52 weeks and counting!

Hooray!  We made it!  We lived!  We are victors of year one!!  

Now cue the crying.  Just look at her.  She is basically a little person.  Nope, not a baby but a little girl.  She's tall and beautiful and talking up a storm.  Dang.  It still floors me that we made her.  Wild.  She also isn't a cake fan.  Or a fan of anything that requires chewing.  Icing and chocolate cheesecake don't require chewing, so this is how Ro broke the no-sugar lifestyle she has enjoyed up until this week.  The chocolate cheesecake was the biggest winner she kept wanting, "more" and then, "more" and then, "more".  Wanna know what else?  She says 'balloon".  How cute is that?  It's like this:  "ball-mmm".  Additionally, she has amazing chubby and soft cheeks.  They were made to be kissed.  And I do.
So let's get to it!  Because little kid's birthday parties are rife with camera snapping moments...
First stop, Reno.  The usually drab, ugly, dirty town was coated, dusted, blanketed in snow.  It was fantastic!  It was also Rosanna's first time to touch the stuff, so I was really excited for her!  She, however, wasn't really into it.  I had to basically force her to touch it and stay near it long enough to capture a picture.  "Look!  Snow!  Touch it...here it is!  Come over here- Rosanna, come feel the snow!  It's so cool!  Come here baby!"  Sooooo, yeah.

It was cold for this wussy Cali girl.  So cold.  And what is cuter than bundled up babies?  Not much.

Our hotel was pretty neat.  It had a bowling alley and an arcade.  Reese tore up the basketball shooting game (and got enough tickets to get a beach ball!) and we spent some quality family time shuffle boarding. 

For her actual birthday we splurged and got room service.  Nothing but the best for this one year old!  She got a kick out of it, and she also got a kick out of the huge mirror and the entire box of tissues that were installed at eye level. (P.S. The following picture might just be my favorite birthday picture we took of her)

Did I mention the chocolate cheesecake?  She was sure she could eat it all!

I mentioned before that I was persistent in capturing her first snow moment on camera, regardless if it was something she was interested in...well this theme continued with the application of the birthday hat.  The short story is: she didn't want to wear it.  

I tried multiple times to put it on her.  I even thought, "Ok, it's been a few hours maybe she'll forget she hates it..." but no, she hated it all day long.  Her family wore them though, we know how to celebrate!

And...frosting?  Maybe.  This girl won't eat just anything, a lot of investigation goes on first, and why not?  

One night Ethan and I got a little time to ourselves and things got a little giddy....

We couldn't help ourselves, we had $40 to burn on the Wheel of Fortune quarter machines!

And we were baby-less!  The upside of bringing two sets of grandparents along is that there is no shortage of anxious adults who want to snuggle and ogle at your wee-one.

Our drive home was interesting.  The drive takes about 2 hours and we made it home in 4.  Yuck.  Road closures due to accidents paired with an intensifying storm left us $75 lighter (chains, boo) and all kinds of crabby (if you are Ro).  Our heroes (Reese and Ethan) chained us up and got back into the car with blue fingers and a sense of accomplishment.  You guys rock!

It was fun, and I am almost over my disbelief that she has been out of me for a whole year now (did I mention that I got emotional in the cake store?  I did.).  Next post will cover her birthday party at our house over the weekend.  I'll leave you with a few more pictures from our trip because I can't help myself!

 (Can you even stand it?  I can't.  I am certain she was overtaken with mommy kisses shortly after this pic was taken)