Slow down summer

Summer is seriously going by way too fast. How has July 4th already come and gone? I have been so spoiled this summer being with Evie everyday. Some days are definitely a little tiring, but I LOVE being home with her. She has such a sweet personality and I am loving watching her discover new things each day. She is walking nonstop and into EVERYTHING. She is going through a clingy phase and wanting me to hold her a lot, but the minute I pick her up she is ready to get back down to play. Evie loves to eat and eats a lot of different foods which we are very thankful for. Some of her new favorites are grits, grilled cheese, watermelon, peaches and applesauce. She almost always cleans her plate!

 

We have had such a good summer so far. One of my best friends, Sarah Porter, got married at the beginning of summer. It was such a beautiful and fun wedding! Evie and I have been on lots of play dates and pool dates. Evie really enjoys being in the water in her float! We went to the zoo for the first time and Evie loved looking at the animals! Here are some of the pictures from our summer so far! More to come later!





The beautiful bride

Leigh and I at the wedding...so good
 to see you!

My sweet hubby
 

First attempt at a picture was
not successful

Cousins at the zoo

 

 



Mak and Evie

Brady, Katelyn and Evie

Baby curls... This is what Evie's hair
looks like after bath :)

 

 

Sprinkles

Evie's first birthday party was a complete success! I was so happy with the way everything turned out! When I first started planning this party I really didn't know what theme I wanted to use. I was discussing this with two of my good friends, Anna and Paige, and Anna suggested doing a "sprinkles" theme. I had never thought of this and never would have if it hadn't been for her. I decided to look this up on Pinterest (of course) and there were tons of ideas out there for this theme. I looked it up a couple more times to make sure I thought I could pull this off and decided to go with this as the theme. I am so glad I did because sprinkles have so many different colors so I was able to pull in all of these throughout the decorations.

We invited a lot of our friends and our family to help celebrate our little girls first birthday! We had a big crowd and Evie got a lot of goodies. She has loved playing with all of her new toys and I have loved seeing her in the new outfits she got! They are all super cute! Here are some of the pictures from Evie's party! Thanks to my sweet friend Meredith for helping me get some good ones!

Love the way this banner turned out!



I knew I wanted some type of board to display this information.
I didn't want to spend much on it do I decided
I would make my own. I have to admit, I was pretty
 impressed with the way it turned out!:)

 

Party favors

The birthday girl



Pure sweetness!

She definitely enjoyed this part of the party!

 



Evie is O-N-E

Evie is 12 months old!! I still can't believe it. I do love this age, but miss her being an itty-bitty. Evie is seriously the sweetest baby and just so stinkin' cute. Yes I know I am biased, but I just can't ever get enough of her!! I would say that Evie is a mama's girl, but she LOVES her daddy too. They have the sweetest relationship that melts my heart!

Evie loves to eat and is now officially off the bottle. It took her a couple times to get used to the milk, but she now takes it with no problem. I was worried about this transition because the girl LOVES her "bop-bop". Some of her favorite foods are chicken, strawberries, bananas, biscuits, goldfish and Nilla Wafers. She is a growing girl weighing 22 pounds!

In the past couple of weeks she has become quite the walker. She was taking a few steps here and there before her first birthday, but now she is walking all the time. She still crawls a good bit too, but I am not going to complain about that because I know when she starts walking consistently I will be in for it. Evie can say bye-bye, da-da, mama, hey and bop-bop. She just recently starting saying ga-ga which might be what she is going to call my mom because she seems to say that when my mom is around. :)

Evie has developed so much and is learning so many things. When you tell her to raise her hands she will and she is now blowing kisses which might possibly be the cutest thing ever.  She loves to clap her hands and always laughs when she does. Anytime you say "yay" she will start clapping her hands. When music is on she has started moving around which we will call "dancing". :) The latest thing she has learned is how old she is. I about fell out when she actually did this. I decided to say "Evie how old are you?" and I held up one finger. I kept doing this until eventually she started it. After that we would keep asking her and she would hold up her finger and then clap. Melt this mama's heart!!

 Evie loves to play with her toys and will play for long periods of time. It is hilarious to watch her with some of her toys. She got a couple of puzzles for her birthday and will not leave the pieces in. She immediately takes them out when she starts playing with it and if we try to put them back she takes them out again. She loves the car we got her for her birthday. She likes to put toys in the car and then take them out over and over again.

Evie is still a great sleeper and takes good naps. She is now down to one nap a day which usually lasts for 2 hours. She goes to sleep at night between 7:30 and 8:00 and wakes up around 7:00.

I know I say this in almost every monthly post, but Gray and I are just so incredibly lucky to have been blessed with such a sweet and loving daughter. She brings us so much joy and happiness and I just can't imagine my life without her. Here are a couple of pictures from her actual birthday...1st birthday party pictures will come later!:)

 

New car...Cozy Coupe



Enjoyed that cupcake :)

 

Punta Cana

Every year Gray's company has a convention and this year it was in the Dominican Republic. We were so excited to be able to go this year and what a great time we had! I knew it would be hard to leave Evie, but everything worked out great. She stayed with my mom and grandma and was happy as a clam the whole time! The day we left I was very emotional because I had not been away from Evie at all since she was born. I was looking forward to getting away because Gray and I really needed a vacation!

The resort we stayed at was AMAZING. Everything was so nice and I hope one day we can go back there! We didn't do any excursions because we were only there for a couple of days and to be honest, Gray and I really just wanted to relax by the pool and beach! We had two nights planned with the company and one night to ourselves.

Gray and I had such a great time. Thanks Senior Life Services for an awesome trip!!

Great end to the trip with some karaoke!:)