Happy anniversary to the best guy in town

Today Larry and I are celebrating our eighth wedding anniversary. What a wonderful, quick eight years those have been! Although we have our moments, I still love him to pieces and am so grateful to have him as my husband and partner. He is a wonderful, smart, funny man, and he's awfully cute, too, which is a bonus. ;)

Happy anniversary, my love! I love you!

"Dogcou, no!"

Much to my previously-mentioned amazement, Sara has begun to speak in a few sentences. Here are a few of her "greatest hits":

• "I want ___." I hear this innumerable times each day. Today I heard that she wanted to go outside ("I want ide"), that she wanted a banana ("I want nana"), that she wanted to get out of her stroller ("I want walk"), and so on. "I want," Baby Girl has discovered, is very POWERFUL.
• "I want bus." Sara is currently obsessed with "The Wheels on the Bus," so I hear this little sentence many, many times each day.
  
• "Uh-oh! Shoe!" In a mistake I will never again repeat, I bought Sara's shoes about a half-size larger than her actual foot size, thinking she'd grow right into them. Instead, they slip off constantly. Sara made sure to alert me today so we didn't lose one.
• "Dogcou, no!" This might be my favorite. While Sara refers to most dogs as "woof," she calls Tanja and Eric's dog Cougar "Dogcou." Since her infancy, she has heard people telling Cougar to stop barking, and she has already taken up the cause. While we were camping, every time Cougar barked, Sara would say, "Dogcou, no!"

We are having so much fun with our little one!

Family vacation 2009: Lopez Lake

It has become tradition in recent years for my side of the family to go on a camping trip each summer. This year we planned the trip for a bit earlier in anticipation of little Kyle's arrival in early August. Off we went to Lopez Lake: our little family, my parents, my two stateside siblings, and our friends the Merediths and the Ramsiers.



This was our first trip to Lopez Lake. I don't think anyone liked it quite as well as our beloved Shaver Lake, but it was a fun trip. Larry and I decided to rent a Waverunner, and that certainly increased the fun factor quite a bit! Nothing quite like zipping across the water at high speed with very little other watercraft traffic!

Carla's baby shower

Tanja and I hosted a baby shower for Carla on Saturday. Little Kyle Alexander is due in early August, and we could not be more excited!

Preg and pregger


Kyle's oma and mama


Yummy food from Gondola's


Ladies chatting



Beautiful, delicious cake by Rosina


All-blacks rugby teddy


Preparing the the new reality...


It was a fun day!

Mommy and Me Field Trip: Santa Ana Zoo

On Friday we took our field trip to Santa Ana with our Mommy and Me class. My friend Candice once described it as a "pretty lame zoo," but it's perfect for toddlers. Since the weather was cool, the monkeys were very active and put on a fun show for us all. It was a nice morning!

Sara and her friend Sophia by the birds


Hanging out on the bench. Sophia kept trying to touch Sara and apparently she wasn't in the mood for it. LOL


Aah.. A bench to call her own


Riding the train

NINETEEN months old!

Our sweet toddler is just toddling along! This was a really fun month with Sara. After a phase with a lot of whining and neediness, Sara has been a bit more independent (as far as year-and-a-half-year-olds go) and a bit less temperamental. Maybe it's because her molars are finally breaking through; maybe it's because her language skills have improved; maybe it's because her mama has better learned to meet Sara's toddler needs. Whatever the case, I'm embracing this new phase and hoping it lasts a while!

Even though no one else can really understand her, Sara is now starting to talk in sentences. Most of them start with "I want (ahwa)..." I keep working on "please," but I don't hear it very often just yet.

Sara loves to climb and has gotten a lot better at it. She regularly climbs her way onto the couches now and will climb the ladders at the playground with some assistance. She also loves to try to jump, but she doesn't achieve liftoff yet.

Sara has little patience for fine-motor, crafty kind of stuff. I try to get her to scribble, and she'll do it for a couple of seconds, but that's about it. She'd much rather look at books or transfer objects from container to container. She also loves to do all the hand motions for "The Wheels on the Bus."

She still loves her banana more than anything, but Baby Girl can, as Larry likes to say, "put away the groceries." She's not a big veggie fan, unfortunately, but otherwise the girl can certainly eat!

Overall, it's sad to watch babyhood falling away, but toddlerhood is a whole lot of fun. We love our baby girl!

Happy Birthday, Tante Susi!