Happy Birthday/Father's Day Ricky Lee!

So we had a very eventful weekend. First we celebrated Ricky's 31st birthday yesterday and today is Father's Day! Bella and I had so much fun preparing for this fun occasion. I thought I would take on the task of baking Rick a birthday cake and it turned out great except for the fact that the serving size was for 16 to 18 people. Yep, there is only three of us in our little family. I got a little carried away.

Rick also was surprised with the xbox 360, which all of the family members chipped in for and also, Rick and I were spoiled with a combined gift of Wii Fit! It is such a blast and if you have the Wii I would totally recommend it! Thanks to all of our family for taking such good care of us. We love you!

I also just wanted to say a quick appreciation to my dad, Rock, Don, and Rick on this Father's day! To my dad, I thank you so much for your willingness to help us out and to completely understand the financial hardship that occurs while putting yourself through school and raising a family while doing it! You have saved us so many times with Bella and her costly habits and we thank you so much! I love your sense of humor and you always know how to make me laugh! Thanks for being such a great dad! Rock, your wit and sarcastic sense of humor is so fun and I just love playing Hearts with you and beating you :)! Thanks for raising such a great grandson and for the support you give our family. Don, you are such a warm and thoughtful person! I still remember from my surgery you telling me how you felt like you needed to say a prayer for me while you were driving and so you pulled off the side of the road to do it. You are so kind and I appreciate all that you have done for Rick and I as well. And finally Rick, what a great husband and father you are! Bella just loves you so much and everyday cannot wait to have you walk through the door. She definitely is a "Daddy's Girl"! We love you and appreciate all the hard work that you put into our little family!

Happy Father's Day to Sean and Jeremy. What great examples you are to our family.

Happy Father's Day to all!

Some Fun Pics

I thought I would post some pics of Bella from her birthday shoot! I just love these pics and my friend Whitni does such a great job. You can take a look at her work at http://whitniparkerphotography.com/ . Bella's personality really came out in this shoot and I think the pictures captured her personality completely.

Things are going great these days. Bella is still climbing, bouncing, and running! She is not one to stay still. Rick has now started his fourth year and is just waiting for some more root canals...any takers :)??!!

I just finished the first batch of tennis lessons and am starting up again this week! I love it and am so glad that I have gotten back into to playing. Megan, you and CJ better start practicing up :)!

Bella is now saying "two, Momma, Dadda, kitty cat, shoes, oh no, and oh shoot". Sometimes the "oh shoot" sounds like a bad word, but luckily she is a baby so she can get away with it. We are so excited to go home to Utah in a month to see our family and friends. It seems like it has been forever since we have been home! We also get to go to Disneyland and we can't wait for Bella to go to the park. It should be interesting, fun, and also crazy!

Hope you all are having a great summer break!

Fun with Daddy!

Getting ready for the pool with her dad!
Can you say swimsuit model?? What a poser!
Bella and Lilly playing with bubbles.
Horns on the head...so fitting!

So it has been so great having Rick home! He is now officially a fourth year dental student and I can't believe he will be done in one year! He has been so great at finding a balance with family and school and boy does Bella love it when he is home! Since Rick has been out of school we have been swimming and going to the park a lot! Bella loves to swim and put her face in the water. Bella had a very fun pool day with her friend Lilly today. She also ran into her friends Asher, Caleb, and Jacob at the pool as well. Also, her new favorite word to say is Asher. To be honest Bella has a huge crush on him and constantly wants to go and play with him.

Life is going good out here. We have decided to stay at our current apartment to finish out the school year. We have really enjoyed Lewisville and all of the parks. It really has been a great place to live. We do miss Utah a lot though and are hoping that we can end up back there to set up practice.

Bella is growing so fast and has developed quite the personality. She likes to talk on the phone, vacuum with me with her push popper, and beat up on little kids ( I am so proud :) )! We love her to death, but she sure is a handful.

Oh and on that video with her trying on the swimsuit as a cape... I am sure some of you ladies can relate to the stuffing. Hopefully Bella will get blessed with a little bit more than her mom has :)!

Just a Little Somethin'

Eating soy mac & cheese after a long and wild hair nap!
Playing in some flowers after church!

Just Chillin' in her chair.

