first birthday eve...

Tomorrow (well, technically today since it's 12am) is Ziana's 1st birthday!!!! I honestly. can. not. believe. it. At. all. One year ago from this moment I was 5 hours away from going to the hospital to be induced. I was trying to sleep, but all the excitement, anxiety, apprehension, nervousness, joy...was keeping me awake. It was tough to fathom becoming a mom to five, with our youngest at the time being only 14 months old!!
I had NO IDEA if I would be able to do it, but the SECOND she was born it was so incredibly obvious that this sweet little girl was meant to be.
Meant to be our little ray of sunshine. She has brought out such a sweetness in our boys, including wild man Daxton...and her big sister could NOT be more excited to teach her everything and just love the heck out of her!
We have all been so incredibly blessed to have her in our lives this past year. And we look forward to the years to come :)

This is our soon-to-be-birthday princess on the eve of her first birthday: Not exactly how I would want her to feel :( she had been crying and crying all day with a runny nose...well, actually since last friday. I'm pretty sure it's teething. It makes me sad...she just wants to be held, and we are more than happy to oblige, but it's tough not seeing her be her usual self...that RARELY ever cries.
I'm really, really hoping she wakes up tomorrow feeling better and she has a fabulous birthday...she deserves it! We love our little Zee Zee!!!

halloween costumes...

The weather was chilly this year (in the 50's), but thankfully it was not raining as it had been the previous days! Every year we go trick or treating in my parents neighborhood, the neighborhood I grew up in. There definitely weren't no where near as many trick or treaters as there used to be!
Ziana and I walked with them halfway down the block just to get a few pictures and headed back to my parents. My dad had to work...I think it was the first Halloween that he wasn't home to see the kids in their costumes :( I will have to take them over there dressed up so he can see them.
Here they are in the backyard before trick or treating...I almost fell over because when I told them to all stand together for a picture, Daxton marched right over there and stood there looking at me and everything!! WOW!! I know that's never happened before, ha!

Xavier is Commander Fox from Star Wars. He's soooo into Star Wars!

Xandria is a beautiful bride. She did inform me that she plans to never get married, but I'm sure that will change when she gets a little older!

Drakey robot. That's one of my nicknames for him, so we decided why not have him dress up as one for Halloween and surprisingly he was up for it!! I wasn't sure because that boy is INSANELY finicky about what he wears and has a strong opinion about he will and will not wear! He did have one issue...having his shoes spray painted silver! He was quite upset at first because he said those are his favorite shoes, but once he saw them he was pretty excited.
Nick made his costume from the pink foam stuff you see on the outside of houses before they are sided. He put a bunch of little lights on the front with a switch to turn off and on. He did an AWESOME job and the photo doesn't do it justice!

Daxton the devil. Yea, this costume is quite fitting for our little two year old and the antics he seems to come up with!! I definitely have moments where he drives me INSANE, but he is also such a sweet boy and is absolutely adorable as well! He carried around his pitchfork and he actually loved his costume...when I first tried it on at the store he did not want to take it off!

Meeee-oooowww!! Ziana the pretty kitty cat. She was a happy kitty cat...just like she always is!

Look who caught a mouse, ha ha!! She's too cute...I took alot of pictures of her in her costume since it was her first Halloween and also she seemed to really get into her kitty character!

I was really happy with how their costumes turned out especially since they were pretty much last minute! Halloween is absolutely my favorite holiday :-)