Today was a snow day, and there wasn't any snow until about 1:30pm! Of course we were all thrilled! Ricardo is off site all week so the kids and I woke up and had a delish waffle breakfast!

We received some new dishes in the mail this weekend. The kids sat like this, in and out of the boxes for a very long time. Their mission was to pop every single bubble in the box.....mission accomplished'

Friday and Saturday night slumber parties is the new routine around here. They get so excited to line their "beds" up. We let them chat for a bit before lights out and they just love this time together. I'm so grateful for the team they make.

This crew had an epic battle yesterday. They had a blast fighting each other and then asked me to take posed pictures :)

Making chocolate chip cookies and enjoying them dipped in milk!

Oh this precious girl is a delight. What joy to be her mama!

Papa and his cuddly bear

The girl LOVES seaweed!

Oh sleeping beauty! Breaks my heart every time I have to scoop her up from her nap to go somewhere! Today it's off to school pick up we go.

Me and my boy!

Here's lucia in the waiting room yesterday before she received her dreaded vaccines. She had four shots and was soooooo hysterical-poor baby!
Our lil peanut weighs 17 pounds which is the 1st percentile! Alexia was a little bit at this age too so there's nothing to worry about. So very grateful for a excellent report that she's perfectly healthy-praise the Lord!

Enjoying her ride!

Cute lil miss!!

The new plasma car has been an all time favorite toy!

My dear friend, Katie is moving to Colorado with her family later this month so we had a play date for her friends to hang out one last time. Marco had an absolute blast with Ben, Jack and James. We had 10 kids here (Eleora, Sophie and Evie opted to play inside most the time). I miss these get togethers so much! Now with our busy schedule, we don't get to host group play dates anymore (we cxld speech for this!) and it was good for my heart to host!  

The boys played stomp rocket for a long time

A full lunch table!

Our Saturday morning was awesome!  Our friends invited us over for pancakes and pjs.  Since we had an appointment afterwards, Ricardo and i wore normal clothes, but everyone else was in pjs.  We arrived at 8:30 and Gabe made the most amazing pancakes ever and they had every topping imaginable.  We ate to our heart's content and shocked them with the number of pancakes our family can down...I had warned them! :)  

They blessed us greatly.  How gracious for a family of 3 to invite and feed a family of 6!  We stayed for 3 hours and enjoyed a super special time of fellowship and our kids had a blast playing in the culdesac and terrorizing their cat.

Hudson is 6 weeks younger than Lucia, but looks a whole lot older!

The breakfast table!

Hudson wasn't quite sure what to do with 3 big kids wanting to hold him the whole time.

I'm not sure if I ever posted this, but this is Hudson and Lucia several weeks ago at our house.  Look at that size difference!

Y'ALL, it happened, our baby girl turned ONE and I seriously can't believe it.  Cannot believe it.  I've never known a first birthday to creep up on us so quickly.   

This past year with this precious girl has been a treasure.  It truly has been better than we could've imagined.  Most of you know, we prayed for 1 1/2 years about whether or not to grow our family and have a 4th child.  This was a huge step of faith for us as we previously had not imagined ourselves having many children, but the Lord was doing some serious tugging at our hearts.  In November, 2012 we excitedly decided that we'd do it...we'd push ourselves into the minority of families with 3+ children (I'm sure there's a great statistic to back that up).  We were thrilled to find out we were pregnant that January, but then at 10 weeks, we lost that baby.  The baby that we had prayed for for so long.  We have prayed for and about each of our pregnancies, but never THAT long.  This one was different.  So when we lost that baby we had to start all over again and ask God if He was really calling us to grow our family.  Ricardo and I both felt a strong sense of peace about that loss and joyful about what the Lord's plan would be for our family.  Two months later we found out we were pregnant again, and oh, how we rejoiced!!  

The Lord had Lucia's life planned from the beginning of time and it was US who He had chosen to bless with her life.  I can't even start to express what a blessing she has been.  All 5 of us our madly and crazy in love with her.  IN LOVE WITH HER!  

We had a fun day planned for her to enjoy her first Family Fun Day.  Diego left school early and we were to have lunch, let Lucia nap and then go out for some afternoon fun (shoe shopping for her and park).  Well, little miss birthday princess decided to nap for 3 hours which she never does.  So we had a great lunch together at home, put her down for a 2:00 nap and then it was cupcake time when she woke up at 5:00 and then dinner time!  We did have a special family breakfast in the morning before the kids left for school at 7:30.

I mean, seriously, there is a TON of personality in this precious little peanut.

Birthday breakfast!  We put balloons in her room on Tues night and she loved waking up to the sight of balloons in the morning!  For breakfast we had eggs, toast and strawberries.

Here she is enjoying her cupcake.  I made spelt banana/blueberry cupcakes and they were scrumptious.  She ate entire half of one.

Smothered with love!

Here she is finishing off her last pieces of pizza and wild rice for dinner.

Some fun facts about Lucia Grace:

- She is a crawling machine and pulls up onto absolutely everything, but has not taken any steps yet.

- She is not a huge eater, but has some favorites: yogurt, black beans, cheese, berries, bananas, pasta

- She goes to bed around 7:00 and wakes up around 6:30, with one nursing at 3:00.  

- She is the most independent of all of the brood. She wants thing done her way, on her terms.

- She does not like to be held or cuddled 

- She loves to be read to

- She says hola, papa, hi, and can moo like a cow, hiss like snake, bark like a dog and quack like a duck

 - She is very content and goes along with the busy pace of being the 4th born

Lucia is our first baby who does not cuddle...ever. Above Ricardo is enjoying a 3-second cuddle, which is very rare.......she would much rather be pointing to everything around her and doing her own thibg'

Seahawks fans!!!!!

We went to Steven and Hannah's to watch the game on Sunday. We carried all of the munchies into the family room, sat down, Ricardo said "let's pray!" and poof! the power went out! I think it was out for about 90 minutes. We enjoyed our spread of snacks by candlelight and enjoyed special family time together. It came on at half time so I took 3 littles home for bed and Ricardo and Diego stayed until the end. Boo hoo on Patriots winning!

Wrestling boys!

Alexia Marie was the runner up for the spelling bee!!!!! She advances to the district competition at the end of February. We are so very excited for our girl!!!!

Fun family lunch on Saturday at Bell Street Burritos!