5 months, seriously?!

(with Hannah Gray as she loves to be in these pictures with t and then with the sheep to see how much bigger she is)

Hannah Gray celebrating in Tenley’s accomplishment! WhaHoo!!!

Well, Tenley hit five months a couple days ago and rolled over this morning for the first time (back to belly) while I was getting the camera to do her five month pic. She’s growing fast! I started to feel like a bad mom that she hadn’t done this feat yet feeling like it was probably b/c she spent so much time not playing on her tummy or back b/c I was packing, driving across the country or unpacking and remodeling, but I figured she would. Eventually. And she did! WhaHoo!! That’s how we celebrate around here. We leap and dance and yell Whahoo!! So Hannah Gray and I jumped, danced and yelled whahoo with our hands in the air to celebrate Tenley’s accomplishment today. That’s what family is for right? To multiply the  joys and split the load of not so good times. So we celebrated.

Hannah Gray also woke up from nap two days ago, took off her diaper, found her big girl undies (which she hasn’t worn yet as they are being reserved for potty training to help build the excitement) and put them on all by herself. So instead of going to the park, we hung around her a bit and allowed her a chance to wear her undies and use the potty a bit. We’re going to go all out and give it a whirl (no pun intended) in a couple weeks.

Marty and Quinn visit!

Marty, my dear friend since high school and her daughter, Quinn came to visit us over the weekend. Quinn is just a few months older than Hannah Gray so they had a great time playing together. We visited the beach a couple times and took a ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island (after almost missing the ferry on the way over and then missing one on the way home. oh well, it was fun) and then hit the Seattle Aquarium afterwards. It was great to have them here and just to have some good time with a great friend.

Miss Quinn near Pike’s Place

Playing at the beach near our house

It was SO windy that the kite surfers were out in full force

Burr!!

 

Marty and Quinn on the ferry

The girls on the ferry ride

enjoying a treat!

loving on the otter at the aquarium

miss tenley at the aquarium

 

all of us back at the beach before Marty and Quinn flew home.

We had such a great visit with them and are so thankful for them!

“Sticky Fingers”

Yesterday I took the girls to the grocery store with me, but I did not use a cart. So on one hand I had Tenley in her carseat and I was holding Hannah Gray’s hand with the other hand. We were just going in and out for one item and she likes to feel like a big girl walking with me instead of riding in the cart. The store was about empty (great time to go is about 9 am I’ve discovered) and she was having a great time. I stopped to look for a specific kind of oatmeal and Hannah Gray got really excited about all the fruit snacks and cereals on the nearby shelves (she saw Nemo “Melmo” on the box and she was all over it). I think she touched every single box of cereal, fruit snacks and coupon pull tabs in that entire aisle. Many times she’d bring a box of whatever had her attention over to me. And I was not in that aisle for 20 minutes, it was more like 20 seconds. “Why didn’t I use a cart?” I kept asking myself. Oh well. But during this process of asking her not to touch everything I said, “Hannah Gray kiddo, you’ve got some sticky fingers this morning.” At which point she stopped, bent her elbows to take a look at her palms and wiggled and stretched her fingers to see if they were indeed sticky. All I could do is laugh as I looked at this sweet, pigtailed little girl looking at her chubby hands wondering why her fingers were sticky. Aww, I love that innocence!!

All In A Day’s Work

Today Ethan had I think it was about 250 bags of mulch delivered to the house. Ethan had a daddy date with Hannah Gray to the pool and out for a treat. So when they came back, we let Hannah Gray play outside while we spread mulch. Great friends sent a fantastic gift to Hannah Gray of a wheelbarrow and some garden tools. Today was a perfect time to use them!

Before we knew it, she had scaled the pile and was covered in dirt (including her face giving her away that I think she had tasted it as well). This girl loves to get dirty!!

(notice she’s removed one shoe?) the dirt on the mouth dead give away of eating it

Montana

We had almost a week away in Montana in a tiny little town just outside of Glacier National Park called Polebridge. It was so beautiful and great to get away with the Peak7 staff. The mountains were clearly visible all but one day, which after the clouds appeared covered in snow. So that was beautiful to see.

One of the Peak7 volunteers had some great pictures that I will share also, but cannot claim them as my own. :)

Hannah Gray with the ranch dog Scout (which is funny by the way, b/c that will be the name of our next dog as I have wanted a dog named Scout since I was little)

She had so much fun riding the horse. You can see her “petting” it with her one little finger. One of the guides, Emily, took her for a spin.

Playing in the river with Daddy just inside Glacier Nat’l Park.

Mini photo shoot with Tenley. We headed to Bowman Lake in Glacier and I had set up this little sun tent for the kids and just fed her. She was one happy and content baby!

Bowman Lake, lens has no polarizer on it, the clouds looked just like that.

Funny story about the picture with the three kiddos. The two kids were singing and whenever the boy would sing, he would lift his arms. Which Hannah Gray must have been taking as a cue to hug him. So every time his arms would go up, Hannah Gray would hug him!

The gracious host of the weekend had a beaver that was building a dam down his river that needed to be removed. So 4 of the boys took off with guns in hand to look for the beaver to “take care of the problem”. It was actually a pretty hilarious scene to watch them march along with their rifles in hand.

To be honest, not real sure what this picture is all about other than it’s hilarious. It has something to do with being animals… we hiked to a top of one of the mountains near Glacier and this was a group picture at the top. I had taken off running down the mountain with two other guides to hitch a ride with them on dirt bikes because I forgot I needed to feed Tenley. Oops. (side note: she wasn’t even crying when I got back.)

Couple funny stories

1. The other day, Hannah Gray and I were driving to the zoo and it was a pretty hot day. Hannah Gray noticed a dog (go figure) sitting in the shade next to the road. She pointed him out and I said something along the lines of, “you’re right Hannah Gray, a doggie. He’s hot, so he’s sitting in the shade”. To which she immediately replied, “HOT DOOG-IE!” and just kept repeating it, then added, “Hot Doggie, wa-wa”. “Yes Hannah Gray, the doggie needs water…”

2. We were in Montana over this Labor Day Weekend for a staff retreat and it was cold! So I practically lived in a 3/4 zip pullover. Hannah Gray loves to play with the zippers, but she kept unzipping my jacket as she’d say, “Hot Momma!”. Thanks HG. Thanks.

It’s late, so I will post fun pictures from this weekend tomorrow.