So life out here in Texas is just movin' along. Rick is almost done with his third year of dental school and then we have one year left. It will be interesting to see where we end up a year from now. Rick is in finals now and it will be so nice to have him done for a couple of weeks until they start into their fourth year.

Bella is just as crazy as ever and we love it! She can find her bellybutton as well as finding my bellybutton in the most inopportune times (church, grocery stores, etc.). She is now saying two, mamma, dadda, and kitty. At one point I thought she was saying a bad word, but luckily if it was a bad word it wasn't used again. I don't know why she decided to start saying two other than she loves when we go up the stairs and we count. She will say two for the first step and I just pretend that she is right :)! She is getting her first molar in and she has been miserable. I thought it was because of her 1st year shots, but now I know what the real cause was for her moodiness. Her 1st birthday check up was quite hilarious. All of the nurses just thought she was so cute as she was walking back to the exam room and was babbling to all of them, but right when we entered into the exam room she through a fit and started crying hysterically! She definitely knew where she was. The nurses than proceeded to do rock, paper, scissors to see who would be the lucky one to give Bellazilla her shots. The poor sucker who lost had a tough time restraining Bellazilla, but luckily it was over pretty quickly. The conclusion after the exam was that Bella is a BIG BABY! She was in the 90th percentile for height, weight, and noggin! We were reassured that this Neocate was not going to make her a sumo wrestler so we are holding the doctors to that :)!

I am doing great too! I have decided to start finding things to do for myself and have started running in the mornings with Bella in a jogging stroller and with some friends and am starting tennis lessons tonight. I am way excited and Megan I am ready for a rematch when we get together again and hopefully I won't nail you in the head again when we play :)! Work is good too. I have just enough that I can get it done during Bella's naps.

Well that is it on the Larson Front... I hope everyone is doing great! The video is of some things that Bella has learned and of course of her just being Bella!

A Texas Tradition

Well Megan and I thought we would be daring and take Bella and McKenzie to have their picture taken with the Bluebonnets, which is a Texas tradition. It was so much fun and Bella loved picking up the flowers,playing with them, and also hanging out with her friend. She has really become a lot of fun over the past few months and I have loved her walking! She definitely is a big girl now! She has always had just one speed and that is fast. She is loving to run (yes not walk anymore) and chase the kitties as well as keeping up with her bigger friends. Also, we have some good news on the food front, Bella has had no reaction to soy foods! Can we yell out a big YIPPEE!! We are so happy that she is doing well with it and we now get to start her on Soy milk. Hopefully this food allergy is going to be very short lived! Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the spring weather!

1st Birthday...Party All Weekend!

Little Devil!

Little Angel!

Bella's Poodle Cake

Fun times with Daddy

Party Animal!

Opening gifts at family party

Fun pink chair that Grandma gave her!

Well the Pink Poodle Birthday Party was a success! Other than high winds, Bella practically getting a concussion, and then taking a nap for about 45 minutes at her own party, the party actually turned out to be quite nice! We have been so lucky to have made so many good friends out here! We truly have been blessed and we are so grateful for having such good people to be around when we are so far from our families. Bella's Grandma Ellen was able to come and we were so glad to have at least one of our family members here for such a wonderful occasion :)!

Bella was spoiled by receiving so many great gifts from family and friends! I have a video attached of her with her new steed! She will make her Papa Warren so proud with how comfortable she is with riding it. Now all she needs is a cowgirl hat and she will be all Texan! It is amazing how fast this year has flown by. I remember like it was only yesterday of me and Rick heading to the hospital through a few tornado's just to get there after the hospital had been evacuated. Oh the memories... Bella came in with the tornado's and she is still running like a tornado, how ironic! She is definitely a lot of fun, especially now since I have taught her how to give kisses and when I am mad at her she will lean forward and give me a kiss to stop me from being mad (how manipulative -huh-, but how smart because it works). She is so good at giving high fives and we have attached another video of her walking and giving high fives. Jackie asked me to send a video of Bella to her and I thought that I would share it with all of you since I thought it was so cute.

Sorry for the long post! I hope you all are doing well!

Short Birthday video!

Bella with her brand new steed!

Walking video

You're Invited...

Just thought I would invite all of you to Bella's 1st birthday party. So if you all are in the Dallas area stop on by!