hAppY bIrtHdaY saVanNaH

today is savannah's 8th birthday! hooray! here are a few (i use that term lightly) pics of her through the years. i can't believe how fast that 8 years has gone! she will be baptized next month when her grandparents and uncle (coming home from his mission this week) can get here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAVNANNAH! WE LOVE YOU BROWN BEAR!

okay doesn't she look like an eskimo? the nurse in the hospital almost didn't give her to me when she brought her in. she said only because our bracelets matched that she did!

this is how she was during most of her baths as an infant! love this pic. and those lips!

1 month

6 months10 months

first christmas at 11 months with her best friend, her pasi, until the age of 3!

1 year
18 months. she LOVED flag shirts at this age, so when they had this background at the studio i HAD to use it.

this is how she usually looks when eating chocolate (or anything for that matter!) later, when she was around 3 1/2 she would tell me she needed to have chocolate everyday so she could stay brown! too much!

2 years with her little bob!

3 years

3 1/2 years

4 years

5 years in kindergarten for an indian program. umm...she TOTALLY fits the bill for this one!
6 years
6 1/2 as cleopatra

almost 8! HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIRL!

carolina cousins

we had a great visit with cristina, matt and the boys. (matthew and christian) those boys are toooo funny! they had a great time running around shooting their guns and chasing brady! but he's used to it from gracie doing the same thing. only she isn't shooting the guns she's putting him in doll clothes and making him sit in a purse or a stroller!

gunnar jr.

over christmas break mauricio's sister, cristina, and her family came down from north carolina. they have one of our puppies. he was mauricio's fave. well, he is a complete clone of gunnar! it is uncanny! even his temperament (and yes this is the correct spelling. i checked on dictionary.com) is the same. WEIRD!

too bad we don't have any pics of the happy family reunion with all the dogs. let's just say it was not a moment cesar milan would be proud of. YIKES! but after the initial reintroduction they all played nicely. and no, he still does NOT have a name! what is up with that guys? they still call him puppy.

puppy

i'll be back

well, new year's eve i came down with a fabulous sinus infection so i have been absent from the blogosphere for a while. now that i have made my way out of a drug induced fog i will be posting again. tomorrow i get to go to an all day crop (alone and without children!) so after that i will catch up.

happy new year!!

hope everyone had a great new year!!! we did! we stayed home and had our little family party and enjoyed it immensely. gracie kept saying "this is a fun party!"

sarah did a little documenting of her own.

we did a little dancing, (mauricio made me promise not to post the video)

a little t.v. watching, (this one is for sarah b/c she loves the jonas bros sooo much NOT)

a little game playing,

a little drinking, (sparkling cider, of course)
a little celebrating,
a little sleeping, (she didn't make it past 10:30)
and a little swimming!!!! (at like 1AM!!)

we also did a TON of eating!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

christmas day

here are the pics from christmas day. it was a bit rainy that day so we pretty much stayed in the house and ate, slept and watched movies. okay and just so you know we were up til like 2am and savannah and gracie came in and woke us up at 3:45am!!!!!!!!! are you kidding me??? "come look! santa brought us boots and gracie's scooter!" i vaguely remember saying something like "what the heck are you doing?" and "go back to bed!"

they drug mauricio out to see the loot apparently, but the next thing i remembered was someone snoring in my ear at about 7:45 and as i turned over i was greeted with savannah and gracie in my bed and mauricio on the floor! don't even want to know how that happened. and this year we had to actually wake sarah up! that was a first.


i skipped the traditional turkey dinner this year out of tiredness and really not wanting to do it again so close to thanksgiving. so thanks to my friend heidi and her book club i made wild rice soup that was superb!!!! with rolls and salad!!!! but i did do a apple-cranberry dessert! yum!

sarah's dream came true with the arrival of prince caspian.

this was the best gift for savannah. it is the coolest book with lots of cool envelopes with little letters tucked inside and at the end it has a wand with neat feathers, stones, crystals and sand to put inside. throughout the book, that she read entirely, it tells you how to make the wand and take care of it. and the best part is that i got it 40% off! i am all about the bargains baby!

toss across! this has brought lots of fun to our house during christmas break! thanks santa!

savannah modeling the hat sarah gave her. sarah bought her gifts this year with her own money she earned from working over the summer.

the girls asked santa for calendars and he produced these awesome harry potter ones! good call santa!

savannah's dreams came true with the harry potter dvd #4.

gracie was sooooo happy to have her "big girl" scooter. i tried to tell her to ask for one of those ones with three wheels, but she wasn't having any of that! "those are for babies mom." she says to me. she had fun riding it on the patio due to the inclement weather.

and thanks to a HUGE pack of bubble yum in gracie's stocking she learned to blow bubbles on christmas day! and the pack was gone in like 2 days!!!! she goes through gum faster than underwear!

don't know where she was going in this get up but i think the weather must have cleared and she was out to ride her scooter and blow bubbles with her gum with her nightgown and boots on! watch for her to be doing all this in a few weeks while talking on a cell phone.