Andrew's Birthday Week

A year ago this amazing little man was born into our family. It started out so calm and surreal, and quickly changed to ...

Nerve racking, intense, scary, unreal. Andrew spent 10 scary days in the NICU before we were able to bring him home. How quickly he went from this....

to this!
Now he is everywhere! He is the fastest little crawler I have ever seen and can get into anything by the time I turn my back. Needless to say he keeps us on our toes!

In our family we don't believe in a birth "day". We believe more in the birth "week". So we naturally celebrated Andrew's birthday all week. On his actual birth date we started out with our gifts on the table, donuts in the sky tradition...

Andrew was simply amazed by this

He really could care less about the gifts and the donuts. I really should have just stuck to my plan of balloons all over the house and saved a bit, but he got into donuts as soon as he saw that we could actually eat those hanging things. Presents soon followed when Ben and Kallie just couldn't take it anymore and opened them for Andrew. He was very appreciative.

We even remembered to squeeze in a family shot! (this is big for us)

After a much needed nap we put on our swim suits and headed over to swim in an indoor swimming pool. Since Andrew loved swimming so much while we were in California I thought he would really like to do that for his birthday. We were there for about 4-5 hours and he didn't want to get out once! He did try a few times to crawl thru water that was a little too deep for him, but he is a quick learner :) We were lucky enough that our friends came and joined us there. Andrew and J-- are only 16 days apart (she is the older of the two) and they had fun watching each other. Ben and Kallie had fun playing with J--'s big brothers and J--'s mom and I had fun not being there alone with 7 kids! We had a blast! (Yes that green 'eyed' girl is Kallie :)

Andrew with his future wife and mother-in-law....

The next birthday celebration was at Grandma and Grandpa's for pizza and swimming! It really didn't matter it was only in the 60's. The spa was pretty warm for the kids and gave Andrew a shot to try out his new water toy! He even got in a little practice stealing Ava's Binky. Good thing Grandma is quick!

K, I love this picture of Ava and Alex because they have the same expression! I just had to add it...Alex if you really want I could add the swimwear picture too...just let me know

A cute girlie with her handsome daddy

Love this shot of Amy and her model pose...you are so cute!

Andrew trying to get to my camera

Realizing how much he LOVES strata!

His sign of approval...a clap and a laugh

The happy yell

Realizing that not only was it strata, it was a built in toy! He loved this paper plate!

This is the cake I made him for his next birthday celebration at my aunt Jan's house. The little cake was for him to eat. (if you can't tell it's a racetrack...he's fast so I thought it fit his personality...and he loves to eat cars!)

He also has graduated into a new car seat! I love this forward facing one!

Blowing out his candle.

While we were at Jan's we had our Ellsworth side Easter dinner and egg hunt (I'll post pictures of that later...not going to try my luck with blogger again) Andrew was also able to meet their new colt Cisco, who also shares his April 17th birthday! This little guy is only 2 days old!All in all I think Andrew had an awesome birthday. He has taken such great naps for me ever since :) We love him and just can't believe how fast a year can fly! He makes our home so fun and exciting. Andrew is always up for anything and is just such an amazing little man. I can't wait for all the fun birthday's to come!