Happy Birthday - Gracie!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I last blogged. Things have been crazy here! My work project is in its final phase and I've been pretty consumed with it. AND Grant's last day at his current work is TODAY! Wow! He is venturing off on his own (actually with a partner) to open his own PT Practice. Wow! He'll be doing some home care stuff with a company part time until they get going, but they will be business owners in the very near future! Yeah! And Olivia now has a terrible cold. She has been pretty pitiful the last couple of days - she has a terrible cough and every time she sneezes, well . . . let's just say we make a run for the tissues!

Anyway, ok so what has Olivia been up to these last couple weeks??? Well, the biggest thing is that little Gracie turned 1! Yeah! We went to her birthday party on Sunday and had a fun time hanging out with them. Here are some pictures from the party:

Here are the little friends hanging out!













Here's Gracie with her birthday balloon.














Look at all those toys!!














Here's Olivia "borrowing" Gracie's car














Borrowing some more toys!













Yummy! Gracie really enjoyed her cake!















Gracie with her new Pooh car from Olivia













Isn't this cake so adorable?? Sara made it to go with the Winter 'One'derland theme! How cute is that??













Aside from that, Olivia has learned a new trick - ok, so she stole this trick from cousin Drew, but either way - she's become pretty determined that NO towers shall stay standing anywhere within reach!! Check out the videos to see what I mean:

No obstacle can stop her:

She is also trying to "Crawl" the *right* way instead of army-crawling. She keeps getting up on her knees and testing out the waters. She has taken a couple of baby knee steps, but no real crawling yet - but it will be soon. She is however, getting lightening fast with her army-crawling. She is even starting to try to pull-up now, too. We haven't quite finished baby-proofing our house for her yet. We have gotten rid or the coffee table and end tables and cleared out the living room for her. We haven't gotten our gates up yet (they are on order) but we have a temporary barricade for her using a big box and some tray tables on their sides. It's been working for now, but she'll soon figure out how to pull up then it's all over! Our gates should be coming in this week and we can do some more permanent baby barricading!

Well, that's about all for now. I do need to scan in some fun artwork that she's done at daycare over the last several weeks to show you all. I'll try to do that in the next couple of days. Until then, here are a couple more pictures of her to hold you over.

Check out Olivia with her cute NC State Overalls that mommy and daddy got her!
































Isn't she cute in her little Polo Ralph Lauren Shirt from Santa! What a little preppy girl! ha ha