Olivia's First Birthday: January 30

We celebrated Olivia's birthday in Utah with nearly all of Olivia's cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  She enjoyed having all the attention on her.

I had so much fun making Olivia's birthday cake. My sister, Lauriann, does cakes professionally and she spent three nights helping me put Olivia's cake together. The top and bottom layers were orange flavored, and the middle layer was strawberry--Olivia loves fruit.  My favorite part was making the butterflies and dragonflies out of fondant (basically edible play-doh). We finished the cake on the morning of Olivia's birthday, around 1:30 a.m.  Although it was hard work, it was nothing compared to the late-night work of getting Olivia here a year earlier.  It's so fun to make cute things! :)

A few days before Olivia's birthday, I finally convinced Daniel to let me get Olivia's ears pierced.  He even came with us and took pictures.  She cried for about ten seconds and hasn't given us any trouble since then.  Other than finding them on accident once in a while with her fingers, she hasn't even noticed that they're there.  And since then, no one has told us what a cute boy we have. :) Mission accomplished.

For Olivia's birthday activity, my family took Olivia swimming at the local rec center.  As always, Olivia was in heaven playing with her two favorite things: cousins and water.  And this time she could run around.

That night we had a fun birthday party with both sides of the family.  We opened presents, ate dinner, and admired the cake one last time before letting Olivia demolish it.

Happy Birthday Olivia!  Thanks for making this past year so fun!

Christmas 2009

Well, it has been over two months since we last posted. I will discuss that more in a later post. For now, I'm just going to try to get caught up a little bit at a time. So here are a few shots from Christmas.

About a week before Christmas, Olivia and I met Daniel on Capitol Hill and visited the Botanical Gardens. It was really nice to see palm trees in December!

 

 A few days before Christmas, we got hit with a really bad snowstorm. It was bad enough that church got canceled. 

Since we couldn't really go anywhere, we decided to take Olivia outside for her first real snow experience. We put Target grocery bags over her feet and socks on her hands for gloves. She didn't mind being outside, but wasn't a huge fan of actually touching the snow. Putting her in a garbage bag helped a little bit. :) 

Olivia's first Christmas was a lot of fun! She didn't quite understand how to unwrap gifts, but she enjoyed playing with her new toys.  

She doesn't know how to treat her baby doll very nicely, but it was cute that she took the doll with her to take a nap. :)

On December 26, we drove four hours to Virginia Beach, where we spent a week. Olivia had a blast running  around on the beach, playing in the sand, and looking at the Atlantic Ocean.

 

 During our trip, we drove down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina for an afternoon. We visited Kitty Hawk, where the Wright Brothers took the first airplane flight.

 We had a wonderful Christmas break! It was the calm before the storm...