Turning the big 2-9.

Last Tuesday was my birthday.  It was a great day, started with delicious cinnamon roles baked fresh that morning by my wonderful husband. I loved getting all of the phone calls from home throughout the day, I miss everyone so much.  We celebrated the occasasion at home - Mike made me one of my favorites, French Dips, for dinner and got me a mint chocolate chip ice cream cake from Cold Stone.  Mike got me a great surprise gift and I'm so excited for it.  We're going to Newport Beach on December 9th for 5 days!  We'll be able to visit with our friends, Sierra and Chase and just relax on the beach.  I can't wait!

Thanks everyone for an amazing birthday!

The Madness of Moving

Wow - it's been forever since we've posted anything new.  The past few weeks have been completely crazy.  We've been in the process of moving from the city to the burbs and we chose to do it ourselves rather than hire movers.  Luckily, my brother CJ and his family were nice enough to come to Philly and help us move all of the big pieces of furniture one Saturday. Our neighbors (old neighbors :() helped too and they were great.

Needless to say, it's been about 3 weeks since we started moving and we're still not completely settled in our new home.  We have stuff everywhere!  It's amazing how much stuff we had in our little 800 sq ft condo.  We now have about 1500 square feet and we can't find places for some stuff - ha! Go figure. 

These past few weeks have also been a lot of firsts for Stella... she got a crib and loves to sleep in it.  She started eating rice cereal for the first time in her brand new high chair, and of course most importantly, she has her very own room!

Anyways, here's a few pictures from the past few weeks.  We'll post pictures of our new house soon, it's just not quite ready for it's debut yet!

Moving Day

Stella has recently found her feet/toes and she LOVES them.  She is constantly holding both feet with her hands and trying to jam her toes into her mouth.  It's so cute!

 

Our neighbors threw us a little going away party.  It's so sad, we have the best neighbors/friends you could ever ask for.  We'll miss them a ton, but they've promised to come visit us in the burbs. 

 

Mike and Mike

 

Lauren

 

Meghann

 

Bryan and Stella

Stella's first solid food experience

 

I'm ready!

 

Yum... kinda.

 

I love to drink water and spit it out all over the place

  

That was easy... bring on the green beans.

Stella's first time in her crib. 

She'll miss that moses basket, towards the end she was touching all sides of the basket because she was so big- yikes!

  

She loves her mobile

Our new homemade headboard.  I'm really excited about it, it turned out much better than I had expected.

 

Morning cuddles.

 

Saying goodbye to our first house. It was so sad, but with every ending, there's a new beginning, right?

 

Happy Birthday Elle!

Today is our niece, Elle's 5th Birthday.  Happy Birthday Elle, we miss you and wish we could be there with you!! Love you!

Our Little Stinker on Halloween

We had such a fun Halloween celebrating with Stella for her very first ever. We decided to dress her as a skunk not only because it's the cutest thing we've ever seen, but our nickname for her is our little stinker (you can imagine why:)). Anyways, when I saw that this costume was also called the little stinker, I knew it was the perfect costume for Stella.

She actually loved being in it too. She never once cried or got annoyed and she was hammin' it up for all of the people as we walked around Old City. Although she can't really trick or treat, we took her around the shops on our block and mommy got to eat the candy - yessss!

Playing music with daddy on Halloween morning

Getting all dressed up

Picture Time!

Trick - or - treating at Meghann and Bryan's house (our next door neighbors - they have a Yorkie named Marley, see him in the pumpkin t-shirt?)

Now on to the big stuff... walking the streets and hittin' the stores.

Stella and her friend Madison wanted to see each other's costumes, but by the time we got there, Maddy was not into being dressed up as a pea pod anymore... (She's only 7 weeks old!)

Light the pumpkins and get ready for bed...

Stella, 4 months and counting...

4 Month check up stats:
Weight: 15 lbs, 9 oz (88th percentile)
Height: 24.4 inches (57th percentile)

She also got 2 shots and one oral vaccination. She was such a good girl and didn't even cry for the first shot, it was the second shot that made her start screaming in pain. It was so sad, I hate it! And, the doctor gave us the go ahead to start feeding Stella solids! So, as soon as we get into our new place (next weekend), we'll start the fun and exciting world of solid foods. She is getting so old, we can't believe how quickly time flies...

This month we had our friend from Utah, Nicole visit us in Philly, we traveled to DC for a weekend and flew to Minneapolis to visit Aunt Audrey and Uncle Dave. Stella had a blast hanging with her aunt and uncle - she got to go to an apple orchard and pick apples, shop at the Mall of America (the biggest mall in the U.S.) and she had her first dip in the pool!

Other than that, Stella's been working hard on growing up. She now loves to suck her thumb, she talks all of the time, she smiles and giggles, she's rolled over 3 times (we think by accident and definitely to her surprise). She grabs at everything now too, so we have to be careful when holding her, she'll knock anything over.

She definitely knows her mom and dad and recognizes their voices. When daddy comes home from work she gets a huge grin on her face and flails her arms up and down in glee! It's Mike's favorite thing :)



Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Fall Fun

The final days of beautiful fall weather are upon us and we're trying to soak it up! Here are some pictures from the past week. We spent a lot of time running outside and of course hunting for a rental to live in. We also had a fun pumpkin carving party...

Stella and mommy relaxing after a long Sunday run.

Stella is ready to run!
Daddy and Stella post run.
Pumpkin carving party pumpkins. We had our second annual pumpkin carving party with our friends, Wick and Caroline and Rachel and Steve. It was so fun and again, award winning pumpkins. (Mike did Shrek on the right and I did the witch with brew on the left.)

Stella with her pumpkin - not quite ready for carving yet :)

Stella hanging out on the couch.
Stella and Mo enjoying tummy time.