Happy First Birthday Caroline!!!!

Happy Birthday to our favorite little girl -- Caroline May!! It is amazing to think that she looked like this only a year ago. Wow does time fly.

Caroline got a true Koller gift this morning -- she got to sleep in a bit. And then she put on her birthday party dress (with, ahem, a bit of help from Mommy). She discovered her birthday hats before we even left for the office. After checking them out, she decided that they looked fine.

Last night I made Caroline's first birthday cake. It wasn't anything super fancy, but I thought it turned out reasonably well.

Caroline spent a great deal of the day showing off her dress and how perfectly adorable she is. Here she is walking around this afternoon at the house. I took her out to lunch to Five Guys today so that she could get a hot dog. It was so cute to watch her try to offer some of her lunch to the other people in her general area. (Luckily they were all way too far away to accept).

Caroline's first present of the day came from our dear friends the Johnstons. Griffin (the young lady in this picture) made Caroline a blanket for her birthday. It is precious, cozy and warm. Caroline loved it.

We were really excited to see our extended family too. Somehow Clare got cut out of this picture (booo...) but you can see my sister-in-law Liz, her husband Russell and their three fun kids here. We, of course, had to wear the party hats to get into a festive mood. Of course Caroline refused to wear one. :-)
Caroline found the entire dinner to be extremely interesting in any case. I don't think she noticed that she was the center of attention.
Thanks to Russell for this great picture! Caroline wasn't really sure what to think about the birthday candle. She was lucky though since she had cousins knew the drill and helped her blow out her candle.
We also had noise makers. Caroline wasn't quite as proficient making sure that she made teh noise, but she thought the toys were fun anyway.
Caroline actually stayed a lot cleaner than I expected as she polished off her cake. Surprising really--no icing in the hair or ears. I'm not sure what to say about that.
Everyone was very kind to Caroline by brining gifts. Katelyn and Ruth were extremely nice and helped Caroline open her presents. But they were unbelievably adorable as they opened and then made sure everyone (and especially Caroline) got an opportunity to see what everyone got Caroline. Too cute. We are very blessed to have family so close.

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Florida Vacation

We are back from a restful (mostly) vacation in Florida. Caroline came down with an ear infection (and then an allergic reaction to the first antibiotic), which added a little bit of extra fun to the time. But, she was a trooper and mostly dealt with it by sleeping a lot. She was able to have a good deal of fun though, as you can see from her stylish sunglasses. And, at least we didn't have the problems of my sister, whose flight to Atlanta got diverted to Nashville and they ended up driving the rest of the way. Hooray for direct flights.

My parents rented a great house out with room enough for all of us and a fantastic view.
While it was a little chilly for Florida (mostly in the 50s and 60s) we still got out in the sun.
We also had a number of "visitors" to the back porch. This is a picture of the first one. We think that all of our visitors were either cranes or herons, but we're definitely not bird experts.

Micah liked to keep an eye on the birds, from afar. Lucky for the birds, Caroline was asleep at the time of this picture. She definitely would have tried to go out and grab one.

We had a great little orchard along the back side of the house with lemons, oranges, nectarines and grapefruit all for the picking. We used the lemons a few times with our dinners. Mmm...fresh lemons.

We also discovered that one of the palm trees right off the back porch had coconuts on it. My brother-in-law Mike helped Micah get one of the green ones down.

Even though Caroline was under the weather for the first few days, she still was able to enjoy to the vacation. Here she is with her Dad standing on the back porch.

The view was great, but she was much more interested in exploring.

She was very intrigued by all of the rocks that were just off the porch and wanted to check them out one by one.

Luckily she didn't seem to be too excited about trying to run off the dock and into the water. Whew.

We were also able to take these great four seater "buggy" bikes for a ride. My sister got this hysterical picture (Caroline was NOT pleased about having to wear a helmet.)

Here's a cute picture of Micah and my sister Laurie taking in the view.
We were also able to see my great-uncle Bill on Tuesday. With a little help from a lamp (which makes an excellent tripod by the way) my sister got this family picture.
We also introduced Caroline to her great-grandfather, known in our family as Gramps (my paternal grandfather). His 88th birthday was while we were in Florida, so we took him out to lunch. My mom snapped this picture as we were getting ready to head out.

Caroline got her first experience with big sandy beaches and the gulf coast. We put her hands and feet in the rather brisk water. She wasn't impressed. But, she did think that sand was a little interesting.

Here's our parting shot of her walking on the beach.

