Clovis Dairy Fest

Ice cream face!
Daddy put water on her head to keep her cool

Living in a small, boring town means trying to find fun wherever you can. I was pretty excited about going to the Dairy Fest today, thinking there would be a lot of, oh, I don't know...animal exhibits, maybe a bunch of food samples to try. Well, there were 2 calves (pictures above), one Holstein cow, and the only food there was from people running around handing out melted (artifically flavored!) ice cream bars and inside the civic center, sack lunches with burned burgers. The only exhibits were for...get this...animal feed, like grain. Interesting! From what we could tell, the most excitement people were having was walking around shaking tiny plastic cups of cream so they could make their own butter. (On a side note, I actually did that a few years ago...Colin and Aidan and I took turns shaking a jar of cream, and made butter. It tasted really good, but I realized that making it from store-bought cream would cost about 3-4 times what it costs to just buy butter. But it was fun. This was during the time that my family suffered by wearing clothes washed with my homemade detergent for a year...only cost about a quarter per gallon of detergent, but all the clothes ended up pretty dingy and odd-smelling.) Today it was 90'F outside, and even I know that the cream must be very, very cold to make butter.

Anyway, we only stayed at the Dairy Fest for about a half hour. Did I mention that the parking lot was really an existing prairie dog colony? Yep. We had the watch where we stepped so we wouldn't break an ankle in a prairie dog hole. Oh well, it only cost $2 for all 3 of us to get in.

Amelia in the pool

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I took this video of Amelia today in her pool. She was pretty camera shy today, and anybody that knows Amelia also knows this is really out of character for her, since she usually loves having her picture taken. So I kind of figured I was just going to get pictures of her butt, which is pretty much what I ended up with, but I took this video of her anyway. She isn't really interested in the water, or all of the toys in the pool; she wants eat grass on the side and to practice trying to stand. In the end, though, she eventually gets some face time on the video.

Just out of the bath

Amelia and I have a routine when it comes to bathtime. Once I wash and rinse her hair, she is desperate to get out of the tub, so I wrap her in a towel, turn to admire her in the mirror, then we go into the living room, and she sits on my lap while I dry her hair, and then she gets dressed. But Thursday night she looked so cute that I grabbed the camera and took some pictures of her still wrapped up in the towel sitting in our rocking chair.

Clovis weather

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Here is some video that I took last night of a strong storm that moved in pretty quickly. I had taken the pictures of Amelia with her walker about an hour before I took this video. It is shot from our back door, and I got completely soaked in the minute it took me to shoot the video.

Amelia's new walker

Here are some pictures of Amelia with her new walker. She started crawling a month ago, and I am determined that she will be walking on her own within 6 weeks. Why 6 weeks? We are hoping to go to Missoula in August to see Austin's family and to go to his 10 year class reunion. I think it would be great if she could show her Montana family how grown up she is, since when they saw her last, she was 4 weeks old and didn't do anything except sleep. So I got this walker so she can practice. She's trying hard...she can pull herself up on furniture and will take a few steps if we hold her hands.

My Scrapbook Gallery

I loaded all of Amelia's scrapbook pages into an online gallery, so you can check out what we've been up to. Go to http://www.scrapbook.com/galleries/181299.html to see it. The pages are loaded newest to oldest, so I recommend that you set the view to 50 pages and view from the bottom up.

Note that these are only pages from Amelia's scrapbooks, not from the family memory scrapbooks. Once I get a few more of the family memory book pages done, I will also post those in a separate gallery.

A little bit of math, and Erin's obsession

Austin made the comment the other day that I've definitely gotten my money's worth with my digital camera, since I seem to be using it all the time. I take so many pictures that our hard drive is completely full. Since I normally don't print out pictures unless I am going to send them to family, or use them for Amelia's scrapbook, I don't have many printed pictures anymore and if our computer crashes, all of the pictures will be lost. So I went to Radio Shack today to look at an external hard drive to save all of the pictures on. I found one that holds 150 GB for a really, really low price, so I bought it.

