Cuteness

Some fun things Lorelei does now. We finally realized Sunday we are going to try teaching her a few signs to communicate with us like "eat" etc. If she can do this she can learn signs!

She only does this sound with cows.

Soooo Big!

This one cracks us up...when we say "I yi yi" she does this...



Another copy cat that was amusing. Brad was blowing air into zip lock baggies and then she was mimicking him. :)




Not sure how good you can hear it but when we read the tiger in the book she goes "roar" (well her own version of roar)



This she has done for a couple of months now but we haven't gotten it on film before...she tries to "bite" our toes but doesn't ever really bite them even if we leave our foot there. Seems to just do it to get a reaction out of us. :)




Hope you enjoyed them!

Monkeys, Shopping, Bows, and Tube Yogurt

Well this week has been busy as usual, but the days worth mentioning are probably Thursday and Friday. We are SO thankfully to have our friends Sara and Lily to make our days more fun and also keep me sane! :)

After spending one day this week home all day I remembered why I never do that! :) Thursday morning started out very frustrating between a very messy house and a diaper disaster. We thought Lorelei was squirmy on the changing table before, now she has taken it to a whole new level. Somehow I managed to get poop on my arm, Lorelei then proceeded to kick my arm with the poop and got it on her foot, then continued to kick my face with the poopy foot! Not a good start to the morning!

We were at a loss of what to do to get out on Thursday and then got invited to go along for a trip to the zoo with the Check girls! (Sara and Lily) The girls enjoyed seeing the animals and we moms enjoyed being out of the house and easy entertainment. The monkeys were probably the biggest hit. One fun story: Lily was not looking for a moment and I said "Look the monkey is coming to see you." and right then it comes right up to the glass where she looked (they are literally only separated by a little bit of glass, so face to face) and scared the crap out of her and she turned and ran to Sara. It would have made a great funniest home video! Then both girls took great naps that afternoon. Yay! This day reminded me of a Chinese proverb I read once while subbing "A misty morning does not signify a cloudy day."
Sorry, forgot my camera this trip!


Friday we had planned to go to a big consignment sale here. This is my first one for the fall season, and have two or three more to go to in the upcoming months. They are another great way to get clothes for cheap prices! Found some cute outfits here and then on the way out a lady was selling bows. Sara has made quite a few bows for Lorelei to wear and they look just as good as the ones this lady had. She got to talking to her and the lady is interested in any she wants to sell! Yay!

So then naturally we had to have lunch to celebrate this new business of hers. We went to Panera bread where they have a children's menu (very exciting Lorelei now gets to eat all of this) and the girls were both most thrilled with the yogurt that was in little tubes like the "gogurt" they sell at Walmart. Don't know why this was so fascinating but it thrilled them! Then also had to go to Michaels to get ribbon for the new venture. I was happy to get to shop with her (any excuse to shop). The girls enjoyed grabbing anything they could find off the racks...amazing how eating lunch and shopping can be so much more exhausting with those tiny little grabby hands, but we love them dearly anyway!

Was a great couple of days made so much better by having some friends to spend them with!

Low: well, the poop incident; the day we were home all day; waiting to get a plane ticket!

High: getting the plane tickets!!!; going to see Amanda and company in a week; doing stuff with friends

Quotes: Gotta give it to Brad, he keeps me cracking up. :)

We were shopping and I asked if we should get Lorelei some blueberries... he said "That sounds stainful." :) The other lady shopping cracked up with me!

He was giving Lorelei a bath and she decided to send the entire cup of water overboard and he said "Water water everywhere, except for in my underwear."

Hope they make you smile. Love the guy. :)

Another Successful Garage Sale Weekend

We did a few garage sales again Saturday morning and had some great finds! Found two places that had some fall/winter clothes for Lorelei for 50 cents each, another tunnel that actually stays folded up, a Laugh and Learn Puppy, and out favorite...the picnic basket! I have been wanting one for quite a while so was thrilled to get this one for $5!!! It still had the tag on it and the plates etc were even still wrapped up. :) We really look forward to using it.

We decided to make a little trip to the new McDonald's down the road for lunch after having some play time. Lorelei really enjoyed people watching. She is now in the phase of waving to everyone we pass (well except for the people who really want her to wave, then she smiles like "I can but I'm not going to") so she had some fun doing that as well. Then during Lorelei's nap I ran over to the mall in search of a few things for the big wedding weekend coming up, and then we made a family trip to the library!

Sunday we just hung out around the house after a very loooong church service of Lorelei not wanting to sit still for even two seconds. We enjoyed a nice chat with Grandma Stahl and company that evening as well. :) We are so excited to visit them in about a month!

