The girls' Princess Party

It's nice to have the girls' birthdays so close and that so far we can do the parties together :) Olivia picked a Princess Party, which came to no surprise.  Our plans were to go swimming and then back to our house for cake, ice cream, and the pinata. But wouldn't you know it-the one time it's rained in this drought was this morning, and a little into the early afternoon. So we changed it to the Outdoor Campus, which the rain limited us to basically the indoors portion of it. But, the sun did make its appearance later and we got to enjoy the park some too.

 

 Grandma and the Birthday Girl

 Korban

 Caden and Olivia at the Outdoor Campus

 The men hanging around the bonfire-probably discussing the fact that they're missing a cold one in their hand :)

 Daddy and his dear

 Grandpa Lee, Daddy, and the girls

 Princess time!

 I don't think the Castle made one whole round of whacks before it broke open. Luckily we were stocked with candy so taped it up full again & let them have at it for Round 2

Grandma, Cora, and her new baby doll from them



The Big One!

Look who is 1 years old!

Our little Cora-and little she is..has been quite the blessing to our family. She makes us smile and laugh every day. She still is our snuggle bunny & loves to give kisses. She isn't walking, but think she will be in no time. She can stand on her own for quite some time.  Cora still loves to get us up once a night yet to eat-hopefully by her 2 year post I can say that she sleeps through the night! It's been so fun to see all the bonding with Cora and Olivia over the past year. They adore each other, but also get into their own little fights over sharing.

Cora has expanded her vocabulary from momma and dadda to dah (dog).  She only has her bottom teeth completely in & her top 2 partially coming down.

At Cora's 1 yr appt (which was 8-13-12- a little past 1 yr) she weighed 19 lbs, 12 oz (46% percentile) and is 29.25 " (43% perc) tall.  She's pretty much off of baby food & eating regular foods now, with her favorite being the good ole healthy hot dog.

Happy 1st Birthday Cora!!!

 Happy Birthday to my beautiful Blue Eyed Baby Girl!!  Cora is 1 years old today! Because the big birthday party is this weekend, we celebrated her actual birthday with just the four of us. We sang Happy Birthday to her and gave her her own little cake to dive into, but she really wasn't interested at all! We were ready for her to dive in and smear the delicious frosting all over herself, but she didn't like it. So, the three of us dove in and enjoyed! 

 Big Sister helping blow out the candle.

 Cora and her new walker-she loves being on the go with it!

And Cora with another favorite present-her puzzle.  She loved the circle shape to put in.

Colorado Vacation

We took our first family vacation (besides our past vacations to SD & IA from NM) to Colorado to do some hiking and also to visit our friends, the Becks-Jerry & Nadine, and their kids and families. Dan and Bella came with us and was great to have their company! We had an awesome time! We left Tuesday evening at 6 and drove through the night, arriving in Ft Collins at the Becks at 3:30 AM. We crashed there and in the morning drove to Estes Park, where we had a cabin, FloAnn's Cottages, for 2 evenings. I would highly recommend it to anybody staying there. It was a few miles outside of Estes, and off the highway enough, making it very peaceful. We spent our days there hiking and loving the great outdoors. Friday we then drove up to Ft Collins to stay with the Becks, and visited a couple breweries and just had a great time with them. It had been since we lived in Albuquerque that we'd seen them, so we had a lot of catching up to do. I am ashamed to say that I didn't even get a pic of the 4 of us or all of us together. On Sunday about 9AM we made the long drive home and arrived about 11 PM. It was a long day but great memories were had :)

 Hiking at Lilly Lake

 Olivia HAD to be the leader and had a fit, or meltdown if you will, if anybody else got in front of her.

 Cora was nothing but a trooper in her back pack the whole time!

 At the highest point that we reached (by car). Olivia was starting to get motion sickness & was white as a ghost from driving in the mountains so we couldn't go much further. But she came out of it & thnakfully wasn't altitude sickness.

 At a kids fun n games place in Estes. The girls-Olivia & Bella-had a blast!

 Our happy camper

 The front of the cabin.

 Day 2 hiking Bear Lake 

 Taking a break

 Alberta Falls

 Poor Pat!

 Downtown Ft Collins

Happy 4th of July!!

We celebrated the 4th last night at Paula and Dave's with their kids Parker and Tessa. We grilled kabobs & then did some fireworks. The neighbors a few blks south of us had quite the show going on too so we got to sit back and watch their display.  Olivia hated the fireworks & threw a fit anytime anything loud went off & then would take off inside. She'd come out for a minute to see what she was missing & then back in again she was.

 Olivia actually inched up a little for a pic. Cora loved watching them. Even fell asleep on my lap & didn't flinch when they went off!

 Parker wasn't too big of a fan either!

 I'm not sure if it was the Dora dress that made her brave enough to explore something new, but she actually did a sparkler by the end of the night & loved it!

My sweet firecrackers :)