and veggies to steak and chicken. That's why I thought you'd go nuts over your birthday cake. But I guess my little girl is too dainty. You took a few bites and that was enough for you.

But don't let that fool anyone. This girl loves her ice cream and throws a complete tantrum when it's gone. But I can't get you to drink juice. You love your water and I'm fine by that.

You still have two naps a day and you've been sleeping through the night for awhile. (9-8)

You love your crib and won't sleep many other places.

You love to play with other kids, and especially love stealing whatever toy they have.

You're quite the hoarder. You love sticking toys and snacks in little hidden spots.

I love finding small toys in random places. In the pantry, hiding in a shoe, in the bathroom drawer.

You're so perfect to me and I couldn't love and adore you more.

The Party

We're grateful for friends and family who love Nora. Thanks for making her birthday special.

Seniorita Norita

We had such a fun time in Costa Rica! The trip started off rough. We forgot Nora's plane ticket in my sister's car who dropped us off and barely made our flight, we lost my cell phone on the way and we had a few other things go wrong. But it all turned out ok and we had a great time! I won't bore you with all the details but I want to share a few of my favorite pictures.

The scenery was all to die for. So many brightly colored farms off the mountain roads.

Nora almost fell out of her high chair once during the trip. I caught her by the bum of her swimsuit. So terrifying.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the streets. I loved all the little shacks. This gives you a general idea though. You can see the stray dogs in the bottom left of the picture. They ran around everywhere.

Zip Lining was amazing. Our last cable was over 2200 feet long! The view was like nothing I've seen before.

Of course I got some flower shots. So so many beautiful plants and flowers.

Our backyard at our first hotel.

Probably my most favorite part of the trip. We were driving to our second hotel and crossed over a bridge over a huge river. Darin said there was a crocodile. And I said it was a log. Some logs right? 16 MASSIVE logs. Probably 13 feet long.

Nora loved the beach. And eating the sand.

We went to a beach that was in Manuel Antonio State Park. The monkeys were so used to people there that they'd just come up to your towel. They even tried to steal some of our friends stuff and when we tried to get it back they bared their teeth at us. Little thieves. We saw a ton of other monkeys in the wild that weren't used to humans too.

And my little monkey. She was such an angel on the trip. I didn't even have to drug her on the plane. I'll never say she's naughty again. She was a complete dream.

My little world traveling baby.

Nora's 1 year post, coming soon!

I totally suck.

I completely and totally suck at this blogging thing. Between facebook, editing, keeping up my photography blog, being a monther, and all the other million things around the house personal blogging just seems to fall to the wayside.

I won't apologize. I can't promise that it's not going to be another month before I blog again but at least I'm willing to accept it. Sometimes I wonder who I blog for anyway. I'm never going to get a blog book printed out. Every day that goes by I just get more and more stressed out about it. I need to learn to let go. I'm sure nobody cares about our lives as much as I think they might.

Halloweenie!

It's so totally awesome with a baby. We did so many fun things and a few not so fun things.

We started off our Halloween weekend by going to Darins works annual Halloween bash. Nora loved seeing all the people dressed up. She absolutely adores Elmo. We watch Elmo movies at least 2 times a day. But by the look of her face you'd think she never saw Elmo in her life.

 My niece, Alyssa, who's definitely more devil than angel. The above two pictures are also the ONLY pictures I got of Darin in any part of his costume. I'm upset I didn't make that more of a priority.

We were a traveling circus in case you couldn't tell. Daddy was a clown, Mommy was the ringmaster, and baby was a pink performing circus elephant.

Later that night we attended our ward's trunk or treat and then went to Grandmas house to carve pumpkins. Nora did a good job of getting really messy.

Wasn't Saturday night awful? I felt so bad for all the kids that were freezing their tooshies off outside. We attempted to go trick or treating but ran back to the house after 2 houses. We had my sisters family over and we ate good food and just hung out.

And then Nora had a taste of a sucker. I haven't given her hardly any candy so it was a real treat. She couldn't get enough.

Then a spent all night Saturday puking my guts out. Gosh dang flu.

Nora threw up Sunday morning and we laid around the house the rest of the day.

Not so fun.

What was your favorite Halloween activity?