Then I got curious, so I went through my files to see how many pictures I've taken with this camera. As of today, I have 1,531 pictures saved. I've had the camera for 119 days, so that averages out to about 13 pictures a day. After transferring all of the pictures from my computer to the new hard drive, I've used 5 GB of 149 available GB. That leaves 144 GB. I did a little more math, and I should be able to save at least 45,000 digital pictures on the drive at the current size of files which I take now. With this much space, I should be able to take 13 pictures a day for the next 9 1/2 years, which should take me all the way up to Amelia's 10th birthday...bring on the camera!!!!

Amelia's New Swimsuit

I didn't get any pictures of Amelia swimming in the hotel pool yesterday, so here are a few of her in her super cute new swimsuit. I really don't like bikinis on babies, so I was really exciteed to find this cute suit in Lubbock yesterday at baby Gap. She wears a hat every time she goes in the pool, but lately she's been taking it off after about 20 minutes or so, so this new hat is really handy with a chinstrap that she hasn't been able to figure out yet.

Hi Maggie!

This super cute girl is Maggie Henderson. She is Austin's cousin, the daughter of his Uncle Greg (Austin's dad's brother), so that makes Maggie Amelia's first cousin, once removed. According to Grandma Laqueata, who sends us pictures of Maggie, she is very sweet and super smart. She lives in Georgia and will be in the 3rd grade this fall. She is posing behind Grandma Laqueata's flowers in her yard. We hear that Maggie looks at our website, so we want to say "Hi!" to Maggie, and wish that Amelia gets to meet her soon.

Trip to Lubbock

People watching in the food court at the mall
Modeling her new swimsuit from baby Gap
Outside the restaurant with Mom

Outside the restaurant with Dad

Playing with an identical friend in the hotel

Just woke up, but still smiling

(probably because she got to sleep in the big bed with Mom and Dad)

All worn out on the way home.

I had my annual physical for my job scheduled in Lubbock yesterday (the closest place to get it done), so all 3 of us went to make it a short weekend getaway. It's funny that going to Lubbock was, for us, exciting (compared to Clovis) After my physical, we went to the mall, where we bought Amelia her first bathing suit, we had lunch, did some more shopping, and then went to the Science Spectrum Museum. While Amelia and I watched the Omni movie "The Alps," Dad checked out the museum exhibits, and then we went back to our hotel. We took Amelia swimming in a real pool for the first time and she loved it! She splashed and tried to swim, and she laughed hysterically at Austin when we would cannonball into the pool. Then we went for dinner at the Triple J Chophouse, where we had steaks, and then went for a walk near the restaurant. We came back to the hotel and to wear Amelia out, we took her swimming again. But, she could not be defeated! She was so excited because we were in a new place and she ended up falling asleep at about 10pm and I put her in the crib, but she woke up a few hours later and slept in the big bed with us, which she liked a lot better. She even let us sleep until about 9:30, and that hardly ever happens. When she woke up, she was smiling and laughing right from the start...Austin says she is the laughingest baby in the world...she's happy and laughing all the time. We got back into Clovis around 11 am today, and Amelia's been napping for about 2 hours...must be tired from the trip!

Welcome Bailey!

Meet my new niece! Bailey Hope Jones was born today, Saturday, June 16th, at 4:09am, at the Seaside Providence Hospital in Oregon. Bailey weighs 8 pounds 3 ounces. She was a little cranky at birth, and wouldn't let the doctor measure how long she was, so we are still waiting to hear on her length. Bailey's parents are my sister, Dana, and her husband Jeff. They live in Cannon Beach, Oregon. What a great early Father's Day present Bailey is for Jeff!

My sister had a high fever during the delivery, and Bailey had a hard time breathing on her own, so she was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Portland, where they will keep an eye on her for a few days. My sister will be released from the hospital tomorrow morning, and they will be going to Portland right away, and we all hope Bailey will go home soon!

My sister actually managed to keep the baby's name a secret her entire pregnancy, because she was afraid people wouldn't like it, but everybody thinks Bailey is a great name! And believe me, I tried plenty of tricks to get her to reveal the name, but Dana didn't fall for it once. I claimed, among other things, that I was making a personalized quilt for the baby (I don't quilt) and also that I wanted to get a jump on the baby announcements that I am ordering...ha ha ha!

