Happy Birthday Melia!

Well folks we have a one-year old! While it is hard to believe my little girl is already one, it is getting harder every day to remember life before this sweet, smiley girl. This lucky girl got to have two birthday parties leading up to the big day and set sail for a week-long cruise on her actual birthday!

We are so thankful for her content nature. She is adored by her older siblings (although they are slowly forgetting how to be gentle with her). She likes to eat early in the morning (around 5am) and then goes back to sleep until around 8:30. I am asked many mornings a week by her doting siblings, "Mom, when is Melia going to wake up? Can we go in and get her?"

She is also quite the climber. She loves climbing up in her sisters pink arm chair. We've also found her in various places like the top of the kids picnic table, the shelves of book cases, and the most recent stuck on the bottom rung of the kids bunk bed not able to go up or down! Thankfully she has learned quickly the phrase "go backward" and can usually get herself down safely off of stairs or any thing she has made into a stair case to satisfy her climbing nature. Neither of the other two were really climbers, but I fully expect to keep finding her in other random, high, scary places as she gets older!

We were thrilled to get to see her take her first steps yesterday! Such a precious moment that we got to share together as a family. And in true Oliver fashion, he has continued to announce so proudly each time he has seen her take a step since. Kind of like he used to announce, "Melia's awake!" when she was an infant, and "she rolled over" when she learned to roll, and "she crawled" when she was learning to crawl. He is one proud brother.

Here is our big one year old!

Below are some pictures of the other kids at one year. I love comparing pictures and seeing the family resemblance.

Oliver

Gabriella

Amanda

Matt

Her first celebration was with Matt's parents, or Granna and Papa as they are better known around our house!

We got her a water table to play in outside which she loves. Her siblings are always eager to help her use it!

It was also Father's Day, so we attempted a picture with the kids and their daddy in their "I heart Dad" shirts.

The climber in action

Papa and Daddy entertained Melia with some baseball while Granna got to hold the birthday girl

We were so thrilled to be able to celebrate Melia again with my entire family! We had a swimming party at my parent's house and loved every minute!

Melia and her cousin McKinley

Pepe and McKinley

Aunt Emmy and Uncle Bossy

Aunt Beg Beg, cousin McKinley, and Uncle Travis

Aunt Natty

And of course there are no pictures of me or my mom during this party... since we were running around making it all happen. But we were there too :) Isn't that how it always is with moms... love you Mom!

Happy Birthday to our sweet baby girl. Your smile and happy nature light up our lives. We are so thankful for the blessing of you and can't wait to watch you grow up. We love you!