1st Annual Forever Family Day!

Can you believe it?!  Luci has been home a year!!!  I know I can't!  So today, I am thinking back on the last year and all the amazing changes our family has gone through...

Last year, April 27 was the day we lived twice...literally!  It was April 27th when we woke up in Korea and it was April 27 nearly 42 hours later when we finally laid our heads down in our own bed back home!  Granted we didn't lay our heads down for long because our sweet Luci had her days and nights mixed up and she was ready to play at 2 a.m. as evidenced from the precious picture below.  Note the sheer exhaustion on my face and the absolute delight that we finally gave in on Luci's face!  We will never forget those 2 a.m bonding sessions...actually, they still happen.  It is extremely rare that Luci sleeps all the way through the night.  This little bundle of solid energy just doesn't need much sleep.  Mommy and Daddy do 'cause we are old but Luci doesn't seem to get that yet!  HA!

 As any parent knows, one year can bring so many changes.  We came home crawling, shortly followed by cruising, and immediately followed by walking, running, jumping, skipping, etc...She has always preferred vegetables to any other food and to this day will walk into the kitchen, try to open the refrigerator and say "peas???"  Seriously...what toddler begs for peas before asking for any other food????  I know she's weird but I'll take every morsel of Luci weirdness she can dish out!  She also LOVES to be outside..."ou-siiiiide???" (Notice the Southern drawl I tried to insert...yes my little Korean will have a Southern accent.) This time last year the idea of touching grass brought a series of panicked screams.  Now our bare-footed, nature-lovin', worm-digging girl can't get enough of the great outdoors!  And, of course, we can't either!  (Check out the picture below from a go-to-work-with-daddy day last week...NOT staged!!!)  What an absolutely perfect match for our family!

So, how did we celebrate our 1st annual Forever Family Day?  We started about 2 weeks ago with a photo session commemorating the occasion.  Mindy of MJW Photography took some absolutely beautiful pictures and now we have the impossible task of choosing which ones to order...below are some of my favorites.  I have narrowed my choices down to about 20. I think I need to narrow further.

 On the actual day, we celebrated by going to Build-A-Bear and letting Luci pick an animal.  This girl LOVES her stuffed animals like no kid I have ever seen.  As you can tell from the one of the above pictures, "elephant" goes with her everywhere...even to a photo shoot (yes that is his ear in the big-smile, little-teeth picture)!

After Build-A-Bear, we went to a Korean restaurant for some delicious food..bulgogi for Jason and dolsot bibimbap for me!  Luci had the whole restaurant ohhing and ahhing.  She got quite a few extras that I am sure we didn't get charged for!

We had a lovely day, but then again...we usually do!  I can not imagine life without Luci!  She brings joy to every moment of every day!