Emery's Eleven Months Old

  Here we are at eleven months already.  In a month we'll have a one year old, and we'll get to ditch the formula and bottles.  Time has really felt like it has flown by with this baby.  Maybe it's because she is by far our biggest baby.  Emery is 21 pounds already.  Our first baby to reach 20 pounds before her first birthday.  Avery was 19 pounds at one, and Harper was 17 pounds.  

   Emery still has a very ready smile.  She is just as happy as a clam, and loves to eat.  I like to call her my hungry, hungry, hungry hippo.  She packs it in, and loves real food.  It seems like she has been teething forever with teeth on the top threatening to come in, but they haven't broken through yet.  Emery is standing up all the time and cruising around the furniture a bit.  We can get her to walk with us a little bit.  At this point since everyone else is walking she might as well be walking too.

The best shot I could get after many attempts.

This was Emery's first time hanging out in the grass.

Emery eating her first doughnut on Mother's Day.

Snoqualmie Falls

  Yesterday we went to Snoqualmie Falls.  After several years of work they have finally opened the trail down to Snoqualmie Falls, so I wanted to go visit them again.  My parents also joined us.  The trail is much nicer now.  Emery's little umbrella stroller easily made it the whole way down.  It's a little disappointing though because they made this really nice wooden walkway to view the falls, but the viewing deck right nearest the falls is extremely small.  It was very crowded and we didn't stick around even for a minute.  They also didn't have a way down to the rocks, but that wasn't stopping people.  They were climbing over the deck and down there themselves.  It seemed like a really poor design.  

  What was nice is now there is a smaller parking lot at the bottom of the trail, so instead of everyone hiking back to the top Daryl and I just went.  We got our car and drove down to pick up the girls and my parents.  Avery loved going down the trail, and I'm pretty sure she would have ran all the way down if we would have let her. Harper insisted on being carried most of the way, and Emery could have hiked all day in her stroller.

Grandma and Avery

Snoqualmie Falls running a little heavy.  You could feel the spray.

Avery and Harper hanging out on a rock together.

As good a family picture we could get with only the top of Emery's head in it.

Harper sitting with Daryl while we were waiting for lunch at the Salish Lodge.

Rockets!

   A couple weeks ago Daryl had Avery and Harper sit down with him and pick out rockets on Amazon, so he could launch them with the girls.  Avery and Harper love rockets, ships, plane, trains, and things that go.  Daryl thought this would be an activity that they would especially enjoy.  This Saturday the weather was good, so we headed out to a special park to launch our rockets.  Aimee, Karl, and Tyler were there too.  The kids were definitely excited about the rockets.  Avery and Tyler really liked them, and helped Daryl hit the ignition switch.  Harper was a little too timid for that, and we made Emery cry a couple times because she apparently does not care for loud noises.  It was nice that kids were able to run around the expansive park; although Harper was confused that we called the place a park even though there were no slides there. She might have felt a little deceived.

A rare shot of sister cooperation.

You can't tell, but the rockets the girls selected were shaped like a pink and green crayon.

Tyler thought this water fountain was really cool and could have played with it for a long time if we let him.

Growing Up

   This weekend I offered to give Harper some pony tails and she actually took me up on it.  She usually doesn't let me do anything to her hair, which we affectionately refer to as her super mullet.  I knew her hair had gotten longer, but I was still surprised to see the two long curly pig tails she ended up with.  I loved them, but Harper is indifferent and hasn't really let me do her hair up in pony tails again.

   Also Emery climbed the stairs all by herself for the first time on Saturday.  I was sick that day, so I was upstairs in bed.  I kept hearing Emery in the stairwell and just assumed that Daryl was supervising her.  Pretty soon though up pops Emery into our room with no Daryl behind her.  At first I thought he was just teasing me by hanging back until I got upset that our baby climbed our wooden stairs all by herself, but he had not noticed that our baby had gone missing.  Oh well, she made it up just fine.  Getting down is a skill she needs to work on though.

Harper's sweet curly pig tails.

The triumph of reaching the landing!

I just threw in this picture of Emery eating her first Costco chocolate chip cookie for fun.  Avery loves to get in all photos.

Silliness

   Here are just a few random pictures depicting the girls' antics.

Harper has been pretending to be a walrus pretty much every time we've gotten french fries lately.  She thinks it's hilarious.

Avery eating oranges.

Avery and Harper came home from Church last Sunday and immediately got dressed up like this to put on a show for us.  It was a short play about monsters.  You really missed out.  

An Unexpected Picture

         

 
       My Dad takes a lot of pictures all the time, and most of the time we get annoyed with all the random pictures that he has of girls camp or some work function that he has.  In fact, Dad recently embarked on a mission of organizing the many, many pictures that he has taken over the many years.  Finally he has a picture that is interesting.  My oldest brother Phil graduated from Auburn High in 1996 which made him in the same graduating class as Daryl.  They didn't know each other though.  This picture is from my brother and Daryl's graduation day.  Now Dad was probably trying to take a picture of one of my brother's friends Ben, but in the middle of the picture looking the opposite direction toward the stage in his hunky giant glasses is Daryl.  It appears that Daryl's and my family's paths crossed at least once before.  I wasn't at graduation because they are boring and we didn't have enough tickets anyway, so we weren't together on the day in question.  Although we have figured out that we were at a Youth Conference that our church did at Ensign Ranch in Cle Elum in 1996.