Vanilla Stir Fry

As you all know I cook a lot, and make a LOT of baked goods. So many in fact that we buy our vanilla in a half gallon jug from Sam's. We also happen to buy our soy sauce this way. Well, we used to keep them next to each other in the pantry and I kept saying one day I'm going to use the wrong thing. That day happened last week, as I was making stir fry on way too little sleep (Evie has decided since we got back from Rochester two weeks ago she doesn't way to sleep through the night anymore, Hannah has been getting up at 6:30 and I've been going to bed way too late) I grabbed the half gallon dark liquid container out of the pantry, poured it into the stir fry and Nathan walks over and asked what I was cooking since there was such a strong vanilla smell. See how we had moved the soy sauce to the fridge a few months ago because we finally read the packaging and it recommended refrigerating after opening. So I added extra soy sauce and the stir fry wasn't that bad, much better than the vanilla enchiladas, but that's a story for Nathan to tell. :-)

Evie's 8 month check up

Evie had an eight month check up at the doctors yesterday. The doctor had wanted to see her at eight months instead of the normal nine because her head and weight percentiles had decreased at both her four and six month check ups. Her head has seemed to have stabilized, however her weight still went down in percentile. When the doctor saw Evie standing at a bench in the room when he walked in, he asked if she could pull herself up and if she could cruise. I said she could and he agreed that she is very mobile for eight months and that could be part of why she has not been putting on as much weight as would be expected. Her current numbers are 17 lbs 1 oz and 28 inches tall. Since her weight is still low we had to do an anemia test, they had to prick three of her fingers to get enough blood. The test results came back within the normal range which is good. We've been cleared until 10 months when we have to go in for another weight check.

Sister love

I often get asked how Hannah is doing with Evie and if she enjoys having Evie around. This week has been a great example of how much Hannah enjoys Evie. Once Hannah is awake in the morning I bring her down stairs and have the baby monitor on so I can hear Evie when she wakes up, several times this week the moment Hannah hears any sort of peep from Evie on the monitor she turns to me and says "Evie's awake, Evie's awake!" and then proceeds to get to the stairs as quickly as possible. Today was a good example as Hannah was still eating when Evie woke up, Hannah stuffed the rest of the waffle in her mouth, said she was all done and ran to the stairs. Once I opened the gate at the bottom of the stairs she ran up as quick as she could and opened Evie's door ran in and said "Good morning Evie" Evie always greets her with a huge grin :-) It's great to watch them interact!

Hannah also loves to "play" with Evie. One day Hannah and I were sitting on the floor playing with Evie and Evie very clearly said "Evie" so clearly in fact that Hannah could tell it sounded like Evie and got very excited and said "Evie said Evie, Evie said Evie Mommy!" Evie has been babbling a lot, so this was just another sounds in her babbling, but it was fun to watch how excited Hannah is about her ability to talk. This past week Evie also responded with an attempt, which was very close to "Hi" when Nathan said hi to her and has introduced the "Na" sound into her babbling. Everyone says she's going to be a talker, we'll wait and see.

Saturday Visitors

Friday was a busy day, Nathan went and helped out with "fabulous Fridays" at church. In the morning the meet at the church building and do worship and that type of thing and then they head out for an activity for the day. The girls and I headed over to a friends in the morning and spent the morning outside enjoying the kiddie pools they had out, it's been hot (upper 90s) and dry(er) here for the past couple weeks, so playing in the water was fun. After that we came home, did naps and then headed out for a birthday party right after naps. When we got home form the party we had a voice message from a friend who lives in Singapore and was currently in town. The message said we had been on his mind and he was wondering if we wanted to do breakfast, Saturday. I heard the message and said to Nathan "I don't like being on people's mind. The last time someone was on Konrad's mind they ended up going on a missions trip to China" Well we had Konrad over for breakfast on Saturday and there was no mission trip or anything like that, but we did have a wonderful time visiting and some good waffles too. After that the Barnes came over and after James had his nap on our couch, which he does every time he comes to visit (we have comfy couches) we did some grocery shopping and had some good fajitas. While I was busy drawing a bath for the girls and keeping track of Evie, Sarah helped Hannah pick up her room. I love the Barnes!

The Activities

While in Rochester we enjoyed time with friends and family. After not getting to bed until 3 am, we all slept in on Thursday. The girls slept until 9:30 am! Of course if you think about it, it's only 8:30 CST and really going to bed at 3 you'd hope they would have slept later, but oh well. We take what we can get. We then spent a couple hours enjoy the lovely weather, coming from highs in the 90s it would great to only have highs in the 70s.

Here are some pictures from hanging out with Aunt Debbie, Great Grandma Richards and Aunt Lori on Thursday morning.

Hannah exploring the flowers
(there were LOTS of flowers out and the Brown's have a beautiful garden!)

