She's 1!

I can't even believe how fast this year has gone by. I just spent a while going through my iPhoto picking out pictures to go in Genevieve's awesome 1st year album from her Aunt Megan. It was fun to look at all the pictures we have from the past year or two since we found out I was expecting. So much has happened. Bill graduated from college. We moved across the country with a nearly two year-old and four month-old. He started his PhD program. We've been hiking and camping and exploring our new home. We flew back across the country and then drove home with a now 11 month-old and 2.5 year old. We've made friends and fallen in love with South Carolina and just really had a fantastic year.

Through all of that Genevieve has grown and grown and grown and now she's walking and eating like a big kid and starting to talk and is just the most delightful little girl I could imagine. She's such a joy in our little family. Spencer doesn't know what to do without her. He's always saying how he loves her and he gets bothered when she's asleep and he wants to play. She returns the love.

She bonks her head against yours to show she loves you. She says yes, boo, baby, mommy, daddy, dog or some version of those words. She loves food and gets very bothered when she can't get it in her mouth fast enough. She shunned her lunch the other day and chowed down on my taco salad instead. She only has four teeth, but it doesn't stop her in the slightest from eating anything she wants.

She plays peekaboo and is delighting in her newfound ability to walk. I had to go bring her back to our pew probably four times today in church. She's mostly gotten over her fear of strangers and charms everyone now with her cute little smiles and red hair.

She loves her water bottle. It's a Camelbak kids one and she and Spencer both have one. She chugs that thing all day long.

Her stuffed dog is her dearest of possessions. She has recently decided it needs to be at her side pretty much at all times. If anyone, and I really mean anyone, gets near it, she glares at them and starts hyperventilating and half crying until they give it back. That includes me, Bill, Spencer, and anyone else.

She recently discovered dolls. She has a few floating around and just decided they're pretty great. We have a mesh hanging thing of all the stuffed animals in the toy room and she will pick ones down from it to play with. She'll give them hugs and kisses. It's so crazy to me the difference in personality between her and Spencer. I have no idea what is different from boys and girls, but they definitely have different interests. They both love books though. It makes me happy to see her in the toy room reading her books.

She fancies herself an artist, particularly when it comes to kitchen bowls. She grabs crayons from Spencer's art supplies, heads for the kitchen and colors in my mixing bowls. I just thank my stars it's not the wall. She likes to color on paper too, though she's only just getting a good enough grip to really draw much. We picked up an easel with a white board a few weeks ago and both she and Spencer just love it. I don't trust her with a dry erase marker yet, but she'll love it once she gets one.

She has a halo of red hair. It's getting longer and longer and she has opposing cowlicks on the crown of her head, so it just sticks straight up in the back. It has just a hint of curl, but nothing major yet. Spencer's hair is already starting to darken up and I think he'll end up dark like me, but I'm guessing she'll stay light. Her skin tone is totally that of a redhead.

And that's my Genevieve. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can love our kids. It's cliche, but I really can't imagine life without our little lady.

New Park

Our poor little city has gotten pummeled with rain this summer, and four of our five parks have flooded, causing significant damage. One of them happened to be up for replacement this year, which was super handy, but I can't imagine what the city is going to do to handle all the damage. It's not just the parks but bridges, roads, etc.

But back to the park. We tried out the new park this week and had a delightful time there with some friends. The kids love it. I was on the committee to pick the new park and I'm super pleased with the result.

She does this all the time. Just the last few days she's started actually taking a few steps instead of just standing. But she stands up nearly anywhere she is.

She was actually hanging, if only for a second.

Tunnels! This one goes uphill. It makes a great slide too. :)

Playing peekaboo with Daddy. So cute.

Look at that awesome sweaty hair! We were all soaked by the time we were done playing. Gotta love humidity.

Saturday morning we made an impromptu trip to Greenville to try out an awesome park there called Cleveland Park. The kids loved that one too. We had a great time. 

Spencer had a graham cracker in his hand the entire time.

Genevieve spent the first part of our morning chugging graham crackers hugging her dog. She was delighted.

Besides a few terrorizing attacks by pigeons, Spencer had a great time throwing rocks in the river. And by terrorizing I mean they were near him. But I can't blame him. They are much closer to his size than mine.

Genevieve has always loved this dog. It's what she goes to bed with. But in the last few days she's decided she can't go anywhere without it and she gets VERY bothered when anyone else has it. It's pretty adorable. 

Look, I was there! I don't actually get in too many pictures these days. 