Low: STILL not getting our parts for the grill because they were out of stock!; Lorelei thinking she never needs to go to sleep...

High: great finds at the sales, good family time

Quote from Brad: "She was like Godzilla walking through the city destroying things... must be how her toy's feel."

Just Keeping Busy

Well this week we have done many things from trips to two parks, Lowe's, and a farm, to swimming with Dad and just plain dealing with a stubborn 10 1/2 month old!






Brad started a new schedule this week. He is now working from 7-4. This is awesome for us...although at 5:15 am he is a little hesitant to get up. :) This gives him much more good time with Lorelei though. So far we took a trip to Puppyville and also went swimming! Before this there wasn't time to do much after work other than a bath. :) As you can tell she is thrilled to get more Daddy time.


Lorelei is consistently enjoying driving us mad throwing her food and cup on the floor...we have gone from ignoring, to lecturing, back to ignoring again...we'll see what happens. The good news is she is on mostly all "grown up" food now! This picture is of her digging her food out of her bib because I took the tray away...







We took a trip out to a farm on Friday. A couple of other moms from our moms group were going and I thought Lorelei would really enjoy the animals. Plus it was FREE! We were also supposed to see a magician, but got there a little late so it was very full and not a good view of the guy. We saw turkeys, chickens, cows, horses, sheep...you name it. Of course the only thing I took a picture of was the pile of manure...apparently the picture is too small but it says FREE MANURE. :)

Copy Cat

Lorelei is in the phase of wanting to copy everything we do...this is quite entertaining to us. She has an amusing fake laugh she does when we are laughing. We did get a decent video of one of her tricks. ;)

Here he is....the Darth Vader duck!

Well I told you I'd put up a picture when I found him again....so here he is! I was going to put this to music but decided it probably wasn't worth the effort! Just try to imagine Darth Vader's theme song and weird breathing...plus I did a bit for you on the video. :) Enjoy! Creepy eh?

Great Deals

Well I must start off by saying I LOVE CRAIGSLIST!!! It is wonderful around here. I know it isn't as exciting for those of you not in the city, but for us it has been great! I have been looking for a Laugh and Learn Home for a couple of months. Lorelei seemed to really enjoy it when playing at our friends, Lily and Sara's house, so I knew it would be a hit. It is apparently quite the hot item though, because each time I found one on Craigslist they had already sold it! Checking multiple times finally paid off and we got one for a great price. :)

I then looked for garage sales that I knew had chilren's toys (you can put that into the search on craigslist) and then picked some that sounded promising in our area. We had a very successful morning garage saling, and Brad was thrilled to find some computer parts that he will resell. (hopefully soon as I was not thrilled about this sitting around the house, but he does have a good plan. :) ) The best find probably was the toy box. We plan to either re stain or paint it but for now it serves its purpose!



The puppy is actually from my sister and she loves it! She is starting to get a bit more attached to her stuffed animals. She probably gives them more hugs than she does her parents! :)

Low: having to figure out how to get a smaller gas tank for the grill - much more work than we thought it would be!

Highs: well finding great deals, obviously! :) ; spending Friday with Sara and Lily - the girls had fun playing together (of course forgot my camera, but you can click on her blog to see a cute video, she is a "follower" on our blog) and we had a great time exchanging recipes and just having other adult conversation!; helping Mirinda register at BRU and finding some more good deals on a couple of fall dresses at the consignment store!

Here is what my sister showed me from a book after I told her about our weekend...thought it would be a good quote for this post. :)

"I can't believe I bought three pairs of shoes at one time. You're a bad influence" - Jenna

"They were on sale" - Lucy

One pair was on sale - Jenna

You saved money on the one, so it's not like buying them."

"It's not?"

"No," Lucy said in reasonable tones. "It's like saving on them. So look at it that way: you only bought two pairs. And one of them's for the wedding. Those you were obligated to buy. Really, you only bought one pair."

"Your logic is wise. And confusing." - Jenna

Playpen Fun

We had a couple of days of beautiful weather with no humidity! It was amazing so we had to get outside to enjoy it. After a swim that afternoon, I took the playpen out to the balcony (the wood and nails are not ideal for crawling.) Lorelei is in the phase of dropping things from the high chair...She will hold her cup out and wait until we look at her to drop it, just to get our reaction (yes we are learning not to react!) This also applies to the playpen and she thinks its hilarious. You will hear her "evil" laugh before dropping her poor Noah.

Then we enjoyed a fun game of catch...
I cant get the video to load, but it was very amusing and she enjoyed throwing the ball for me from the playpen. :)

Low: Lorelei being cranky from teething, how can one tooth cause so much whining?

