Twelve Months

Time for Grace's final onesie picture.  

Grace is officially one year old!  That year went so fast!  It doesn't seem like it was that long ago that we brought home our little tiny baby girl. 

And now she is all grown up!  She took her first steps a couple days ago.  She has been crawling around everywhere and cruises along all the furniture in the house.  She gets so excited for dad to come home; she makes he run laps with her around the living room.  She is just such a happy child and loves people! (and they tend to love her)

Grace has mastered her basketball hoop and is working on her building skills.  She is SO busy with toys and playing and LOVES books!  She goes into her room and sits at the bookcase and pulls our books and looks at them constantly.  I hope she keeps that one up.

Just a couple more pictures ... the first one is from the 4th of July (I never posted) and the second is just her when she wakes up ... she can't leave her crib without bringing and animal or a blanket with her.

We LOVE this little girl!  Happy birthday Gracie!

Grace's Birthday Pictures

On the day before her birthday I took Grace to a local portrait studio to have some pictures taken.  It was much more of an experience than I would have imagined it would be.  My typically ultra friendly, super hammy baby totally went blank in front of the camera.  It took a lot of prodding to get her to smile much at all (if you spend much time with her you will know that this is not her disposition at all).

Then, shocker of all shockers, at one point when we have her standing up next to this block, Grace turns to me and takes two steps all on her own to get to me!  Grace took her first steps right then and there!!  I about fell over I was so shocked.  Pretty sure the photo guy didn't know what to do with either of us at that point.  That was all the walking that she did there, but it was amazing!  She did do a couple more for daddy that night so he didn't totally miss out.

North Carolina Vacation

For our summer vacation this year we went to the Outer Banks of North Carolina with Eric's family.  It was our first attempt at a long road trip with Gracie (21 hours of driving over 2 days).  Poor Grace was teething and not too happy about being in the car all day.  

On the way there we were able to stop and spend the night with my brother Ricky, his wife Julie and their son Jack.  We had not gotten to see Jack yet, so it was fun to go meet him and introduce him to Gracie.  They are only 3 months apart so they are each others closest cousins in age.  This is them right before we left for church in the morning.

We stayed in Frisco, NC which is on Hatteras Island.  While there we visited the Hatteras lighthouse which is the tallest lighthouse of the 5 that are on the Outer Banks.  You can still climb this one, Eric and I did, supposedly it is the same as a twelve story building.  I have to admit I was out of breath by the time we reached the top.  It was a muggy day, but we could still see pretty far.  Gracie hung out at the bottom with Grandma and Grandpa.

Over by the Hatteras beach access there is a large pond that has lots of turtles.  People have apparently been feeding them over the years because when you pull up and get out and walk over to the pond they swim over to come see you.  Here are Eric and Gracie checking out the turtles ... I had no idea what this was leading to.

Another site that had to be seen during our visit was at Kitty Hawk where they have the Wright Brother's Memorial. 

Gracie with Grandpa.

We stayed in a beach house that was just 5 or 6 houses in from the beach.  Grace loves water and decided she loved the ocean and sand too.  Here she is playing in the sand with Grandma.

Grace LOVED the water!!  Here is a fun little video of her running into the waves.

On our last full day there we took the ferry to Ocracoke Island.  Here is our little family riding the ferry ... the car is on the other side of the boat somewhere.

While there we visited the Ocracoke lighthouse.  You can't climb this one, but it was fun to see.  Grace saw it with Grandma and Grandpa.

Eric and I tagged along.

While on the island we went looking for a souvenir.  We introduced her to all sorts of cute little stuffed animals and she just threw them all away.  That was until she found the giant turtle.  She clung to him and wouldn't let go ... she still hasn't ... she sleeps with him now.  

We took a quick family picture before we left.  It was a really fun vacation, Grace learned lots of new things and we got to relax and see some new places (well new to Grace and I, Eric and his family had been there before).

Lucky for us Grace did much better in the car on the drive home.