Kid Obsessions

Spencer is a creature of habit, like most two year-olds. He loves his routine. He likes to read the same books, look at the same pictures, eat the same food, pick his own pajamas, have bath time exactly the same every night, etc, etc. For months and months now his favorite book and movie has been The Lorax. He's kind of past his love of reading the book all the time, though he does carry it and his other Dr. Seuss books around all over the house and totally freaks out if Genevieve so much as brushes by them, but he still loves the movie. I'm pretty sure we're going to dress him up as a Lorax for Halloween, and he'll be delighted.

Grandma Suzanne has experienced this obsession, and she totally made his day/life/world when we got to Utah last month and she presented him with his very own Lorax quilt that she had made. It is beyond adorable. He loves it. He sleeps on it every night. We have a video of him dancing on it when he got it. It's pretty much awesome. The first couple weeks after we got home he wouldn't let us put it anywhere but laid out on the floor so he could dance on it some more. So here it is. The quilt of quilts that made Spencer a happy child. :)

Yes that is a pink fleece blanket on his bed. It's Genevieve's, otherwise known as Spencer's. He loves blankets with fringe, so he snitched this months ago and considers it his. He says it's Genevieve's blanket, but he sleeps with it every single night.

Stop everything and make this cake

It's in your best interests to stop everything you're doing and go make this cake. It's heaven. And gluten free. That's not a big deal to me, but I am floored how amazing this is. It's made with quinoa. I had no idea how good that could be. So yes, do it. I promise your day will improve. :)

We built some things again!

I dearly love building furniture, but it's not always high on my budget priority list. I have a whole list of projects I plan to build, and for the last few months have been saving to build a bed frame and headboard. When Bill's bike got stolen, the kid climbed over our outdoor box and cracked it. Well, it was already cracked from our move, but he made it worse. It was a perfect opportunity to get to building a replacement. I took the chance to build a desk too, as mine was a Costco plastic table that my keyboard rattled on whenever I typed. It was so annoying. Anyway, last weekend Bill and I combined forces and built the two pieces.

I'm super proud of both because I designed both of them. The desk I got a plan off of Ana White's site, but then tweaked it quite a bit to fit our space. I love how it turned out. We accidentally got treated wood for the legs, so we have to wait a while to stain it, but otherwise it turned out just beautiful.

The box is on wheels so we can actually move the thing. It's beefy. Nothing is going to get in there. When Bill took apart the old box to get rid of it, a bunch of huge cockroaches crawled out from the bottom. Gross! That's certainly not going to happen with this one. Our power tools are safe in here!

 It doubles up as a super secure base to lock our bikes onto. Just installed that last night. Now our bikes will be safe and secure and definitely not a temptation to our weak-willed teenagers in the complex.

Now to start saving again for that bed. Although our kids are going to be so bummed when they can't come climbing all over the mattress laying on the floor in a few months. But watching Genevieve climb, I'm sure it won't be long before she gets up there anyway. The girl isn't even walking quite yet, but she stood in the center of our living room today and threw a ball back and forth with Bill. She amazes me. She's terrified to walk, but can stand unassisted and climbs on anything she can find. What fun!

Bill's Bike

Bill's bike got stolen a couple weeks ago off our porch. We were so bothered, especially since it was only a couple months old. Granted, it was partly our fault, as it wasn't locked up. We naively thought it was hard enough to even get on our porch that no one would take it. But alas, that wasn't the case. However, yesterday we found it! Apparently some unknown kid in our complex or one nearby thought he would just swipe it and then let a younger sibling ride it around in here. Not the best decision on their part, as it had some pretty distinguishing characteristics that we could identify. It looks like they had a lot of fun with it. The back tires are way worn and the grips too, but otherwise it seems not too worse for wear. We're just glad we don't have to replace it, and we immediately went out and got a beefy chain and lock and hook to lock it up while it's on our deck now. Thanks for not too painful a learning experience to remind us to not leave expensive things lying about tempting people.

Rockin' Good Garden

Our container garden has been fantastic this year. We've had the summer of all summers for rain. It rained 17 inches in July alone a friend told me the other day. We're at 57 inches for the year or some crazy number like that. 48 inches or so is average. While our friends' gardens have kind of floated away this year, ours just flourished. Since our porch is covered and we have just the right amount of direct sunlight, I don't think we could have gone wrong. It makes me feel like I'm an excellent gardener. Hee hee! I'm sure another year will prove me wrong on that front. But I feel all kinds of confident for the moment.

This box has five tomato plants in it plus a row of peppers on the back side, all of which are producing. It's probably way too full, but it's doing great! We've had so many tomatoes and they're still coming, as you can see. Our peppers are just starting to really come in and I can't wait for lots of good, hot food in the next month.

