A Week in Birmingham

Wow, it has been 2 weeks since the last post! Certainly a lot has happened since then. We've gone from really hot days to cool brisk days in the past 2 weeks. Last weekend Katie came up to visit us. Savannah had fun having someone different to chase her around. Sat. morn Katie and I went to several neighborhood garage sales. Savannah got a new/old cozy coupe car, which she loves to get in and out of it. She never seems to get anywhere, just likes to open and close the door. ;) I also found a few outfits for her. Somehow in midst of the morning I managed to loose my cell phone. I remember when I last used it, and then I couldn't find it after we came home and went back out. I spent 2 days trying to retrace my thoughts and steps of where it might have been. The problem was that I had turned to ringer off the day before when I had to go get my driver's license renewed. Bad timing! Katie stayed till Monday morning. We had a nice visit. Jonathan wasn't too concerned that I had lost my phone. He came home Mon on his lunch break and brought me a new pink RAZR phone. I know he was just excited to have an excuse to get a new phone himself. Oh and then later in the week I went to put my jacket on and realized there was something heavy in the pocket. There sat the cell phone that I searched forever in the car and through the house for. I knew I couldn't have been that careless as to loose it, but the thought that I wore that jacket in the morning hours, never crossed my mind. I had a feeling it would show up somewhere.

Monday afternoon Savannah and I headed to Birmingham. I wanted to spend some time with my parents and getting some sewing done with my mother. The week started off wet, overcast, cool, and dreary. There were several days we didn't see the sun. On Tuesday I made a orange fleece trick-or-treat bag for Savannah. Rebecca spent the night Monday night also. So, the girls had fun playing and getting into trouble together. On Wednesday Savannah and I met Julie and Caroline for lunch. On Thursday my mom and I cut out and sewed together 2 Roman shades for my office room. I'm slowly getting the hang of the machine sewing thing. I've always enjoy hand stitching and left the machine sewing to my mother. But now that there are things I would like to make, I guess I better learn to use a machine. I'll have to post a picture of the finished product as soon as we get them hung.

Friday morning Savannah had her 18 month checkup. The doctor confirmed that she really is growing up fast. She weighed 26 lbs. 9 oz and was 34.5 in. tall. She was in the 100% percentile for height and 75th for weight. We knew she was getting big! We then headed over to Lauren Townsend's baby Halloween party. Savannah enjoyed dressing up as a chicken and seeing all her little friends again. That afternoon I made cupcakes for the Noble Hallowen party on Sat night. I found a good recipe in a magazine I wanted to try. I learned a new trick when making my icing. You can use a package of Koolaid to color your frosting and add flavor. The icing was an orange flavored icing to start with and the orange Koolaid just enhanced the flavor to go on the chocolate cupcakes. That night I got to go to Bunko. We were suppose to dress up in a costume. To make things easy I went as Martha Stewart. Wore khaki pants and a sweater set. I had a handcuff chained to one arm and I carried a basket of fresh herbs and one of her books, along with a tray of mini cupcakes I just baked. I certainly wasn't the best dressed, but it was any easy outfit.


Not the best picture, but this is Savannah as a chicken.

I had been wanting to take Savannah to Botanical Gardens or somewhere all week to take some 18 month pictures, but the weather didn't allow for it. I finally just took some pictures between my parents and grandmother's yard Friday afternoon.


Savannah enjoyed helping her Grandpa pick up acorns, or as she preferred, pulling grass.




This is my favorite of the bunch.

Jonathan came to Bham Fri night and we spent the weekend at the Bailey's. Savannah knew right where everything was and where to find her toys when she got there. It was fun to be able to go the Noble's annual Fall party Sat night. The wind was a little much. but we survived! Savannah wore her Curious George monkey outfit to this party. Savannah got to try her hand at the whole trick-or-treating experience. She loved sitting and watching all the adult walk by and dump candy in her bag. The problem was on the way home she became possessive of her full bag and didn't want to let go of it. Little does she know, mom and dad will be eating most of that candy.


Savannah's buddy Ellie started crying when Savannah sat down and took her spotlight.








Cupcakes that I made for the party.


