Pool Party

The 3 of us went to a birthday party for Gavin, who turned 3 today. Gavin's parents are Derek and Melissa, who Austin has known for years. Gavin is the cutie in the second picture. We had a great time; we watched Gavin open his presents, Amelia and Austin went swimming (put a pair of water wings on her and watch her go!) and then we had make-your-own pizzas and ate birthday cupcakes.

Rock Band

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Uploaded by Hen7975

Here's Amelia and Gavin rocking out. Gavin got the guitar for his birthday...when he opened it, he said, "It's a violin!" It was pretty cute. Gavin's mom, Melissa, brought out a keyboard so Amelia could play while singing lead vocals.

First kiss...and the second one

We're pretty sure that this is Amelia's first kiss...yikes...so early! Amelia and Gavin were smooching in the pool today and I was lucky to get this on camera.

A Conspiracy

Two parts to the explanation for this video:

1. Ever since I got sick in the summer of 2003 from my mystery Alaskan illness, Austin has said that I snore. And as I get older and more matronly, it has gotten worse.

2. Amelia sleeps in bed with me whenever we visit family or stay in a hotel room and occasionally at home. In the past month or two, she's slept with me about 10-12 nights. My supposed snoring doesn't wake her up, so I figured that Austin is just a light sleeper, and is exaggerating my snoring. Well, lately, Amelia will lay down somewhere, pretend to sleep, and then start snoring. I think it's a conspiracy between her and Austin to make me think that I really snore, when in fact, I know I do not.

In this video, Austin is pretending to be asleep to prompt snores from Amelia. You might need to turn your speakers up.

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Uploaded by Hen7975

22 Months!

Amelia is will be 22 months old tomorrow. Which means she is only 2 months away from being 2. Which also means that at some point, I will have to stop calling her "the baby."

Smiling because she doesn't know she has a new hair style
Keeping a calm facial expression as she
plots to steal the camera.

Her favorite hiding place

Trying to get the very last bit out of her Go-Gurts

Singing along to "Ni Hao, Kai Lan"

O'Fallon, IL

So I was working in O'Fallon, IL (about 1/2 hr east of St. Louis) for the past 2 weeks, andI thought I'd share some pictures of the area.

Yep, that's about it. Other than the AFB there, and a movie theatre (of which I became a frequent customer...seeing 5 movies), there wasn't much else.

Mermaid!

I'm pretty weird about swimming in natural areas, like rivers and lakes and oceans. I'm always afraid that a shark or muskie or alligator gar is going to eat me. I remember swimming in the YMCA pool, and psyching myself out that there just might be a shark behind me. We went to the Corpus Christi Beach yesterday, and Amelia and I missed being stung by a jellyfish by about a foot. Yikes. Today, we went to North Padre Island, and at every beach we went to, the shore was clogged with gobs of seaweed, and the water was full of it. Every time a wave would hit, seaweed would tangle around my ankles, and really skeeve me out, and Amelia hated it too.

So, we hung out on shore. Austin went for a walk to a nearby pier, and Amelia and I pulled out our sand toys and played in the sand. Amelia was just sitting there, so I put some sand on her legs. She didn't mind, so I kept piling it on. After I buried her legs, I decided to see if she would sit still long enough so I could fashion a mermaid's tail. I still can't believe she let me do it.

4th of July Weekend at the Coast

Driving to the coast on Friday... Amelia's

new thing is to pile as many stuffed animals as she can on herself.

Pretending to take a nap with Daddy.

On Mustang Island (running away from the water.

Apologies and Web Counter

Sorry, I haven't been posting regularly lately. I have been traveling a lot...in fact, I leave again on the 14th of July for 2 weeks in O'Fallon, IL, then home for a week, then gone again for 1 week in Delaware and 1 week right after in Idaho. When I get home from work, I can hardly get on the computer because Amelia wants to bang on the keyboard. I'll try to post more pictures, but I can't promise anything. Thanks for sticking with me, which brings me to my next item...

...some of you may notice that a few weeks ago I installed a web hit counter, which tells me the number of times that my blog has been accessed. It's on the way bottom of the page on the left hand side. I think I've only made one post since then, so I was really surprised to see that I had 120 hits. Either people are checking the blog to see if I've posted any updates, or I've been logging into too often to watch the "Boomdiada" video. Either way.

We're escaping the inevitable 4th of July parties that our downstairs and upstairs neighbors are surely going to host, by spending this weekend on the coast. Amelia's going to swim, for real, in the ocean on this trip. I'll post pictures when we get back.

Happy 4th of July!

Pictures from today

I ditched work at noon today and came home to start a long 3 1/2 day weekend with my A's. I took some pictures of Amelia in her Bollywood-inspired outfit (really a beach coverup and a pair of Sophie's lounge pants).

Thanks, Sophie!

Amelia is really lucky that she has a cousin, Sophie, who is a size ahead of her in clothes, because that means that we get Sophie's hand-me-downs. We got a box of clothes last month and I haven't had to buy Amelia shoes or clothes for summer at all. And Amelia's been wearing the heck out of them, too, something different every day. Amelia's modeling a cute orange and pink sunsuit in these pictures.

Amelia's Bad Habits

Amelia's picked up a few bad habits recently...

Tantrums

Spitting

And nail biting. I wonder where she learned to bite her nails???

From Mommy!