These two buckets of peppers have done great too. I didn't even cut holes in the bottoms for drainage. I'm telling you, we couldn't have a better growing year. I'll try to do a few more things right next time around. :)

Fun at the splash pad

When we were in Utah my sister and her daughter, who is only three months older than Genevieve, headed down to a splash pad in Provo. We had so much fun. She just sent me the pictures and I loved them and had to share. Spencer took quite a while to warm up to the water and Genevieve wanted nothing to do with it, but Shae loved it and wanted nothing more than to be sitting in the middle of the pad. Bill was nice enough to follow her in, as we hadn't really brought swim clothes ourselves. Now if only they would build a splash pad here. I'm pretty sure we'd be there several times a week. :)

Shae spent the entire time with water blasting her. :) 

Spence was more a stand-on-the-outskirts sort of kid. We've since gone swimming and I think he'd like it much better if we went again.

She was in heaven

Oh look, he was getting more into it. He was so mad by the end when it was time to go. You know they've had a good time if they're screaming bloody murder when you take them away, right? Ha! 

This is the best picture of the cousins we got. For how similar my sister and I look, our girls couldn't resemble each other less. Though in this picture you can see that their profiles are uncannily similar. We have big plans for these two. Summers spent together, anyone? Miss Shae will definitely be invited out to wherever we live when the girls are a bit older. I can't wait. I foresee college roommates. :)

Shae was mostly bothered that she wasn't in the water. Geez, Mom, just let me get back, okay?!

And this is where Genevieve was happy. Sitting in the shade drinking her water and stealing Spencer's too. I love this picture. What a cutie! I still can't believe I have such a pasty white daughter. I could just eat her up though!

Beach Day

We live next to a beach. Well, we live next to a lake which has a beach within a bike ride of our house. I wouldn't ride there as there is no shoulder, but I could. I had no idea it was that close until yesterday. People told us about it months ago, but it literally rained nearly every day the month of July and it just wasn't that warm yet in June. But yesterday was the day. We got there in about five minutes of leaving the house and I almost felt foolish for not going until now when I realized how awesome it was. We had a fantastic time. We've gone swimming at a friend's pool a couple of times this year, but the water has been really cold both times so the kids wouldn't have anything to do with it. This was totally different. Spencer beelined it for the water the instant he saw it. In fact, we had to walk along the water a ways to get to the actual sand, and he had a hard time focusing to walk because he kept drifting toward the water. :)

It was just a fantastic time. We brought our little video camera, but it had some troubles. Here's a couple videos that give a bit of an idea though.

I was so proud of Spencer. He gained courage the longer he was there, and by the end he was playing around using his water wings to float.

Funny story about that. I wanted to have him experience floating. The water has a very gradual decline, so he could walk out really far before it got too deep. I would sit far out and he would come running out to meet me repeating "Audrey!" over and over again. That's the name of the girl on The Lorax that he has a crush on.  He'd get to me and give me a huge hug. It was so fun.

Genevieve had a ball. She floated around in her little inner tube for ages and then had a grand old time once we set her on the beach. She found a shovel and was happy as could be even though she was literally falling asleep where she sat.

We will definitely be back. Spencer keeps watching the videos and asking to go back. Good times!

She walks!

Genevieve took her first steps the other night, just out of the blue while we were reading stories before bedtime. Thanks to the handy dandy phone we even have video evidence. She was so proud of herself.

She likes to dance too. What a cutie.

My kids are rockstars

We had a fantastic time in Utah and then had the most uneventful drive back I could possibly imagine. I was super worried about how the drive back would go. The kids were total rockstars. They were as chill as possibly could be pretty much the whole time. Spencer watched about a million movies and Genevieve slept and ate and slept and ate over and over and over again. It was awesome all around.

We spent the middle day of our drive back in Nauvoo for the late afternoon/evening. It was fantastic. We had frozen custard at Annie's. We went to the visitor's center. We went to a bunch of shops and got ourselves a sunstone, and ended the day at the Nauvoo Pageant. We have some friends from Utah in it and they saved us seats and it was so cool to be on the front row. I actually spent most of the event standing on the side holding Genevieve, but it was still a great view.

Back to the vacation itself, we did some great things. We had a fun time at my family's reunion. 

 The kids were in heaven watching the Lorax on the projector.

 This place had the most gorgeous view.

My grandma brought every souvenir she could find from previous reunions as a joke at our family  meeting. It was hilarious. I can't believe she could come up with all of them for the last 13 years.

Once the reunion was over we went to Bill's parents' house for a few more days. This is the one and only picture I took there, lol. We couldn't be bothered with taking pictures. But we had a great time and did lots of playing and lots of going to places we don't have in South Carolina like IKEA and Winco and other such places. It was fun. We took the kids to a splash pad one day. My sister got pictures there. I definitely need to get them because the kids had so much fun. Well, Genevieve didn't, but in her defense she was super tired. Anyway, it was all around a great time and a great vacation. It's nice to know we can make something like this work. Here's to more good times in the coming years!

