Eight Months Old

Today marks Annie's eight month birthday--she celebrated with apples and rice cereal and by pulling all of her pants out of her drawer (she assures me this was quite thrilling!). We had a nice day together, with lots of playing and exploring. Annie is more and more willing to leave toys behind to see what's in other parts of the room, which will be a wonderful motivation for me to keep things clean!

We had a great Thanksgiving week, with great time with family and friends. We started the Sunday before Thanksgiving with our traditional Thanksgiving with friends. Here are Annie and Daddy goofing around at the table:


Thanksgiving weekend itself meant three meals. On Thursday we enjoyed a wonderful dinner (complete with lefse!) with our friends Brett and Emily and Brett's family.


On Friday evening, Grandma Barb, Uncle Jeff, Aunt Dee, Cousin Emily and Uncle Greg all came over for dinner and playtime together.


On Sunday, we headed to Papa and Nana's for our final Thanksgiving dinner.


Needless to say, this left us feeling very thankful and very full! Annie and I especially enjoyed having Eric home for the long weekend--as much as Annie enjoys waving "hi" and "goodbye" to Eric during the week, it was much better to get to go on walks with him, eat meals with him, and have lots of quality play time!

Now, we are gearing up for Advent. We got out decorations on Sunday evening, and tomorrow morning will go shopping for a tree...We know that Annie won't fully appreciate all the wonder and anticipation of Christmas this year, but we are looking forward to sharing it with her nonetheless!

Happy Thanksgiving

We began Annie's first holiday season with our traditional Thanksgiving with friends, and are looking forward to all the wonderful, crazy events that will follow over this next month.

Annie's intense curiousity and her skillful rolling, lunging, and scooting (no crawling yet!) have joined forces to start getting her into new places. She loves the fact that no longer does she have to wait for Mom and Dad to get her toys, she can just cuddle up to the toy basket, pull it over, and have her pick.

With food, we're delighted to report that she continues to do quite well; this week she added peas and bananas to her list and seems to enjoy them both. In fact, she seems unbelievably enthusiastic about peas--cooked, pureed, peas--I must say this confuses me.

Finally, as you'll see from the pictures, we've enjoying some cooler temperatures here and all the challenges that come with keeping a baby warm...We must admit, we love dressing her in this hat!!! And, she seemed to love Daddy keeping her warm on a walk today...she cooed quite loudly most of the way around the block.

It just doesn't stop...

Annie gets more adorable by the day!

Her babbling is becoming far more varied and constant, and she seems more and more intent on communicating. She is very intentional in trying to connect with people. This morning at church she had several ushers and a group of ladies under her spell throughout the service (during which she enjoyed--as did the whole congregation--listening to Daddy play the marimba!).

She is not crawling yet, but can move herself fairly well with a combination of rolling, scooting (while sitting), and lunging. Many of the positions she ends up in make me think that she may be destined for the ballet.

In the world of foods, the newest item is an avocado, it should make her Uncle John proud to know she seemed to love it at first bite!

We're planning a nice fall walk this afternoon, and to enjoy baking apples and other holiday dishes as we approach Thanksgiving. We hope everyone is doing well!


Annie seems to love playing catch, and generally being silly; note Annie's skillful raising of one eyebrow (how I wish I could do that with such ease...)

Home Again, Home Again...

After a wonderful week in Maui, we are happy to be home with Eric.

Our last few days in Maui included more early morning time down at the beach (Annie's wake up time was persistently 2 hours earlier than everyone else!), time at the pool, time in the ocean, lots of playtime with River (when naps coincided), wonderful meals and relaxing. Our last full night was Sunday, and we celebrated our time in Maui by attending a Luau...Annie managed (despite attempts to convince her otherwise) to stay awake the whole time--she was especially fascinated by the Samoan Fire Dancers!!

We left Monday evening and arrived home (to much chillier weather!) yesterday afternoon. Once again, Annie and River were great travelers, allowing Erin and I to get much needed sleep on the red-eye home! Since we've been home, we've managed to log in a lot more sleep (even Annie who was understandably worn out from our adventures) and a lot of play time with Daddy.

It's fun to think of the holidays approaching...

Another day in the sun

Today we enjoyed a lot of time outside...we walked around Kapalua, the area where Erin's family has their condo. It's a beautiful area, and--while it was a bit humid (that made us feel right at home!)--we loved time out and about.

We spend a good part of the afternoon at the pool, where Annie enjoyed being dunked, playing with River, with Erin's dad Ron, and a fish squirt toy. Tomorrow we look forward to a relaxing day at the beach, and then a luau.

Time here has been really relaxing, and Annie is proving what a good little traveler she can be!

More fun...

Hello, all! Annie and I are continuing to enjoy our time in Maui--eating wonderful food, playing in the ocean and the pool, enjoying beautiful scenery, great company--but missing Daddy, of course.

Annie is doing very well with our vacation schedule, and charms everyone who dares to look at her. She gets quite determined to make friends with people, and will stare them down till they look at her, and then gives them her sweet smile...it's pretty endearing!

Besides our time here, the other big news is that Annie's top two teeth are coming in, one has peeked through, the other is close! We hope all is well!

Aloha!

That's right...Annie and I send you "Happy November" greetings from Maui. Last Thursday, we got a wonderful surprise invitation for a week in Maui with our friends River, Erin, and her family. So, we left early Tuesday morning, and have had a great time! The kids were GREAT travelers on our 15 hours between home and here, and have done pretty well adjusting to time. We had a fun Halloween, going to a big party in Lahaina--a bizarre mix of Disneyland and New Orleans, with lots of great costumes in a gorgeous setting! We plan to spend the next few days enjoying this BEAUTIFUL place, Annie is loving the warmth and the water, and we enjoyed a beautiful rainbow over the ocean as we ate breakfast this morning!