He is Risen!

Happy Easter!! We are so blessed to worship a risen Savior!! We sang a new song at church today (that I just love!) and the chorus is perfect for Easter. It's 'Glorious Day' by Casting Crowns, and here's the chorus:

Living, He loved me
Dying, He saved me
Buried, He carried my sins far away
Rising, He justified freely forever
One day He’s coming Oh glorious day,
Oh glorious day!

It has been a gloomy, rainy Easter Sunday here in Northwest Arkansas. Ya'll, it seriously has been raining for what seems like a week straight! Wednesday afternoon we had crazy thunderstorms and a major hail storm come through, Thursday night we had thunderstorms with hail, Friday night we had tornadoes in the area and bad thunderstorms, it rained and thunder-stormed all day Saturday (including hail), and it has rained and thunder-stormed all day today. And it's supposed to do this all night and all day tomorrow, plus off and on all week. There is some serious flooding going on at the moment in our area. Here's looking out our front door.
But things were bright and glorious at church this morning. Lots of folks may not realize it, but this is Sara Kate's first Easter!! Here we were at Easter last year.
With my due date still 3 weeks away, little did I know I was less than 1 week away from delivering this little princess!
So here's our 1st family Easter picture. I just love her dress. I found it a couple months ago on clearance at Dillard's, and she got so many compliments on it today. My mom was right when we found it, the blue was perfect to bring out her eye color!
And then she realized she had a bow on her head but here's an equally good picture sans bow.
Chris' parents came to our church today and that was so nice. Sara Kate looks tired...it's because she was!
With Bob heading back to Kansas early because of weather, we had no other plans for the day. So Phillip went with us and we had brunch at The Village Inn. Wow, they have quite the selection!! The meal started like this for Sara Kate...
But it ended like this!
Silly girl! She had some of Uncle Phil's pancakes and pretty much all of my scrambled eggs.

We came home and had to check out what the Easter bunny brought her! The joke I saw on Facebook earlier was that the Easter bunny had to take a canoe to get around here! My mom brought up my Easter basket from when I was a kid so we used that for now. She just had a birthday so I just couldn't think of anything she needed, but I thought eventually she's going to get into Disney. So we started her a Disney movie collection and decided to start out with the most recent, 'Tangled' (plus we want to see it...I hear it's really cute). :-)
And here's all her loot, from Meme and Poppa, Aunt Jenny and Uncle Jason, and Gran and Pop. Lucky little girl!
We finished the day with a nice little nap together for Sara Kate and I (it was very reminiscent of when she was a little baby and we used to nap together all the time...loved those times!)...
And a little dinner made by Uncle Phil. No picture of that but it was some yummy sausage and broccoli pasta. Hopefully he didn't have to swim home. Ha! Despite the rain, it was a great Easter! Hope everyone else had a great Easter, too!

12 Month Appointment

Today Sara Kate had her 12 month appointment. She looked so cute this morning. Chris said, 'she's cute but she's awful dressy for the doctor', but my goal was no pants on her legs since she was getting shots!

Here are her stats:

Weight: 20 lb., 0 oz. (25th percentile)
Height: 27.64 inches (10th percentile)
Head Circumference: 17.8 inches (50th percentile)

Looking back at her 9 month appointment, she was 50th percentile for weight (19 lb., 4 oz.), 30th percentile for height (27.26 inches), and 50th percentile for head circumference (17.4 inches). Her weight has definitely slowed, and it appears that we have a shorty on our hands! My mom said she may have inherited the short gene from my side of the family. She's only 12 months, so I'm hopeful she'll hit a growth spurt at some point and grow upward. :-) We saw a different doctor today. She was younger, female, and has a 2 year old of her own. I really really liked her. I guess we haven't seen a doctor at the clinic we haven't liked but I think she's my favorite so far.
She got her head measured...

She got her height checked...

She got weighed...
There was this paper mobile above the scale that had different colors and shapes on it and she really liked it! She kept pointing and 'talking' to it.

Then we waited for the doctor to come in!

I just looked back at daddy holding her at her 1 week doctor appointment...
Wow, how she's grown and changed!
The doctor listed to her chest, checked her ears, checked her tummy...she said that Sara Kate looks absolutely perfect! The only developmental milestone that she hasn't hit is walking, but the doctor said the average for babies to start walking is 12-15 months. So she's not behind yet.

