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