Over to the other side of the country and back again

We had such a good time in Washington I didn’t want to come home! We did so much and had such an awesome time that I can’t put it all down in words. We have so many stories and memories that it wouldn’t do it justice. I wanted to put the pictures into a Smilebox (online scrapbooking thing) but my computer is being dumb…so that didn’t happen. I am just going to have to captions all the pictures to tell the story….

She is playing and sleeping at the airport in Atlanta. She did very well on the planes. I think the worst parts were the layovers. We had a long one on the way there. We were originally supposed to go to Cincinnati but with a big storm and mechanical errors we ended up in Atlanta, twice. Otherwise she was great! She only got loud when she couldn’t hear herself on the plane. It was cute.

Here she is with her Great-Grandpa Tighe. We stayed at his house the night we flew in. I think he really liked her.

While we were still in Seattle we went to see Derick’s sister Rochel, her husband David, and their new baby Evelette (I’m not sure if I am spelling that correctly.) Oh man, was that baby adorable!! She was so smiley. She was only two months old and all she did was smile at you.

We took the long way back to Ferndale and went on the ferry. It was really cool. I realized that this was O’lena’s first time on a boat. She loved it! She loved the wind in her face. She just laughed and giggled. That is the ferry behind us.

Okay if you don’t know Derick has 8 brothers and sisters. There are nine total, so to try not to confuse everyone I will give the rank where everyone is in the lineup. For example: Derick is 6^th of 9. His sister Rochel is 4^of 9. One night we went to brother Josh’s (3 of 9) house for dinner. I got to meet him, his wife, and their two kids. They were great and I really enjoyed meeting them. I know Derick was really glad to see them too. It had been a long time. Derick’s brother Wesley (9 of 9) went with us.

One of the days we went out to meet up with sister Rebecca (7 of 9) and her family while they were camping out at this river. It was so beautiful. You looked up and the foothills were right in front of you. It was real rustic camping. No real bathrooms. Yeah they had a bucket and a shovel….We women did learn that there was a port-a-potty on the property next to us so we trespassed and made use of it. O’leeny had fun playing in the water. The boys had a different kind of fun in the water. At one point Wesley got his jeep stuck (twice) and some nice people helped him to litterly dig it out.

This was the first time O’lena met her other set of grandparents. She took to them instantly. I think they kind of like her too. You know how sometimes people have habits that they don’t know that they have? Well…..my mother-in-law whistles. When you ask her she doesn’t know she does it. And you know when spend so much time with someone you tend to pick up some habits….well her granddaughter is whistling! No joke she is puckering her lips and blowing. She evens get sound. It is quite amazing! Here she is spending time with her grandma and grandpa. :)

We went to this farm where they grew a whole bunch of things. The coolest were the beautiful and huge flowers! You could cut your own beautiful bouquet. They had huge blue berry bushes too. Actually everywhere in Ferndale there were flowers. I have never seen anything like it. Every house has a vegetable garden, rose bushes, and hydrangeas. It was very beautiful there. I really enjoyed it.

We went to Lynden, a cute and quaint town next to Ferndale. It was very pretty and flowery too. Anyways, it was settled by the Dutch and had this big wind mill in the middle of the town. It is actually a hotel, but it was cool. They were having a raspberry festival with a car show, venders, raspberry everything, and even kid basketball tournament. It was a lot of fun. We went to eat at the Dutch bakery too. That was really yummy.

The one Sunday that we were there we went to Derick’s home Ward (that is the LDS church meeting house for those who don’t know.) We had the honor of having Derick’s father (Mike) give O’lena her blessing. Mormon’s don’t baptize infants because it is believe that they are not held accountable until the age of 8, so they give them blessings. It was so beautiful. I cried. Of course this is the only picture we got of O’lena in her blessing gown her grandmother made her! I need to go take some more before she grows out of it. It fit her perfectly that day, like we were meant to wait that long. The second best thing was having a lot of the family there (everyone that was in town.) I felt very blessed myself that everyone made the effort to be there for her.

This is us back at the house after church. Yes, I planned us to be matchy matchy.

I think this turned out to be the best picture of the bunch! She was actually chewing on it. Don’t worry; it is a pellet gun not a real one.

After church everyone came over for supper. We ate on their beautiful back patio. It was great to sit and hangout. This is Derick’s sister Rebecca (7) and brother Lee (1). Rebecca has O’lena in her arms and her daughter Aubrey sitting with her.

Derick with his nephews Adden and Mason. He is showing the how to load the pellet gun. Yeah, there was a lot of gun talking and gun shooting while we were there. The cool thing was that they were out in the country so they could just shoot on the property. You didn’t have to go to a gun range.

Derick, Patty, Mike, and O’lena hanging out after eating.

I love these pictures. Maybe it might have to do with the natural lighting. The grass was amazing there too! You don’t have the weed grass or the fake squishy kind there. Just beautiful, full, almost like long gulf grass, grass there. It was so nice she didn’t need a blanket or anything. I just plopped her down and she was in heaven. She only ate it a couple of times and I didn’t have to worry about fire ants.

Here we are with Aunt Hope (married to D’s oldest brother) and cousin Mason on the monorail in Seattle. Hope was kind enough to show us around.

We had to do the very touristy things. We went to Pike’s market. You know the one where they throw the fish. It was pretty cool, but the best part was the flowers. They had the most beautiful and HUGE bouquets for sale for like $10! Anyone in FM knows you can’t even buy carnations for $10 here. We also ate in the restaurant where they filmed Sleepless in Seattle. It was very good and we had a great view of the sound.