We talked to her about switching to whole milk, weaning from nursing, and we learned that apparently we're supposed to be brushing her little teeth. Oops. She did say to stop the night time nursing because at this age any milk at bed time stays in their mouths and can start causing cavities. She also said the night time nursing will be the hardest to stop. I've read that night time nursing, or nursing to sleep, has been called 'the cardinal sin of motherhood' (ha!), and I've done it every night since the day she was born. But it's worked for us! Guess I'll keep ya'll posted on how that goes! Anyway, back to her appointment. She got 4 shots today, 2 in each leg. Did ya'll know that there is an immunization for chicken pox?? We had no idea! The shots were hard on her but the nurses were a machine...1, 2, 3, shot (nurse on both legs), 1, 2, 3, shot (nurse on both legs), band-aids, into mommy or daddy's arms.

She cried that hard cry where they can't catch their breath...that cry makes me sad.

But after a few minutes of snuggling my sweet girl was fine. And we let her look at the colorful mobile on the way out...she liked that.

Here are her battle wounds. She managed to get both band-aids off her legs on the way home. But there are 2 little spots on each leg.

Hopefully she won't have fever or any ill effects from the shots, but teething and shots could make for a long evening. :-( She's playing right now and moving and dancing around to some music in her pack n play so maybe she'll be fine. I'll think positively! :-)

Wild About One!

The 'theme' for Sara Kate's 1st birthday party was 'Wild About One!' I made the cutest invitations online at Bedford Camera. I had hoped to get one scanned in so I could post it on here but that never happened. It was zebra, black, and hot pink, it said said 'Wild About One' at the bottom under her picture, and on the side it said 'Sara Kate is turning ONE, come and join us for some party FUN!' Here's the picture we used for the invitation. And I LOVE this picture!!

Her party was at 1:00 on Saturday, and we had a light lunch that included chicken salad sandwiches, rotel and chips, fruit, and pasta/veggie salad. I had planned to do more with decorations and I had more ideas in my head but getting sick last week kind of put a kink in my plans. But it turned out nice.

I had all her monthly pictures displayed on a zebra covered cork board...I loved being able to see them side by side to see how she changed each month. In fact, I still have the board and pictures sitting in the same spot, and I catch myself just staring at her pictures.

The cake and her smash cake came from Rick's Bakery. They were fantastic!! I told them exactly what I wanted and they got it perfect!

I never got a good picture of Sara Kate in her birthday outfit, but here's the back. And on the front there was a zebra bow and it has her name monogrammed in hot pink. It turned out perfect, and I just love it! I went for the bloomer/monogrammed look instead of the tutu look (which I had my mind set on for a long time) because she can wear this outfit all summer. At 1 year old, she doesn't have much use for a tutu. So when she's a little older I can do a tutu and she can play dress up with it and it'll get more use.

Sara Kate and her friend Clara, who turned 1 in February.

Lunch time!

Present time! You can kind of see her outfit better in these pictures. She got some books, lots of clothes, and several toys. Thanks so much to everyone!

And finally, cake time! You've seen the video (hopefully...if not, watch it!) so I'll post a few pictures here. As you can see, she had NO fear and dove right into that cake!

The only family picture we got all day!

After cake time was bath time and then we said good bye to our guests.

Family stayed around all day and well into the evening. It was great to get to hang out with everyone. Here's our littlest party guest. Isn't he adorable? Sweet Hayden slept all day!

Overall, we had a great day. Sara Kate won't remember her 1st birthday party but I certainly will. She is such a lucky little girl who has parents that love her so much and lots of family that just adore her. Chris and I are also so blessed to be surrounded by such a loving family, a family who has given us tons of help, support, and encouragement over the last year. So a big thank you to everyone, friends and family, who have been there for us and continue to be there for us. And to Sara Kate, you are more precious and perfect then I could have ever imagined. You are beautiful and funny and so caring. You are strong willed but have a tender heart. I hope you always know how special you are, and I love you more than words can say. The first year was a blast...I can't wait to see what the next year holds in store!