Still catching up...

I'm trying to get a book read for my book club on Thursday. After that I'll work on writing about Evie at 1 year old. I'll try to keep it to 20 pages or so. :)

Thanks to everyone for your encouraging comments about our family portraits. I appreciate the offers of help, but the pictures were at J*C*Penney and we don't have high-quality digital versions to photoshop, only the prints and the low resolution photos that they e-mailed me and that I posted on the blog. I wish we could afford to hire a *real* photographer for these things, but that is outside our budget these days without me bringing in a salary. Anyhow, you are all right that I was NOT used to having that much makeup on. This is me with my normal makeup (and, as always, looking as though I don't have any on when actually I do): I took pictures of Evie in her birthday diaper yesterday, and decided that this will probably be the end of that tradition. I had planned to continue until she potty learned, but it's just getting too difficult to get her to sit still! I might change my mind next month, though. We'll see. Here is the only decent shot I got:

And then this started happening:

And I bribed her to sit still with her new toy cell phone:

But even that didn't work for long:

And then she was down and looking for my cell phone:

And it was over:

(look at that big girl stride in the above photo!!!)

Happy First Birthday to Evie!

The day went GREAT. More on that later, I promise. For now, I'll just say:

1. We didn't get a lot of pictures because we were all so chatty and busy hosting, playing with Evie, eating, etc.
2. The pictures we did get demonstrate the gift that Evie loved most of all: a D*isney P*rincess toy flip phone, which is a gift from her birth father, G. It figures! :)

Evie ignoring the rest of her gift opening after receiving the phone: Still playing with the phone in her high chair before her dessert:

Wondering "why do I have to eat this thing, can't I have my phone back?"--

In the end she devoured the clown cone from B*askin R*obbins (the reason it's not a cake is a story for another post), but somehow didn't make a colossal mess of it. She makes huge messes all the time, but showed restraint when it came to bubble gum ice cream and a chocolate cookie:

Happy Birthday to my precious toddler!

1 Year "Professional" Photos

They went about as well as you'd expect for a photo shoot that included:

• a one-year-old
• a one-year-old who needed a nap (I swear when I made the reservation that wasn't her nap time!)
• a Daddy who doesn't like to smile for photos
• a Mommy who had her makeup done at a salon and looks like a clown
• a Mommy who was spit up on before the shoot and didn't realize that she hadn't cleaned up her shirt well enough (aren't the stinkin' photographers supposed to tell me?!)

I think I'll be taking her another time, to another place, very shortly. She melted down before we got any good photos of her alone in her birthday dress.

Our free 8x10 choice:

Pics of us with spit-up on my shirt and a crapload of makeup:

Fun pics of Evie and Pearl (these were the first shots, before the family pics):

And the one family photo in which Evie hides my stained shirt (but not my clown cheeks):

Card Reader Working!

Yay! I'll try to at least post pictures in the next few days and add text and video after family departs. Here are some pics from the last few days.

Evie loves to cop a squat these days (and be outside):
Strolling in Nana and Papa's backyard:
J and his brother playing B*eatles R*ock B*and:
Evie in pigtails, in her new car seat:

Here's what she and I did (shredded kleenex in another room of the church) during the last half of Grandma G's funeral, after Evie just could. not. sit. still. any. more:

Incidentally, this last photo was taken in the same room where I got dressed and ready before I married J over 11 years ago. I used the bathroom at one point and had a flashback of being in that same stall with two bridesmaids holding up my huge dress. :)

A Sad Reunion

We've just returned from a few days visiting J's hometown after his grandmother unexpectedly passed away on Friday. It was wonderful to see so much of J's family (dozens of people flew or drove in from all over the country and 2 very special people flew in from Mexico City); funerals are strange that way, with an element of joy from family reunion mixed with the sorrow from a loved member's passing. I'm not going to try to do Evie's great-grandmother's memory justice in this post. I'll save that for another time. For now, I'll simply say that she was a beautiful lady and we are grateful to have so many fun memories of her to comfort us. Here are a few photos of her from last month.

Blowing bubbles for Evie:
Grandma G is second from the left:

Another consequence of our time in Minnesota is that I am behind schedule on preparations for Evie's birthday party and will be scrambling to get everything in order in the next few days. I would promise to at least post pictures right away, but my card reader is being difficult right now, so I'm not sure whether or not I'll be able to do that. For those of you who are close to us and can't celebrate with us on Saturday, I'm sorry; I'll do my best.

Short (and Funny) Video

I'm getting nostalgic as Evie's birthday approaches, and I'm working on a few different montages. Here is one that cleverly times music and video to (hopefully) make you chuckle. The very end of the video isn't really done yet; I need to get some recent video of Evie's confident trot for the finale. Enjoy.

Sunday Photos

We have a photographer friend staying with us this weekend, and had a family day at the park. Here are my favorite shots:

Dog Door Video

At Deanna's request, here is a short video of Evie doing one of her tricks: crawling through one of our 2 dog doors. We have one leading from the house to the porch and another leading from the porch to the deck. She loves both equally and will crawl through whichever is closer, unblocked or has a dog on the other side.

In fact, we (sadly) haven't spent much time on our screened porch in recent weeks because she will completely ignore the toys there and spend the entire time trying to get through the dog doors. She is so persistent!

We try blockades (the dog food container in this video is one such attempt) but she outwits us more often than not. The only thing that works, really, is for J and I to be out on the porch together and each one of us sit with our back against a dog door. But then we can't really interact with her as well, and the dogs can't come and go as they are used to doing. Plus, she still tries to crawl behind us. She is a determined little girl!

I'm embarrassed by my tone of voice in this video because it conveys how exasperated I was with her the day I shot this. It was the day Evie really started walking, and I had just caught her walking on video for the first time right before I shot this footage. We had been out on the porch a lot that day (without J there). I felt as though I'd been chasing her from one dog door to the next all day, and you can hear it in my voice at the end of the tape! Sorry, Evie. Mama loves you.