11 Months

Genevieve has just blossomed over the last few weeks as we have vacationed and been around lots of new people. She's been incredibly mom and dad centric for several months now, but she's unwound a bit lately and is willing to at least interact with other people. She still loves other kids. It's all the adults she's a bit wary of. But she's getting more friendly to them now.

At 11 months she is super vocal. She loves to chatter. I'd say she knows how to say mom and dad, at least I think she does. :) She likes to mimic what we say, so it sounds like she's saying other things at times. Spencer will talk gibberish back to her and they'll chatter away. It's cute.

She is cruising all over the place and recently has started lunging at us if we stand her up, but she's not particularly close to walking yet. I thought she was, but changed my mind after I saw her cousin Shae, who just started walking during our vacation. I imagine it will still be a while until Genevieve walks. She crawls super fast and loves to climb. I caught her trying to climb up onto the ottoman at our family reunion. She had her leg all the way up on it and just couldn't quite pull herself up. I'm sure that won't stop her for long.

She's smiley and happy and still sleeps like a dream, no pun intended. Haha! She loves to eat. I'm pretty sure she's never refused to eat in her life. This girl knows how to enjoy food.

Her hair is starting to grow in the back, though not so much in the front. She's still a redhead. She has the most beautiful clear blue eyes. People often comment on them.

I can't believe we've almost had this little lady around for a year. Time has flown! People often ask us if we have any nicknames for her since her name is pretty long. The answer, not really from her name yet, but she's lovingly known as Little Squish around here. Spencer even calls her that. We can't help it. Those rolls are to die for!

Vacation!

We're vacationing and it's fantastic. I'd say that for two kids who love their routines, Spencer and Genevieve are doing fabulous with the lack of those routines. I haven't uploaded any pictures but so far we've stayed in a giant's house for our family reunion, gotten to go to the temple for the first time this year, ate tons of tasty food, spent lots of time with awesome family, welcomed a new beautiful niece into the world and said hello via Skype, witnessed another niece starting to walk, did some hardcore playing with aunts and uncles and cousins, and generally had a fabulous time. Spencer had one of the best moments in his life last night when his grandma unveiled the Lorax quilt she made for him. He was so excited. Genevieve has unwound enough to play with all our family instead of seeing if it's possible to become my second skin whenever anyone looks at her. It's been a good week. A few more days and then off to the epic across the country drive. Should be exciting. :)

Toes!

This little lady got her toenails painted for the first time this week. I did it on a whim, but I totally love it. This may become a habit. Having a little girl is so much fun! She and Spencer are different in so many ways and I love having them together to play off each other. Possibly the best thing about both kids is that they're both cuddle bugs. Love it!

Relaxing Week

I just looked at the pictures I've taken this week to see what I wanted to write about and I'm sadly lacking in any photography. Really, we've just had a super relaxed week.  4th of July was fun. Some friends from church host a 4th of July backyard pool party every year. This year we've had almost perpetual thunderstorms for the last nearly two weeks. 4th of July morning we woke up to this.

By the time the party came around the skies had cleared temporarily and we actually had some sun. Thank goodness for portable canopies. We all squeezed under the one they set up while it alternatively poured, thundered, got clear, and then drenched us again. Being from the west where storms like this are few and not nearly so intense, Bill and I both thoroughly enjoy all the rain. I wish I had a picture of Spencer as he stood getting soaked so that he could keep drawing with his sidewalk chalk. He loves, loves, loves the rain. I was hoping to teach him to swim this summer, but we haven't quite been able to make that happen. He's not as ready for that step as I thought he'd be, though he does love water and isn't afraid at all. We'll see if we can get him out swimming as the summer goes on and maybe he can learn a bit.

Speaking of swimming, we had all intentions of going to the lake on Saturday, but the storms haven't ended yet and we got rained out. Instead we did one of our favorite things and drove to Greenville to go to Costco, then to REI. Costco polish sausages and a shopping trip, playing on the bikes at REI plus browsing to our heart's content, made for a great Saturday afternoon/evening. Both kids zonked at REI. That made it all the better. :)

I did make these delectable treats this week.

I had no idea how easy cream puffs are to make. I used this recipe. We just finished the last ones we had frozen this afternoon. They were amazing.

The big news really is that we're leaving for Utah in just over a week. I'm giddy with excitement to see all our family and have our first real family vacation since we got married. I mean the kind you remember as a kid where your parents planned a whole trip and went and executed it. We've seriously never done this and I'm so stinkin' excited to go have a great time. It's going to be fantastic.