This is Derick eating his mammoth cake. Can you believe it….he ate the WHOLE thing!

Here we are in front of the Space Needle. We didn’t go up because it cost $18 a person! It would have been cool, but that is a bit ridiculous. I dunno, maybe I’m just cheap, but I can think of a lot of things better to do with the money that it would have cost us to go up.

That was actually about the end o f our trip. We caught the red eye out of Seattle and headed for home. She pretty much slept the whole way back…mamma didn’t…but baby did. We really did have a great time. Like I said I did not want to come home at all! I still don’t want to be here. I could be back there sitting on the porch looking at the hydrangeas and eating pie. Oh well…………

PS: I dont know why there are several different fonts. For some reason I cannot get them to stay the same!

6 Months Pictures

So she will be 7 months next week and I am finally reporting on her 6 months stuff. Oh well...better late than never.

We did her 6th month check up and pictures all in one day! She was 18lb and 27inches. She is in the 70ish percentile in all her stuff. The doc said she looked good. :)
After the doctors we went and got her picture taken. We went to Portrait Innovations again. I love that place. The are fast, reasonablely priced, and do a good job. I love her pictures. Now my goal this time is to get these out to everyone before she is a year old. I still haven't sent out her birth pictures to people yet. Actually I am going to send the birth ones with the 6 month ones. I don't know, seem reasonable to me. So in her sixth month she has really become a different baby. She is very talkative, has an opinion on things, plays with toys, and is now mobile! She is crawling...well pulling herself around on her belly. We have a funny video of daddy teasing her with a piece of string, like the cat, well he gets jealous and wants to play too. It is cute, but forever long so probably not going up on the blog. I will try to get something shorter.

Well thats about it... we are heading out to the beach and then on to Washington next week!!! Very exciting!! Enjoy the pictures.

Yes she is falling over on this one, but I love the smile on her face.

This is mommy's personal favorite. I love her cheeks!! I eat them all the time!

This on is daddy's favorite.

The best vidoes ever!

So Daddy had O'lena laughing so hard that mommy had to get a video of it. She just kept going and going. She was laughing like that for three days. Then she stopped. We can get her to do it any more. I makes mommy giggle too every time I watch it!

Daddy got her laughing again while playing with her. I thought it was great too. This time I got it on the better camera. We have realized that she has to be in a mood to do it. When you act really weird she will smile at you, but when she is in the right mood you can get her rolling. I love it!

Exciting things happening?

The most exciting things happening: 6 days of school left, we have TILE in the shower, O'lena is awesome, I finally cut my hair, and there is only 6 days of school left! I think I already said that.

Yes, there are six days left for school and I am ready. People/students are starting to get on my nerves. I am ready to spend time with my baby too. I hope this is going to be as good of an experience than I am thinking that it will be. I have big plans that I just KNOW I am not going to get done. Oh well, I can always try.
Yes, WE HAVE TILE!!! Awww the shower. Our two year project is finally getting a face and it is beautiful! I love our accent tile. It is sooooo much better that the previous tile we chose. I love it. See the pictures below, though they do not do it justice.
Yes, O'lena is awesome. She is defiantly getting a personality. She knows what she likes and what she doesn't like. She likes her toys. She has really started to play and enjoys playing with people and her toys. She doesn't like that she cannot not crawl yet. She kind of scoots on her head to where she is trying to go, but not very successfully. I think she is getting balder and balder.
Yes, I finally cut my hair off. I have been thinking about it for a while and even blogged about it. Well I got it cut last week. It is a longer bob with layers and bangs. I like it. It is much more fun, but I actually have to do it in the morning which is a pain. I keep telling people I feel like I'm 19 again because this is the length I wore it in college alot. I'll have to get a picture up soon.
What else? Oh yeah, 6 more days of school. And by the time some of you read this there may only be four or five days left!!!! So excited!

On to pictures....So for some reason I cannot get any of the picture to move around so everything is backwards. Blogger can be annoying at times!

Yeah I thought this was a great one. She is just so darn cute!
Jessica, Larry, and the family came down to visit us over the holiday weekend. I love it when they come. It makes me realize what life is going to be like with many kids. I am looking forward to it. They are great to have around and I really miss them when they are gone. Here is Lena with cousin Tiggy Tighe. He did very well with her. I was impressed. Here is everyone hanging out in the pool for some nice relaxation. They were working hard putting up shower tile. I like this picture with everyone hanging out in the pool. The kids were in it everyday. Actually a couple of times every day.

Mostly completed shower. Derick, Larry and Jess worked really hard. Derick is now working on the bottom. There is a light at the end of the tunnel and I can see it. Just a few more tiles and grout and we may have something we can get clean in!! Oh yeah, we had a fire on the porch trying to cook hamburgers. We needed the help of the baking powder.
This is the first piece of tile going up on the wall!!! It was so monumental that I had to take a picture.

O'leenee being adorable in her jeans. She kept sliding with her socks on the counter. It was really cute. Daddy is getting very good at dressing her!
O'lena is practicing her sitting up. She is getting better and better, though she still gets distracted by her feet and ends up folding herself in half. It is really cute. She has learned that she likes her feet in her mouth. This is O'lena's first trip in the pool. She LOVED it!! She has been in several times since and has become a water baby. She gets kicks and so excited when she sees a pool now. She wants to go in and swim. We are going to have to be careful when she gets mobile. We got her this awesome floating things she she loves just hanging out in. Though she is not too fond of uncles jumping in and slashing her.
Daddy and Lena swimming in the pool!