Happy 1st Birthday Sydney!

I can't believe it!

Oh Sydney Lou, I really can't believe you have been with us for one whole year now!

You have brought us SO much joy and your little spunky personality is really starting to show...

People always ask me, "Is she really always this happy?" And for the most part yes, you are such a smiley, happy-go-lucky baby girl.

You are always quick to give a huge, gummy smile and also quick to scowl to let us know when you feel you've been wronged.

You've been taking a few steps now for the past week and are very adventurous. You'll climb anything within reach, which scares your daddy and me to death.

You like to follow your big sister around and don't like to be left out of any family activity. You'll give a holler to let us know that you want to be included.

You're talking up a storm and like to mimic the sounds you hear the rest of us making.

You like to cozy up with us when you start to get tired and love long naps + 12 hours of sleep at night.

You greet newcomers with smiles and say "bye-bye's" with a backwards wave.

We love that you are sweet and feisty...that you think your big sister is the funniest person on the planet.

We know that this upcoming year we'll get to know your little personality even more and we can hardly wait!

We love you Sydney Louise! Happy 1st Birthday!!!

A few first steps

Sydney took two whole steps in a row today -- woo hoo! I have tried to catch it on camera, but no such luck yet...

So I'll leave you with my lil yogi doing one of her favorite pre-walking moves.

Holiday season hangover...

No, not one of those silly...although there was definitely some wine drinking in our house over the last few weeks. I'm talking about that hangover we experience after the culmination of a bustling, sometimes joyful, sometimes stressful holiday season.

Part of us is sad to see it go, the other part of us is singing "hip-hip-hooray!" Either way hopefully most of us are hopeful for the promises of starting a new year.

I know I am.

Bryce and I spent some time today sharing our personal, professional and family goals for 2012. I am such a sucker for goal setting. I love collaborating together as husband and wife and encouraging each other with whatever big or little goals each of us come up with. (So proud of Bryce that he included in his goals reading a book a month and limiting television time for us to one-hour a night -- wish us luck!)

I'll have some recap posts with highlights from our holiday season, but in the meantime, I'm enjoying our calm, quiet, content household.

Do you all spend time at the beginning of the year to goal set?