7 Month Portraits

I decided that starting this month (I may change for the 1 year) I would start taking Kate's monthly portraits myself. David's parents got me a VERY nice camera for Christmas that I love, so I decided to finally put it to use for "portraits". **WARNING*** There are A TON of pictures in this post...but I just couldn't decide!

I am a little behind (ummm...2.5 weeks!) on the 7th Month, but I was waiting for my mom to come to town. I had planned on taking the pictures outside, but since we woke up on Monday & Tuesday mornings to rain, we decided I should take some inside to make sure we got some.

I definitely took WAY more pictures than they take at a studio, so like I said...tons of pictures! Enjoy!

When we woke up this morning, it wasn't raining!!! So, we packed up the car & headed over to Maude Cobb. When we pulled up, I realized in my hurry I had left my camera at home. Yep, went to take pictures, didn't bring the camera. If we went all the way back to my house, it would've been naptime by the time we got back, so we just decided to use Mom's Cannon point and shoot to see what we could get. I think we did pretty well...

Thank you for coming to visit & spoiling us Nana!

Happy Birthday Aunt Bethany!

Hope you had a great day!

Crawling!

The Little Girl is becoming quite the mover! It's just so amazing how fast they pick up on things - Thursday, she's crawling for the first time & last night, she was going across the room.

My life as I knew it is definitely over :)

Yay! Kate!

Lots of fun stuff happening around our house! For about 2 weeks, Kate has been easily moving from sitting up to going to all-fours. She rocks around, lifts up her hands, reaches, everything you can possibly imagine. We knew she was going to crawl at any moment...and last Thursday she finally did! I've been trying to catch it on video, but of course she only does it when I don't have the camera out :). It's still a very methodical, slow crawl (which I am GREAT WITH!), but I know I don't have much time left with that. The very first day she did it, I left a bowl with "snacks" in it across the room from her while I went in the other room. When I came back - snacks everywhere! I know my life is about to be turned upside down!!! Hopefully, I'll catch her on video soon.

Kate also learned to clap last week. It's too cute not to share...

100 posts!

I thought we'd celebrate our 100th post with one of my favorite pictures from this week...

She was sitting up in her bed after I put her down for a nap, and when I checked back on her a little later, this is how she was sleeping.

Happy 4th Anniversary!

Last Thursday, July 9th, David and I celebrated our 4th Anniversary. I think we've graduated out of "Newly Married" now. I love being married to this man. He is all the things I dreamed of as a little girl, and so much more.

Before leaving town last Tuesday, we exchanged gifts with each other. We try to follow the "traditional" theme for our gifts to each other, but sometimes stray a little ;) This year the traditional gift was "flowers".

Last year, for our anniversary trip, David bought himself some glasses similar to these, but they broke. I like fun glasses like this on him, so I thought he needed a new pair. These didn't work...but hopefully we'll find some that do!

At least if the gifts were floral things - the bags are!

Here he is reading the poem I wrote to explain one of his gifts...

It won't make us rich,

but I thought it was clever,

on our floral anniversary,

to take an endeavor.

FTD Floral company

sells many flowers.

Your stock will go up,

when with boquets you shower

(your wife).

**I had a hard time with that last line ;)**

David has recently found a new "hobby" in following the stock market. I thought it was fairly creative to get him shares of FTD Floral stock.

A candle that has a floral smell...

A Target gift card...notice the flowers

David also got me a beautiful Fossil "dressy" watch.

Up next...our childless vacation!!!

Happy 7 Months Kate!

We are having so much fun with this little girl! This month's post doesn't have pictures or video since my house is a mess, my bag is still packed from my vacation, & I need to get some work done before I turn in my time sheet, so it's mostly just for my benefit of not forgetting. More pictures to come soon...I promise!

--Loves peek-a-boo

--Loves songs with motions

--Studies new people very carefully, but warms up soon

--LOVES to eat. So far we haven't found anything this girl won't eat: cereals, bananas, peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, avacados, carrots, pears, peaches, & apples. Squash will be added this month! We laugh because we're not sure if she would ever stop eating if we would let her. She is ALWAYS ready for more!

--Very observant of the world around her: she is constantly checking things out.

--Started some finger foods: puffs, small bits of bananas & avacados - still working on the "pincher" motion. Sometimes she gets it sometimes she needs help

--Scoots backwards - still no forward crawling - but she moves all over the room & reaches so hard!

--loves to be thrown in the air, bounced, etc.

--Moves from her tummy to sitting independently

--found the remote to the TV

--puts more syllables together - it's noise all day around here

--still sleeping at least 11 hours @ night & taking 3 naps. The first two are still 2 hours, but the 3rd one is fading - just an hour. I'm sure it'll be gone by next month

--no more teeth yet

--easily expresses dissatisfaction when she doesn't get what she was hoping for :)

--flaps her arms up and down when she is excited

--mimics things we do: motions, sounds

--holds her hands above her head & waits for you to clap when she does something she is proud of (sitting up,etc)

-pulls to standing holding our hands (and once on the crib!)

4th of July

David's older sister, Mandy, and her family came to town. His younger sister, Bethany, also came back from A&M for the weekend - so everyone was together! It doesn't happen very often, so it was a nice treat!

We had a great time cooking out, playing games, eating homemade ice cream, visiting, etc.

At one point, I snuck out in the back yard and got some super cute pictures of Kate. Enjoy...

We also took some family photos & got some pictures of all the kids together. Those are on my Mother-in-Law's camera though, so hopefully I'll get them up later. I am so far behind on blogging, but tomorrow morning I head out for our anniversary vacation! My mom is keeping Kate, and I am looking so forward to time with David.

Stay tuned next week: family pics; a visit from Nana, Aunt Kristin & Connor; visit to Austin; anniversary trip. *hopefully!*