One step at a time...

Working on walking

Stella's walking!

She finally tried to walk on her own! She has been walking along things for quite a while now but she hasn't really been interested in trying to walk on her own. The other day she took 2 steps. Then earlier today I caught her walking with no hands back and forth from one end of the crib to the other. I was watching her on the video monitor go down for a nap. She's in there practicing on the soft mattress! Haha! So a little bit ago I had her Elmo phone in my hand and she let go of the coffee table and walked about 3 steps to me! It shouldn't be to long now! People have told me to not encourage it but on the other hand I don't want to discourage her either. I have heard of someone trying to slow them down from walking and I don't think you should try to hinder your child from reaching a milestone just for your own reasons. Sooooo, I've just been letting her take the lead. She just has been walking holding on to things for so long I had thought she would try long before so I am glad she is becoming interested in "taking the next step"!!! Yay for Stella!

Zoo

Baby Alligator!
Stella wasn't to impressed...

Yesterday my friend Jenny and I took the kids to the zoo. The poor woman is 6 months pregnant and we walked for 5 hours in the 90 degree heat. She is a trooper! Jaden is 4 and Maddie is 2. They both love Stella!

They have a critter class for moms and toddlers that is 1 hour a week, 1 day a week. They do different stuff around the zoo, do crafts, exercises, all sorts of stuff. Jenny and I are thinking of doing it but it's 18 months to 3 years old so we have to wait about 6 months. :( It sounds fun though!

We are going to go with Jennys family for a Halloween event they are having the weekend before Halloween. It should be fun. They have stuff for all ages. Jenny also has a daughter Aubreys age (that's how we met) and they have a haunted trail for 12 and up so the girls can do that. They also have stuff for young kids too and they dress up. Yay!

It looks like Stella's 1st Birthday (CAN YOU BELIEVE IT???? I can't.) party is going to be ON Halloween. Her birthday falls on a Wednesday so the Saturday after happens to be Halloween. The Saturday before we have things planned so it will have to be Halloween...I think we are going to do a midday bbq type party so people will be able to still do Halloween stuff. I don"t want to tie Halloween in because her Bday being so close to Halloween I'm sure down the road will be incorporated into her party some year. We were looking at renting a Elmo costume (for some reason she LOVES Elmo. Toys & Books!) and having someone dress up and make an appearance but I'm having a little difficulty with that idea so we'll see. I leave for Seattle in 2 weeks so I'm trying to put some stuff for the party together now since it will be a little over a week away when we get home. We are SOOOOO excited to go meet Stella's little cousin, baby Reece! Also to see friends and family. They haven't seen Stella since she was 6 weeks old so it should be a blast!!!

Have a great weekend!

Hula hooping!

Friends

Bella hugging on Stella...as you can see Stella wasn't really reciprocating.

We had our friends Brett, Margaret and little Bella over for a bbq yesterday. Brett had brought over the new Tiger Woods golf game for the "boys" to play. We put on the Wii fit to see if Bella wanted to hula hoop. She didn't BUT Stella did. She was cracking up so Daddy let her try. I am going to post a video of her hula hooping in a sec. She was laughing hysterically when she first did it. It was so funny I made him do it again. She's still laughing but I wish I would have got the first one on tape...

Brusha! Brusha! Brusha!!!

When I brush my teeth she always laughs. I make funny sound effects and say brusha brusha brusha! When she got out of the bath the other night she was sitting on the c0unter with me and she sat in the sink and grabbed the toothbrush...

Funny girl!

She's always a ham!

Yay for Stella!

Ok so I am almost up to date on the last few weeks...finally. :)

Kennys Entrance

I would keep your sound down low, the video on the camera picked up more static from everyone screaming more then it did the music. The entrance on the chair is cool to see though.

Kenny

Dork! ;) Think he's excited???
My peeps with Sugarland were nice enough to put a call in for me and get us passes to Kenny when he came to town! Lesson learned...NEVER let Mario hold the camera. He takes ALL videos and zaps out the batteries in a matter or minutes. :( It was a great night and thanks to Papa and Grammy for babysitting!

My little flower!

Long Overdue Bahamas Pics!

Chillin after a "rough" day.... ;)
Shopping, we've bought some prints from Nassau every time we've gone. Love them!

They have an AWESOME aquarium!
The main hotel at Atlantis. The middle bridge part is actually a room that rents for $25,000 a night.
The "lagoon" beach

This is actually water slides...SO scary! There's a huge drop right off the bat, then you twist and turn through the dark! So fun though! There's 3 different slides in this building.

These are slides that time you so you can "race" someone.

Kids area

Stella loved the kids pool, WAY better then Wild Adventures! :)

Pooped!

The grounds are HUGE! I lost count of how many pools there are and then there are 2 beach areas.

Sunset

This is walking around "The Dig". It's a underground tour below the hotel of the "Lost City of Atlantis".
Eels
Ok, so I have been putting off updating because I knew there were so many pictures to upload. We've been home for 2 weeks now and I finally am sitting down to update the blog. All my updates will probably be short...

Vacation was great! Atlantis was SO beautiful. On the cruises we'd been on that stopped in Nassau we had always gone and walked around the grounds of Atlantis. All we could see though was the hotel, shops and casino because it is almost $200. a person for a day pass for the amenities. There are beaches, pools, aquariums, waterslides, undergrounds tours etc. SO much but the ship only stops from like 9-4ish so it's not worth it to spend the $$. I am SO glad we finally got to see it ALL! It is AWESOME! It's like it's own city. I think there's at least 4 or 5 different hotels within the same "hotel". I lost count of the pools. The water slides are like no park I have ever been to before. Not your typical water slides. It is supposed to be one of the best water parks and I think it lives up to it. It's almost like Disneyland, there's all these different parks with pools and slides. Mario and Aubrey snorkeled at the "Lagoon" beach. We shopped, and W-A-L-K-E-D! Boy is it spread out, and LOTS of stairs. SO much fun with a stroller. Ummm, ya right. ;) Anyways, great trip.

I was sick the last day, only lasted a day but then it came back last weekend and I've been down for the count ever since. Ugh. Mario now has it and it's Aubreys 13th birthday tomorrow. Happy 13th Aubrey! I don't like to post pics of other people unless I have their permission and I don't really want to corner everyone that drops their kids off at her "Bowling" party so I probably won't have many pics from that but I'll at least upload some of the girls!!! Ok, now...on to the next post.