Labor Day Weekend

This Labor Day, Stella and I took off to Utah for baby showers and birthday celebrations.  I felt so bad leaving Mike home alone for the holiday weekend especially with all of the travel he has going on this month for business.  But, our sister is having a baby and well, Stella and I wanted to be there to celebrate.
We had an amazing time with Audrey and Sheridan.  It was so nice to just have time with each other, we watched movies, ate lots of food and enjoyed Audrey's baby showers.

Stella enjoying Grandma's blow-up pool

 

Since I don't live in Utah, I decided to throw Audrey's shower at Market Street during Sunday brunch (my favorite!).

The beautiful mother-to-be!

We also got to spend time with Grandpa Vic.  He's such a fun grandpa, always playing around with Stella...

The last few days we were there, we spent at my parents' house in Park City with my sister and her kids. We celebrated Kayley and Connor's birthday.

Me and the kiddos. 

 We even got a moment to stop by and say hi to our friends, Andrea and Alex and their adorable little girl, Ellie.

And thanks to Audrey and Sheridan, I got a night out with some of my girlfriends.

 

It was so much fun, but the time always goes by too fast.  We miss you all already, but hopefully we'll be living much closer to you all soon!

DC to visit the Baltz's

The weekend before Labor Day we went to DC again to visit my brother and his family.  We had a great time as usual just hanging out around their house and on Saturday we braved the insane Glenn Beck crowd and went to see the Botanical Gardens.

Stella and her cousins LOVED the children's garden.  They were digging, watering plants (aka getting soaked) and playing in the garden's house. 

Picnic in the center of the National Mall.

The Children's Garden

Cleaning the dirt off from the garden...

Stella's new favorite thing... the pink chair at her cousins' house.

Braving the slide... woohoo!

Stella, 14 Months

This month we traveled to LA for my cousin's wedding.  Stella enjoyed the beach and she really loved dancing at the wedding.  From LA, Stella hopped on a flight to Utah with my sister and my dad, while Mike and I took off to celebrate our 5 year anniversary in Hawaii.  She had a great time with grandma and grandpa and all of her cousins.  I'm so happy she had the opportunity to bond with them.

Over the past month, Stella has really jumped leaps and bounds in her development.  We are having so much fun with her, she's like a mini person now:)

She says a lot of words now including: hot, up, hat, dog, more, mama, dada, min (her minnie stuffed animal), goof (her goofy stuffed animal), mil (milk)...etc.  She is very good at communicating even when she doesn't know how to say something, she points and yells, she goes to the kitchen, sits below the cupboard and cries as loud as she can until you open the cupboard and give her craisins. 

She understands so much.  I'm always amazed. If you tell her to get something or ask her where it is, she'll go and get it.

Foodwise, she's starting to get a little more picky but she still will eat a lot of unique foods and she has no problem eating spicy foods.  Her favorites now are craisins and grapes.  She hates chocolate and really all treats unless they are frozen (she'll eat any sort of ice cream/yogurt/Popsicle/smoothie treat.

Other funny things she does now...

• She loves to sit on the couch like a big girl now, so she whines until we pick her up and she'll sit there with us.
• Lines up all of her toys in the bath along the edge of the bathtub and then knocks them down and does it again.
• lays on her tummy in the bath, blows bubbles and kicks.
• she loves to shut doors.  She'll shut the door (not all the way) to her bedroom and if you knock, she'll open it up.  But, when it's really shut, you'd think she'd freak out, but she just goes and plays with her books, when she's done she'll knock on the door for you to let her out.
• She is obsessed with hats right now.  If she sees one, she'll say "hat" and run to it, try to put it on, get frustrated and come to mommy or daddy to put it on.  To that point, she also loves bracelets.  She will get out her bracelets and bring them to us to put on.  She also wears mommy's all of the time, often she'll walk around with 6+ bracelets on, it's so cute!
• Loves getting on our bed and flopping forward and backward (really scary, because she has no awareness of where she is)

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