happy birthday bella

Today is Isabella's first birthday. I'm really still quite shocked that she's one already. It seems like not too long ago we were bringing her home from the hospital. She's grown so much in the past year. Her personality has really blossomed and she knows that she has her brothers wrapped around her little finger. {Yesterday I went to get my haircut and had to bring them all with me and she was 'dropping' her bottle out of her stroller to see how fast Tommy would pick it up for it, over and over. It was funny - she knew exactly what she was doing.} It's hard to believe it's been over 4 months since Tom left.

Tonight the boys school is having an open house/preview of the newly re-built school and we had planned on going. We are also meeting great-aunt S and great-uncle S tomorrow for lunch after the boys get out of school so I figured we would do presents after we got home from having lunch. The boys were quite adamant about doing it tonight though. So I rushed to clear some stuff out of the way (unfortunately I didn't move the treadmill so it's making its mark on all the pictures) and get all her presents out of my closet. It was interesting to say the least. The video camera battery was dead (you know, I figured if we were going to open presents tomorrow I would charge it tonight), so I was trying to take as many pictures as I could. The kids were in the way and there were two opening presents 'for her' at a time. She didn't know which way to look and when one was showing her what the present was the other was talking to her telling her to look at them opening a present. We got it kind of sorted out and she enjoyed having all the attention on her (as per usual). Then we tried to take a picture of all of us so we could send it to Tom - that was amusing in itself. I like that the kids are interested in the camera and taking pictures, but I really cringe when they touch my camera. lol

So, starting out with this morning...She fell asleep on the floor, face planted into the rug.



Then she woke up and Alex insisted we give her all 3 of the balloons we bought for her. So, I tried to get a few cute pictures of her playing with the balloons. I didn't get as many as I had hoped, but there were a few cute shots.

Later in the afternoon it was present opening time. Trying out the flash gallery for the first time - let me know if there are problems with viewing it.