Grandma and Hannah

Hannah copying Aunt Lori (and enjoying the soft grass)

Aunt Debbie with the girls

After that we ate lunch and the girls went down for a nap. Surprisingly they didn't nap longer than usual and we were out of the house by around 4 to go and visit some friends. Hannah got to play with Bronte, who she has seen pictures of and knows about but never had met before and she had a great time. After what was way too short of a visit with the Yelle family I was off to the rehearsal and Nathan and the girls went back to the Brown's where we were staying.

Bronte and Hannah enjoying the sand

After the rehearsal I headed "home" for dinner and then we went out for ice cream.

Friday we went to Wegmans in the morning (the best supermarket on earth!) and in the afternoon we helped decorate the reception hall. The girls did amazingly well entertaining themselves while the rest of us setup tables and decorations. I didn't get a picture of the hall empty, but here's the best before and after I have.

Before


After

And here is Evie and Hannah enjoying the bulk food section of Wegmans.

Friday night we went to Taste of China for dinner, the best Chinese food ever and had a very enjoyable dinner with my sister.

The wedding was Saturday and Debbie an I headed to the church early to do my hair and makeup. Debbie helped everyone else with hair as well, she was great! The wedding and reception went well and we had a very fun day. Unfortunately Nathan was taking pictures for the mother of the bride with her camera, and since I was in the wedding I didn't have a camera on me, so we don't have any pictures from the actual event. The closest thing we have is a family picture taken shortly after we returned.

After the wedding we head back to the Browns for yummy pizza and to pack up. Our flight left at 6 am Sunday so we stayed in a hotel by the airport that night. It was a challenge to get everyone asleep in the same room, but some time around 11 pm Hannah finally fell asleep and I was not far behind her (Nathan and Evie were asleep before that). The alarm went off at 4:30 am and I told Hannah it was time to get up, she said "Is it morning? Do we get to go a plane now?" I said it wasn't really morning, but it was time for a plane ride. We headed to the airport and both our flights home went very smoothly, the girls were wide awake for the first one, but slept the second one which was a nice break.

So that was our adventure in Rochester. After returning home, we've been trying to get back into a more normal routine, however things have still been a little busier than normal. I hoping this week it will calm down.

Traveling

We started out the trip with traveling fun, out flight out of Houston was delayed by an hour and a half. We boarded and un-boarded the plane, Hannah was not so happy when we got off before we had actually flown, but we assured her we would get back on. We were afraid we'd missing our connection in Atlanta (that happened to us on the way home from my sister's wedding last year and we spent the night in the Atlanta airport with an 18 month old and me six months pregnant, not so fun), but fortunately out flight out of Atlanta was delayed by over two hours, which meant we didn't leave Atlanta until after we were originally supposed to be in Rochester. Needless to say it was a long late night, finally getting everyone settled in an asleep around 3 am after arriving in Rochester around 1:30 am. Nathan has again sworn off traveling (going to his sister's wedding in Hawaii in Oct 2007 we had a Phoenix to Phoenix flight on the way out, this involved taking off, flying for an hour and then returning to the Phoenix airport due to a mechanical issue, which resulted in us traveling for almost 24 hours to get there, not so fun). But for some reason we always ended up back on a plane.
On the bright side the rental car place stayed open for our flight (rent with National). We were pleasantly surprised when Nicoletta came to meet us at the airport. Debbie also met us there, and when we arrived at the Brown's house at 3 A.M. it felt just like home.

Evie on her first flight.
The most exciting thing? The pretzel wrapper of course!

Happy Father's Day!!

I hope all you Dads out there had a great day! Ours was pretty low key, Nathan had some fun playing with Hannah in the sprinkler and got some yummy carrot cake, so I think he had a good day over all. Now it's off to bed and on to a new week.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have the pictures and adventures from our trip to Rochester posted!

Rochester Here We Come!

We're leaving for Rochester tomorrow, so this past week has been spent getting all the plans and everything finalized. It will be a quick trip, getting in late Wednesday and leaving 6 am Sunday morning, but it should be fun. We'll missing not visiting our old church, but the flight selection was very limited. My Grandmother and sister are going to drive up to visit us while we're there and help out with the kids while Nathan and I are at a wedding. It will be interesting to see how Evie does on the plane, now that she has mobility she hasn't wanted to stop! She's pulling up on EVERYTHING and getting around quite well.

Developements from the past week

This past week has been kind of crazy. After my parents left Evie decided to wake up every night for a week. I've always heard kids tend to wake up while working on new developmental milestones, but I had not experienced it before. Evie has gotten very proficient at crawling, as well as pulling up on just about anything and even doing a little cruising. That along with babbling away, and today when Nathan came home she said "dada, dada, dada" turned looked at me, said "mama" and then back at him and said "dada" again (sorry Debbie, you're too late). I think she just might have been processing a whole lot. I found Evie standing in her crib for the first time on the 29th (in the wee hours of the morning) and I think she might have been stuck. Twice since then I have found her in this position after her nap.

And here's another fun picture, Hannah trying to "help" Evie cruise. A second after this picture was taken Evie fell :-)

In other news, we also took the crib rail off Hannah's crib, to make it a "big girl" bed, we had tried this once before and she wouldn't nap it in, but this time she's doing great and loves it. Yay!