2009 in Review

I borrowed the following from our Christmas card newsletter, figure it's a good recap of our busy year! (and thank goodness for blogger - I couldn't think of one thing we did each month for at least half of them and had to reference my blog to see how we spent all our time.)

January: Bella started crawling. Life got exhausting! February: Our first family outing to a Cavs game. Bella met Cleveland Browns player Josh Cribbs, turned out to be a bigger moment for Justin than Bella, but that’s to be expected. March: Cleveland tempted Bella with blue skies and she quickly developed a love for playing outside! April: The first project Justin worked on at NASA went up in space! It’s official, he’s a Rocket Scientist! May: Happy 1st Birthday to Bella! One year flew by, this girl rocks our world! Cavs playoff fever took over our lives for one of the craziest busy months we experienced. June: Dana went to Colorado Springs for work and brought Bella to spend some time with her Colorado cousins! July: A trip to Riviera Maya with Dana's family and all the free food and drink turned out to be a little less fun for Dana - WE’RE PREGNANT!! August: Full of trips to the zoo, outdoor concerts and cheesecake for Dana's birthday. September: Our first long family vacation! Joined up with Dana’s sister and kids for a week-long trip to Seattle and Idaho to visit family. October: Bella’s first time trick or treating! Dana bit off more than she could chew sewing the costume, but with some help, Bell was the cutest Alice in Wonderland. no bias. at. all. J ran his first marathon, we're so proud of him! November: our first ultrasound and we managed to refrain from finding out the gender of Baby Bail #2 (B2) it’s going to be such an awesome surprise in March! December: Looking forward to Christmas with Justin’s family in Orlando - Bella's frist trip to Disney World!

One Piece at a Time

More to come on Christmas and our trip to Orlando for the holidays... but we did enjoy a sunny Christmas day in Florida and a Cavs win over the Lakers! I had to share this video of Bella opening one of her presents from my parents - her concentration cracks me up!

Holly Jolly

We took Bella to visit Santa over the weekend - she did great! She walked right up to him and waved hello before talking a little gibberish... turns out that even in the midst of testing every boundry, she is in fact a very good little girl that continues to steal our hearts and expects some quality results from Santa this year and he reassured her he'll find her in Florida!

Bell with Santa last year

...and for the sake of making your hearts nearly as happy as mine - check out this old post with pictures of baking with Bella and J's family last year. this girl. love her.

Food Network's Got Nothin' On Us

mine and Justin's conversation after I got home from a movie night with my girlfriends:

Justin: Bella was in a really good mood tonight
Dana: What'd you guys do? What'd she have for dinner?
Justin: We were playing all night, she threw everything I gave her to eat on the floor but I think she was full because they were giving out a lot of those samples of the tofu or soy chicken nuggets and I might have given her a lot. she really liked the meatloaf.
Dana: Wait a minute, our daughter's dinner was samples at the grocery store?
Justin: *chuckles*

not that I can really say anything, me and B2 had movie-butter popcorn for dinner. yikes. clearly I need to pay some attention to this:

Ms. Tollhouse

Ever since Bella's first birthday and her interest in my ridiculously sweet baking skills, I've been trying to think of things she and I could do together in the kitchen. Since her ability in the kitchen is probably already pretty equivalent to mine, I figured we'd start with some chocolate chip cookies - brace yourselves - not the break apart ones either. I'm talking old school, from scratch. I remember when I was younger I used to love helping my mom bake and my sisters and I would stand on a stool or chair to help knead the bread dough (we'd chant over and over "push roll over push roll over" and then made it a song, I'm sure it couldn't have been more annoying) or stir the cookie mix and always fight over who got to lick the spoon.

So I have these high hopes of memories and traditions Bell and I are going to start together. I quickly realized that I was probably at least five years-old in my memories, and my baby girl... is a baby girl. 18 months wasn't quite old enough to grasp what was going on and completely freaked out when I let her stand on a chair to reach the counter. The girl wasn't feeling it. at. all. lesson learned, we'll try again in a couple months... I'll stay out of the kitchen for a few months if I have to. *sigh*

All in all, it was still a good afternoon and Justin's already eaten a good amount of the batch - and it reminded me of one of my favorite Friends episodes that still makes me laugh thinking about it... so if you have three minutes of your life to waste, check it out!

such a good show, I need to get the seasons and watch them all like I have time.