High: warm chocolate chip cookies with milk to comfort me after days of whining :)

Cute story: I was packing up to run an errand and had all my stuff ready and said "okay see you later" to Lorelei (I really did want to leave her there that day!) and she just looked at me and waved goodbye like, "Ok Mom have fun!" :)

Verse: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." Philippians

Workin on Walkin!

Well as you have heard Lorelei is always wanting to walk now! We had been trying one of the little children's "walkers" for a while and she would always lean to far without walking...well Brad tried it this morning and all of a sudden she could do it!



And of course she has been taking a few steps on her own for a couple of weeks now. She has gotten to about five so far. :)



Also had a couple of fun anecdotes for the last few days...

Brad to Lorelei: "Say fish, fish, FISH"
Lorelei to Brad: "EEEEEE"

Me after Lorelei was trying to take the teether off the turtle because it doesn't belong there (she does this with everything out of place): "I think she is going to be anal like me."
Brad: "What do you mean 'going to be?'"

Shoe Shopping

This Saturday was a big "run errands" day for us. Since Lorelei wants to walk around the parks and everywhere we go (with my help of course), we decided she needed some shoes! We decided the kind from Target would be great because it wouldn't really interfere with her walking with a hard sole. We checked out her shoe size and it didn't seem that size 5 was too far away...then went over to our shoes and picked out a large pair that we love! And they were even on sale! After we got home home and she tried walking around in them a while, we realized they were too big. Later we ended up making a second trip (really wanting to get this shoe thing checked off the list) and got a medium. We are keeping the large pair for when she grows out of them in a month or two!

The first picture is Lorelei proudly riding away with her first pair of shoes. I should also mention that she loved shoe shopping but was not to thrilled that we didn't give her every pair we picked up...I'm trying not to imagine the shoe fetish she will have when she is older. The second picture is our next trip, after she has not had good naps (this is becoming a habit) and we are out around 6:15...she is wearing down. :)



The shoes



We also have a few fun pictures and clips from the car...she loves the head rest for some reason. :)

And of course bath time - hilarious! We can't decide if she is hyper because she is sleep deprived or just having way too much fun. :)

Lets Call It Park Week :)

Well we have been keeping busy this week again, enjoying the summer weather. Some of the days this week even had a bit of a cool breeze, so we have really loved that! We have also been recovering from our exciting week and weekend past and trying not to be too depressed that no one else is coming to visit us for a while.

Monday: Mostly got Lorelei caught up on some more sleep (she took three naps each day instead of two Sun, Mon and Tues) and made a grocery store run! So glad we can just walk over there. :)

Tuesday: We also live very close to a little outdoor shopping area which has a big pet store called Animal Jungle and also one called Puppyville. Animal jungle had pretty much everything except puppies and kitties. Lorelei loved the fish, guinea pigs and bunnies. They even have a little monkey there, which is also fun to watch. Then of course Puppyville was a huge hit as that seems to be her favorite animal of all at the moment. She was thrilled to see the puppies and some even came right up to us. She says "da" every time she sees a dog anywhere we go and gets very excited. Then that afternoon we went swimming in the big pool.

Wednesday: MOMS Club meets every Wed for playgroup. This trip was conveniently the park right next to our apt complex. I was very thankful to have a walking buddy with my friend, Sara, and her daughter, Lily. The girls even try to hold hands as we are walking with their strollers! We enjoyed meeting up with some other ladies there. Lorelei of course wants me to walk her everywhere, but it was fun having her interested in the playground equipment. It will be a great place for us to go more often in the fall when she can walk and I wont roast so much on the walk there!

Thursday: Here is where the really nice breeze came in so I just had to take Lorelei to the park again. We drove to a different park (realized in amazement it had been almost a week since Lorelei had had to ride in her carseat! and boy is the car a mess from our history day) Lorelei enjoyed the swings, as usual, as well as walking!

Friday: This time we went to the Botanical Gardens for MOMS Club. (That kinda counts as a park right?) We had a water day at the children's garden there. There are small fountains that kids love to play in. I, of course, got to play in them as well this time! Lorelei especially liked playing with the leaves there...something about anything you are not supposed to put in your mouth right? We had a good time with our usual friends, Sara and Lily (what would we do without them!?), and one other lady who came with her two kidos. We also took a quick trip to the butterfly garden before the girls were totally out. Then Lorelei fell asleep on the way home and naturally seems to think that a 20 min nap in the car ride home is enough sleep! I think she is finally fading though. :)

Oh I should mention we also had another sad moment when we sold Brad's pickup. We love that thing but just realized how much gas it was eating up! He now has a small car that he is taking to work which gets GREAT gas mileage.

