Lucia's 1st Birthday!!!

My baby turned one, and in a feat of determination she started officially walking the day before her birthday. She's also had two more front teeth come in, so she's looking far more like a toddler than a baby. My one year old Lucia is:

1. fearless. I put her at the bottom of the slide at the park thinking she'd just hang out, and before I could finish attending to Gabe she had climbed the stairs and was ready to throw herself down the slide. I sat her down and let her go and she LOVED it.
2. Opinionated. She is generally happy, but will let out a shreik only dolphins can understand if she wants something. Anyone have advice on how to make that stop?
3. Laughs a lot. really, she's a funny baby and one of my favotie things is to lay on the floor and tickle her and listen to her giggle.
4. Addicted to her blankie. When it's timeto go to bed I hand it to her and she snuggles her face in it, sooooooooo happy, pops her left thumb in her mouth and goes right to bed. She doesn't stay asleep great always, but she goes down easy.
5. Great eater. She'll eat almost anything, and eats a lot - more than Gabe most days. But she'll only drink milk if it's warm. And she loves to rub her food in her hair. If I was fanatical about her having clean hair I'd seriously have to bathe her after every meal.
6. She adores her mom, and the feeling is mutual.

We had a family party for her on her birthday and here is the pictoral evidence.
demolishing her cake. At least I removed her shirt first.

toddling around, loving all the people to give her attention.

Ready to blow out her candle, or just grab at it.

We played games that were all about Lucia. Since she loves to eat anything and everything off the floor, she had a race to see who could eat the most cheerios. I love that Lindsay has abandoned playing and is just shooting Matthew with a water gun as he attempts to compete, that Misty does it while holding a baby and that my dad is as into it as any of the kids.

eating baby food. Lucia is a great eater, of anything but baby food actually, but it worked for the game. racing in diapers full of lemons. It was difficult to determien a winner since all confessed to cheating.

The birthday girl and her papa.

Lucia and Kallie on her new horse.

Waiting for the party guests to arrive, in the 2 minutes that her headband lasted on her head.

So happy this girl is in our family!

My Roger

Mario plays in a tennis league, and Wednesday night after Lucia's birthday party (post coming soon when technical difficulties with photos are resolved) all the adults at the party transferred over to the tennis courts to cheer him on for the division championship. HE WON! Sexy and plays well, I'm ready for some endorsement deals!!!!!!!!

10-10-10

Sunday was my magic birthday. 10-10-10. That will never happen again. Crazy thought. It was also magically fabulous. My big day coincided with a trip I had to make to a work meeting on the east coast, so I stayed a few extra days to see all my wonderful girlfriends in DC.

Oh, and Ashley, Lindsay and Olive decided we needed to make it a super girls trip so they accompanied me. It was fabulous.
I flew home on my birthday day, and Mario had prepared an adorable little party with pink plates, pink napkins, pink balloons, pink suckers, and pink candles in a chocolate turtle cake. And in the not pink box was a new sewing machine. YEAH! (and my mom said he did it all himself!)

Lucia and I at the botanical gardens with the US capitol in the background.

In old town Alexandria where we only entered 4 stores but I still managed to spend too much money. We had to go to carriers because boutiques aren't made for strollers. I love Olive totally passed out from exhaustion.

Lucia and Olive hanging with Lindsay at Eastern Market while we waited for our crepes.

Marianne and I. I LOOOOOVE this lady. I want to be her when I grow up. Because I suck, I somehow missed getting pictures with Linsey, Emy, Holly and Catherine, other fantabulous girlfriends I saw on the trip. Man how I miss these girls in my everyday life.

Lindsay, Ashley, Noah, Marianne and Lucia outside DC cupcake.

As you can see, our weekend went something like this: talk, eat, talk, shop, talk, eat, talk, eat, talk, shop. Living abroad for so long one of the things I desperately missed were the interesting converstaions with my educated, witty, intelligent, thoughtful, insightful, politically up-to-date friends. This weekend was like water in the desert and I soaked up every bit of it.

A Place to Call Home

A major reason for my recent blogging absence has been the very very time consuming task of searching for a house. And the middle of September, we were FINALLY able to move into our own home!

Here are some of the before pictures.

master bedroom
the green space in front of our house and the community pool on the other side - serious highlights of this house.

entry way/living room

family room - finally a departure from that hideous peachy color in all the rest of the house!
Front of house.

We're super excited. It's not huge, or elegant, or anything overly exciting, but it's more than twice the size of our last house, and I have American shopping opportunities to fix it up.

Work-in-progress pictures coming soon.