My parents are especially excited because Bailey is their 3rd granddaughter born in less than a year, and for my Grandma Betty, this is her 4th great-granddaughter born in just over a year: Kylie, my cousin's baby was born June 5, 2006, Sophie on Sept 14, 2006, Amelia on Sept 27, 2006, and today, Bailey!

Pioneer Days Parade and Picnic

Today, the 3 of us went to the Clovis 37th annual Pioneer Days parade and picnic. We had a great time! Amelia and I shared some doughnuts, and we watched the parade, the biggest ever in Clovis history, with lots of horses, parade floats (kind of), and a marching band. After the picnic, we went to Green Acres park (don't be fooled by the water behind Amelia in one of the pictures, it's just a small, man-made pond) to eat hot dogs and watch some live music.

Amazing!

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So here it is...finally! Amelia is now a *PRO* at crawling. She came so close to it in Wisconsin, and I was worried that Austin would miss it, but she started crawling for real once we got back to New Mexico, and now just 6 days later, she is on the move! Of course, I had to bribe her for this video with a can of Diet Coke...she loves soda cans. To play the video, click once on the arrow, wait a second, then click once again.

First ever family picture!

Well, it only took 8 months, but here they are, the first pictures of all 3 of us. I had the bright idea of dressing us all in orange, which in hindsight, wasn't so great of an idea, but the pics look all right anyway. I'm planning on taking a few more this weekend (with different outfits) so there will be some more pics up soon.

Amelia's new pool

I finally got Amelia a real swimming pool this weekend, and just in time, because it has been really hot. I looked for a few swimming suits also, but they were all bikinis (for a baby?!?!?!) so I just bought her some swimming diapers instead.

Clovis weather

Wow. We are so ready to move out of Clovis and go somewhere that's just a little nicer. A place that doesn't have creepy thunderstorm invasions and killer tornadoes. These are some pictures that were taken last night. The pictures (from the top) are facing towards the west, south, and east. Isn't that a nasty looking cloud? I was sure that there would definitely be another tornado, but we only had a little bit of light rain, and then it passed us by.

What was kind of creepy for us is that even the native Clovisians (um?) in our neighborhood were outside watching the clouds, as you can see in the middle picture. I would hope that this type of weather wouldn't be a big deal to them, but apparently it was freaky enough for them to take a look also.

Tonight I ran out to get some ice cream an hour ago, and when I came back, there were more scary clouds, and even *purple* horizontal lightning...I've definitely never seen that before!

Amelia and the popsicle

Okay, let's give this a try
Yikes! It's cold and tart!

This part tastes better

Forget it, I'll just eat the wrapper!

The day before we left WI for NM, we stopped at my grandma's house to visit. It started to sprinkle, so my grandma and Amelia and I went outside to watch the rain. It rained for about 10 minutes, and after it stopped, the grass was wet, but really warm, so I stripped Amelia down and let her play in it. Then my grandma offered her a cherry popsicle, and you can see how she felt about that!

Sleep whenever you can!

In her stroller at the airport

In the car

In my mother's garden

Taking a nap in the buff on a hot day

In front of the organ at my mother's house, Part 1

In front of the organ, Part 2

At Grandma Betty's house in the den

The hardest part about traveling is that you just don't have the comforts of home. Amelia normally takes naps in her swing while watching Baby Mozart, and then sleeps in her crib at night. So, we had to get creative so she could take her naps and stay happy, and if she fell asleep, instead of moving her, we'd just let her be.

The Sofa and the Loveseat

"Twin" cousins...only 13 days apart
Someone asked me who the Amish kid was in the picture!
(That's my nephew, Austin Vernick...

he's not Amish, it's one of my Grandpa's hats)
One of the few pictures I took that they aren't crying!

Hands taste good!

So here are some pictures of Amelia and her older cousin Sophie. I call Sophie "Sofa" as a nickname, and since she's got a few pounds over Amelia, I call Amelia "Loveseat." They are so cute together, and I wish they could play with each other more often. They are both really excited to meet their new girl cousin, to be born within 1-2 weeks (to my sister Dana and her husband Jeff). Baby girls rule!