We're Back!

We got back from Missoula late last night, past midnight, and we've spent the day recuperating from the trip and unpacking and washing the car. We had a great time, and we came back with almost 300 pictures from our trip! We love going to Missoula, and even Amelia did great in the car (watching DVDs and sleeping most of the time) but we think we will fly next time. I'll be making posts over the next couple of days. Hope everybody enjoys the photos!

Going on Vacation!

There will be no updates for a few weeks, because we are going on vacation! We are headed to Missoula, Montana tomorrow afternoon, and we will return on Tuesday, August, 6th. We will be spending our vacation with Austin's family at his parents' house. To those in Montana, we will see you soon, and to everyone else, check back in a few weeks to see pictures from our vacation.

Little Miss Crabby Pants

Amelia started making this pucker face on Wednesday night. We weren't sure if it was a pout or a smooch face, and we thought it was so cute! After a rough weekend with Amelia's double ear infection, and very little sleep for all of us, we have realized it is definitely a pout, and it's usually followed immediately with a nap.

Blackberry Crisp

We went to the Farmer's Market yesterday, and along with the usual onions, garlic, carrots, and cucumbers that we bought, I got a pint of blackberries. I made them into a blackberry crisp, which Amelia and I shared for dessert last night. She really liked it, and even though a bunch is smeared on her face, she actually got most of it in her mouth.

Mimi Monster Baby Eater

These pictures were taken in the waiting room of Amelia's pediatrician. She's holding her beloved doll, Therese. She first saw Therese in the nursery of St. Therese Church while we were in Wisconsin for my Grandpa's funeral. I hadn't brought any toys with us to the church, so I was thrilled when I saw the nursery. Amelia saw this doll right away, and I let her hold it during the service. When we were leaving, I kind of "liberated" Therese from the nursery, and Amelia has chewed on her ever since. Amelia's cousin Zachary saw her gnawing on the doll's head, and started calling her "Mimi Monster Baby Eater."

Sunday afternoon

Can't write much about these, since I'm wrangling Amelia at the same time, but I took these pictures earlier this afternoon in our back yard.

It's in that "in between" stage...

Girl's bangs are getting long! I'm not emotionally ready to give Amelia her first haircut, so I thought I would try some barrettes in her hair. Sure, they are cute, but even with a drop of hair gel, the second she touched it, it fell out. But at least the barrette is cute and I got a picture before it fell out.

Crabby Amelia

Amelia was really tired earlier tonight, but she wouldn't lay down for a nap, and cried when I put her in her crib, even though the lights were on and I was right in there with her. She usually perks up and smiles for the camera whenever I take a picture, but not tonight. Even crying and crabby, she is still so cute to me!!!

Grandma Laqueata's Page

I got a LOT done on Amelia's family memory scrapbook this weekend, and I completed 3 pages. Above is Grandma Laqueata's page. She had sent a great, long letter to use, so I had to get a creative way to use it. So I came up with this idea of a fence that opens up and on the inside I put in her letter.

I also completed pages for Grandma Kathy and Grandma Glenda, but as I am going to bring the scrapbooks up to Montana later this month, they will get to see them then.

For Grandma Sally

I took these pictures about a week ago and I forgot to post them. My mom sent this cute seersucker outfit for Amelia. It has matching bloomers and a hat, and she looks so cute in it and it kept her cool. It's been pretty hot here (not Montana-hot, of course), but in the 90's, so Amelia is usually wearing just a diaper or a cute outfit like this one to stay cool.

Her new favorite thing to do is stand...and she will pull herself up on anything...our legs, furniture, her toys.

You should be sleeping!

MOV02312
Uploaded by Hen7975

I took this video of Amelia on July 3rd, around 10pm. She normally goes to sleep around 8pm, but on this night, she was wide awake and ready to party...or at least, ready to laugh at Dad.

9 Month Dr. Appt

Today Amelia had her 9 month appointment with Dr. Winters.

The doctor said she is doing good, she is thriving and is very smart.

Her stats are as follows:

Height: 28.75" (90th percentile)
Weight: 19 lbs, 10 oz. (75th percentile)

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

MOV02269
Uploaded by Hen7975

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

MOV02246
Uploaded by Hen7975

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.