A day at the park

Now that Alyssa is walking and practically running, she loves the playground more than ever! The swing is too boring for her. She prefers exploring on her own. We took a few photos when we were playing yesterday. Aly even learned how to maneuver around the steps and go down the slide on her own after watching another toddler. We'll have more photos to share next week.. We have a big wedding weekend coming up this weekend. My sister-in-law, Laura, is getting married!! Yay!!! Let's hope our little flower girl behaves herself:)

Where did the summer go??

I'm just a bit behind on updating the blog. I'm not sure where the time has gone! We've really had a great summer and we had a lot of visitors and fun times. Alyssa's birthday was a month ago. We celebrated with immediate family and Aly loved every minute of it. Here are few pictures of her enjoying her birthday present from Carter and Alexis! She loved chasing Ernie. The last picture is Alyssa hugging her Ernie doll from Uncle Jubal. Aly loves giving hugs and kisses. She even hugs her shoes and kisses the telephone. She's such a girl!

2 Down, 69 More to Go!

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary. Todd's grandparents were married 70 years before his grandpa passed away, so I told him that we need to break the family record! We decided to celebrate our anniversary with Alyssa, so we took her to the children's museum and then her grandparents watched her while we went out for a quick dinner. Here are a couple of photos from the museum. Alyssa loved her visit and looks forward to many more.

Good Tunes

We weren't using our living room space, so we decided to gate off half of the room and make it Alyssa's play room. We play music for her while she's playing and she loves it. She likes to hold onto the gate and "dance." Here's a short video clip. We'll try to post a few more clips so you can see her in action. She loves just about any type of music (regardless of how good or bad it is). When she gets fussy in the car, we can put a Jack Johnson CD in and she'll immediately get quiet. We've listened to the Jack Johnson CD too many times, so we hate it but we love it. Todd just got her a kid's Barenaked Ladies CD, so he's been walking around singing the "Vegetable Town" song. Good tunes!

Baby's Best Friend

Alyssa has become very fond of Ernie. She smiles as soon as she sees her furry friend in the mornings. Sometimes she even waves at him! I have to assume that Ernie looks like a goofy cartoon character to her because she thinks he's so funny. He can just sneeze, cough (yes, he coughs), whine, etc., and she'll bust out laughing. Ernie enjoys her company as well as long as she doesn't pull his hair.

Link to More Photos

I added a link to the right side of this page for my SmugMug web page. From the SmugMug page, you can view and order photos. Since it has become cumbersome for me to print photos for family and friends, I decided to upload to SmugMug so everyone has access to view and choose their favorites.

Happy viewing!

8 Months

Alyssa turned 8 months old last week. She's been crawling and pulling herself up for about a month now. She loves to explore the world. She also loves to honk her daddy's nose!

Mother's Day Surprise

Todd, Alyssa, and I went to Ohio to spend my first Mother's Day with my mom. We had a nice weekend. Todd planted a garden for me for Mother's Day. He planted tomatoes, peppers, and herbs near our enormous Rubarb plant. Ernie (pictured above) is responsible for keeping the critters from eating the plants. Todd also made a garden for my mom when we were visiting!

Fun in the sun

Alyssa and I joined Kari (Alderman) Wingerter and her adorable son Reid for a fun adventure yesterday! We took the babies for a long stroll to lunch and then stopped by a rummage sale, and then got some ice cream. I think Alyssa may already have a boyfriend!

How do you like those apples?

With help from Alyssa, I took these photos for my photography class assignment. The assignment was to incorporate fruits and veggies into our shoot for the week. Aly happens to love fresh apples. Enjoy our first mini photo story!

A visit from Grandma!

Grandma Mel visited a few weeks ago and we had such a great time! Alyssa loved all of the attention and grandma loved spoiling her! We wish time didn't pass by so quickly. She has to stay longer next time!!

A Taste of Spring Cont....

Here are a few more photos of Alyssa's first trip to the park!

A Taste of Spring

We had a couple of warm days last week, so Alyssa and I spent some time strolling around the neighborhood and "playing" at the park. We're so excited to have the park so close to our house. I got to have some fun too by taking lots of photos with my camera. I can't imagine having better subject matter! I've spent all winter taking photos inside, so it was good practice taking pictures outside with the light changing constantly.

More Family Photos

Family Photos

We had our family photos taken while we were on vacation in Florida. The weather was actually cold and very windy, so Alyssa didn't have much patience and neither did her daddy....