Steve and Jenny Valentine

Aunt Lala has taken many great pictures of Isaac his entire first year, starting at his birth.  We are so thankful for her talent and she always knows how to make our kiddos laugh to capture such cute pics. {Not to mention she had her big ole pregnant self laying on the ground for some of these cute pics}  You're a rockstar, thanks Lauren!

Isaac is one year old! I admit I feel a little emotional...such a sweet little blessing he is to us. His birthday started off with him sleeping in just past 7am {all you who know how early Karis rises, you know this is amazing}…Steve got up with Karis and let me sleep a little longer too! Steve took the day off work and we spent the day low-key together as a family. We had a party Sunday following his birthday with our friends and family. If you know me at all, you know I'm an idealist and very sentimental.  His first birthday wasn't at all planned out like I wanted it to be and I was a bit bummed but I made the most of our UN-idealistic situations and we had a fantastic day as a family filled with many special moments.  I had wanted him to wake up and open his gift from us...but due to all the sickness we have had around here in the past weeks, we didn't have his gift and it just didn't happen that way.  So after his morning nap we all loaded up and went to buy his...

My thoughts about Karis and her first birthday (I'm a few weeks delayed in posting this, because I can't stand how long it takes for all the pictures to upload)! But until she wakes from her nap I will take a few moments to reflect on our daughter a bit. Our little Talker Over the past month her vocabulary has increased.  We're often surprised that she's talking...but then Steve and I smile at each other and say, "well, she does have us as parents and we both like to talk a lot (me probably more than him but he still takes credit for part of this-not to mention both Karis' grammy and grandma are quite the talkers as well-she's pretty much going to have that as part of her personality I think!) Other than the normal babbles and words she was saying before like MAMA, DADA, MORE and GO, She is saying: BABY - which really sounds like bob bob-of course making us laugh because that's her grandpa's name AGAIN - which mostly comes out sounding like ...