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First Birthday Party

Caroline's birthday isn't until the 23rd. But, we're leaving tomorrow on vacation. So I thought it would be fun to have a little playdate/birthday party with our friend Ruthie.

Ruthie's mom Amanda and I were pregnant together as Ruthie's birthday is on the 19th. So, it was a great time to have a joint party.

Clearly, it was an excellent reason to break out the box of 64 crayons and make a sign. (No reason to let Caroline have all of the fun with crayons.)

Caroline put on her party dress in anticipation of Ruthie coming over to visit.

I also made sure that we had the staples of a party--cupcakes. Although normally there are candles for birthday parties, it didn't seem like a good idea for such little people. So we just had purple cupcakes.
We also had party games. One of Caroline's favorite past times is to splash in the bathtub. So, I brought the bathtub to the party.
Clearly Caroline though this was a good idea.

We also got out the crayons. There was a little coloring, a lot more eating of the crayons. But that's o.k. They're non-toxic.

We also had presents! Of course the best part for the little ones was tearing the paper!!!

All in all I think we can count the party a success!

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Snoverkill Aftermath

The Washington Post has affectionately named the latest storm Snoverkill. We thought we would give you an idea of how much snow we have. Caroline and I were FINALLY able to get outside again. We took a short walk around the neighborhood. Here is a picture of Caroline right as you go out of our parking lot. Of course, this takes into account the fact that there have been plows. But still, it is a LOT of snow.

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Snow Day III

The Koller family isn't going to let a perfectly good snow day go to waste. So, we broke out the crayons. With whiteout conditions and snow coming down sideways, Jack was home today too. He worked from the basement most of the day. But he popped up long enough to watch Caroline do something that we have never seen her actually do before--put the crayons ON the paper!!
Meanwhile...outside we were getting pounded...again. And the storm is moving south. So we might get even more overnight.
It is one of the weeks that we're really glad to live in a condo. Yesterday they came and shoveled off our flat roof. Check out the ice and snow on our neighbor's across the way. It is going to make quite the noise when it falls!

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Snowiest Winter...EVER

It is now official. We are having the snowiest winter ever for DC.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2010/02/winter_2009-2010_likely_snowie.html#comments

54.9 inches this winter at Reagan National Airport which is notorious around here for having low snowfall totals in comparison to everyone else in the region. But, whatever the method used for measuring, this is the snowiest winter since the 1898 - 1899 (yes, you read that right, the 1800s).

They are calling for possible flurries on Sunday/Monday. Good thing we'll be in Florida...

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And still more snow.

As a quick update...we have right around 3 inches of new snow since 5:30 this evening. The federal government is closed tomorrow. Caroline and I can ice the cookies...

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Snow Day Part Deux

We can't let the snow days go to waste around here. So, since Valentine's Day is just about upon us, Caroline and I made some cookies. Well, to be fair, I made the dough. Caroline tried to eat it. (Her left hand looks like she is just laying it there in the picture. But, she is totally making a grab for a mouthful of dough.) But really, what kid doesn't think this is the perfect way to make cookies? (What grown up for that matter?) She did help push down the cookie cutter for about half the cookies. So, I think it is fair to say that she helped. Besides, it was adorable either way.

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A good day

Lest anyone wonder whether we are putting our snow day to good use, I
thought I would share a picture of Caroline creating artwork (this is
after she ate a good deal of the "finger paint" also known as
chocolate pudding).

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Caroline in the Snow

As promised, here are a few pictures of Caroline outside in the snow. While this is our second major snow in DC this winter, this is really Caroline's first major foray into the snow. She was rather sick last time. But this was too historic to pass up!

She was pretty excited about getting out of the house, as you can see here getting bundled up. Note that under those jeans you can see are a pair of tights and some very warm sweat pants. THEN she got a pair of jeans she hasn't grown into yet.
The end result was a very bundled up little girl. We had great hopes that we could go sledding. Guess what? That doesn't work so well when there are two feet of snow. The brown box that I carefully saved for the occasion just sank into the snow. (It is too bad we didn't grab a picture of that. It had to be pretty hysterical seeing me just sink into the snow.)
Caroline thought the time honored game of catching snowflakes on her tongue was fun.
She was able to walk around a bit on the road (this is a road that had been plowed, by the way).
In the end, she did what all good kids do...she sat down and ate snow. (For the record she's actually sitting on the edge of a set of steps. Can't tell with all that snow, can you?) :-)

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