Happy 1st Birthday Julia!

Our little Julia turned one on Thursday - my, does time fly! She sure doesn't seem big enough to be one year old or to be doing the things that she does. (See previous post, "Our baby isn't our baby anymore", on her latest development.) And as a little addendum to that post...right after I wrote about how cute it is when she points and how many things that she was getting into, I found her getting into the kid dish cupboard for the first time. When she realized I was taking a picture, she turned around and pointed to me (or probably the camera).

Anyways, see below for birthday pictures. We had a couple of mini present opening sessions when we visited with family over Thanksgiving. Then on the evening of her birthday we celebrated with a couple of presents from us and a pumpkin pie with a candle.



You can see that the sisters were overly anxious to help out!


Grandma Lassen gave Julia some dishes - a couple of bowls and a spoon and fork set. Although she liked the toy and books too, she took a particular interest in playing with the bowls. She was putting them on top of her head, which was the picture I was attempting to capture here. Almost.


Here we are, reading a cute book that my parents gave to Julia. Elizabeth and I were reading it together. The words were ones that she knew - like "zoo", "boo" & "moo".

On a separate note, if you're wondering where part 2 of the Christmas Tree post went...well, we haven't really finished part 2. We got the tree up, put the lights and ornaments on, and there are a couple of obstacles to finishing the project. First off, the tree is still crooked because we need another person to help us with it. Second, the ornaments barely filled half the tree since it is a significantly bigger tree than we've ever had. Then Greg left to go out-of-town. And I didn't have the gumption to take three little ones to the store this weekend to search for more ornaments. So...maybe we'll just spread the ornaments out. I mean, hey, the tree looks great from the outside looking in. It's not until you look at it inside that you notice how sparse the decorations are!

I'm also realizing that I mentioned I'd say something about Thanksgiving...we had a great Thanksgiving Day. We went to Greg's sister's house and enjoyed yummy food and good company. The girls always love to play with their cousins. Julia also opened up some fun presents, as you saw in the pix above. Greg had to work both the day before and after Thanksgiving - late/early and long hours. So Friday it was just us. Then on Saturday we went to my parents' house. I was able to go out for a super fun lunch with some good High School friends. I hadn't seen any of them for at least a year and a half! So it was a great reunion. Greg met us at my parents' house later - after working for a little while. Then Sunday after church my parents and my brother Matt and his wife, Laura, and son, David, came over. We had another present opening and had a nice time visiting with the family. And that was our fun weekend!

We have pix from the night of Julia's birthday, but I am going to post those separately and on another day since this is getting quite lengthy. Or, rather, I am tired of working on it and I'm ready to go to bed :-)