Lows: visitors being gone, goodbye to the pickup

Highs: beautiful weather, getting the lost DVD in the mail so we CAN watch Ross say PIVOT (Sara you need to borrow that one), getting excited for Amanda's wedding in less than a month!, accidentally giving Audry the number to a petting zoo/pony farm for her to call for a carriage for Amanda's wedding...glad she got a laugh out of it though!

This is the quote I had handy that Heather and I saw in a store: "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to dance in the rain."

July 4th Fun

We had a wonderful 4th of July this year. We spent most of the day recuperating from our busy week and getting ready for our party. We were so glad that many of our friends were able to join us for the festivities. Our apt is ideal because we can easily walk to the fireworks display at Mt. Trashmore. After enjoying some delicious food we headed over to the park. Our friends, the Checks, even brought their wagon they had decorated for a parade for the girls to ride in over there! It was so fun and the girls loved it! We had been wondering how Lorelei (and Lily too of course) would do staying up way past their bed time and also hearing the fireworks. Amazingly, Lily fell asleep and slept through most of them. Lorelei was scared at first with the loud noise but then enjoyed watching them the rest of the time. She fell asleep right away when we got home though. Then we enjoyed a game of Cranium before calling it a night!

History Day

Where to start...Our planned "history day" was Thursday. We headed out fairly early because we had so much to do I wanted to get there as soon as everything opened, 9 AM, so we needed to leave around 7:30...well we ended up sitting in traffic for 2 hrs, only to find out we could NOT get through the tunnel to get to Williamsburg etc. There was an accident of some sort and a pipe that burst (guess its good they don't want the underwater tunnel filling up with water) There was one other tunnel we could have driven back to get through, but we decided by the time we made it there and through we would be way too behind to fit everything in. We decided to go Friday instead. We did get to sit in traffic again for about 30 minutes because one lane was still closed. We got to Williamsburg right around 9 and made our way around to all of the free places we could look there. It turned out to be a better day because the weather was a bit cooler and just beautiful for us. Then we headed to Shirley Plantation and ate our sandwiches in the car on the way. We enjoyed the tour of the house as well as looking around at the many buildings on the grounds. Then we headed to Jamestown Settlement. They have a wonderful set up there with a museum type building and then also a fort and Native American camp grounds, as well as ship replicas, all for you to go through. By this time it was 5 and closing time so we headed home, all exhausted, only to end up in one final traffic jam for about an hr. :) Who doesnt want to be stuck in traffic with Miss Lorelei the car seat lover! :) Lets just say we sang A LOT of B-I-N-G-O. We all enjoyed the day though!

Random Fun

In between our usual vacation activities we had some random fun! :) Heather was talked into trying out Lorelei's tunnel one afternoon. We also enjoyed Lorelei's first adventure with mac n cheese. Heather got Lorelei a State Farm onesie so we had to take a matching picture...neither of them were too pleased about this one. Heather and I enjoyed heading over to Texas Roadhouse for some yummy supper with our peach margaritas. Just love having family to visit! It makes everything more fun. :)

Da Beach!

We went to the beach three days in a row this week! Heather had never been to a beach before she came here, so we had to make sure and get in all the beach we could. We went Tuesday Morning for the first big experience. Heather seemed to enjoy it and of course Lorelei was eating the sand as usual! Wednesday we went in to Norfolk to meet Brad for lunch and then headed out to the beach again in the afternoon. We did some shopping as well as hauled all of our beach gear down the boardwalk to see the exciting King Neptune statue! We were already exhausted and hadn't even hit the sand yet! Lorelei enjoyed helping with the umbrella and her usual sand toys. Then Thursday was supposed to be "history day" but we had a change in plans (read soon to be next post "history day" to find out more) so we headed out to Sandbridge, the less touristy beach, with Brad along this time because he took an extra day off to join in our adventures. All of us enjoyed the usual, with a few mishaps, such as our umbrella breaking (its more like a flag now) as well as our big sand bucket...time for some new beach stuff! Lorelei starts screaming and waving her hands with excitement as soon as she sees we are walking to the beach. She can't seem to get enough of playing in the water and sand, as well as eating as much of it as she can sneak in! We even did some boogie boarding as well. By the end of all of these trips I am amazed to say I DO need a break for a week or so! We are so thankful to be able to go any time we want to and glad we could get Heather's toes in the ocean. :)

Heather's Visit

We enjoyed having my sister, Heather, here for a six day visit! She arrived Monday afternoon and stayed until Sunday morning. There was so much that we did during her visit that I'm going to make it into several different posts with slide shows (she and I LOVE to take pictures so between both of us we have a TON) and you can see all the fun we had! Naturally Lorelei loved having her aunt around and of course Brad and I loved having another person along to make things even more fun and less work! We are already missing her and looking forward to seeing her for Amanda's wedding and over Labor Day Weekend.