Treat bags that I made for Savannah's little friends. Got the idea from Martha Stewart.

So we made it back to Madison Sun night. Today Savannah has been pretty difficult to deal with. She has a runny nose either from her shots on Friday or the cool night air, or a combo of both. She has had to check and make sure all her stuff is where she left it in the house. We fought taking a nap for several hours today. I will say that the Peppermint Latte that I treated myself to on the way home from Publix, made my day a little brighter. :)

Picking the Perfect Pumpkins

On Saturday we went to Tate Farms Pumpkin Patch outside of Huntsville. It was quite an impressive place. They have like 5000 acres of land. I thought they did a good job with their set up to accomodate so many people. They had all kinds of playground equipment, slides, little John Deere tractors. They had a hay loft you could jump out of. You could jump in a cotton bin and they had tons of corn cribs you could play in. Savannah seemed to enjoy the corn cribs. Of course they had a hayride out into their pumpkin patch. They said because of the August heat like 80% of their pumpkins didn't mature properly, but it looked like they still had a pretty good selection to choose from in the fields. We picked out 3 small pumpkins that would be easy to carry. Although Savannah was getting tired by this point, she did seem to enjoy walking through the patch and trying not to slip on vines. We couldn't get her to say "pumkpin", but she would say ball. I guess that explains why when I put a small pumpkin in her hands, that she tried to throw it. After several days of cooler, perfect weather last week we were expecting Saturday to be just as pleasant. It was a nice day, but 80ish temps is still too hot in my book for pumpkin pickin'. Overall I think Savannah was at a good age to enjoy the fun this year. Last year she slept through the whole hayride and pumpkin picking experience.










She loved this little ride that went around in a circle. Had to have big kids on peddling though.

Quack, Quack

Savannah and I had fun having Kathryn and Rebecca spend the night Friday. Savannah got to stay up later and take a walk down to Bruster's. Saturday we took the girls to the Madison City Street Festival. It was fun pushing the girls around in their strollers and seeing the sites and people. I didn't get any good pictures of Savannah, but I did get some great ones of my adorable niece, Rebecca. Check out the eyes in this picture! I'm learning to use available light to bounce off the eyes for a glow.


I've been looking at several places lately trying to find a fall wreath to hang on our front door. I didn't want anything too Halloweeny that couldn't be used into Nov. I couldn't find anything that I just loved for less than at least $30. While I was at Michael's on Monday I talked myself into trying my hand at making my own wreath. I found some bunches of bright colored fall leaves that I liked and were on sale. So, I thought I would give it a try. I sat down with the glue gun and Martha Stewart on TV in the background and felt pretty crafty. I was pleased with the way it turned out.




Oh, Savannah is officially a toddler now...She has eaten her first peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We haven't given her a lot of peanut butter before now because the doctor's say wait till closer to 2 because of possible allergies. Well, I needed something different to start feeding her and she hasn't seemed to have trouble with the bits she has had already. Needless to say she enjoyed it and had sticky jelly all over her to prove it.

Today I went to the Old TIme Pottery here in town. It must be a fairly new store. It was well stocked and they seemed to have some good deals. I went with the purpose of finding a hook to go over the front door to put the wreath on. I went through the whole store before finding one on the opposite side. That's ok, it gave me an excuse to look around. I did find some new kitchen chair cushion on sale for $6 each. I didn't think that was too bad. On our way home I stopped at a neighborhood a few miles from home and let Savannah feed the ducks some crackers. I'm not sure if she has seen ducks up close before, although she knows that they quack. There were a ton of Canadian Geese and from what I could tell 2 Mallard Ducks. The Mallard ducks were very fiesty. They went after every cracker we threw down before the geese had a chance, and even came up and ate them out of Savannah's hands. She thought they were hilarious! She got the biggest belly laugh when all the ducks started coming towards us and eating. Those 2 ducks wanted to follow us for a while. Savannah got to swing on the playground. On the way back to the car we stopped under the gazebo. It was the perfect place for good light for pictures out of the direct sunlight with a nice tree behind. Here are a few of my favorite.

Picnics and Pictures

On Tuesday Savannah and I went to visit Aunt Kathryn and Cousin Rebecca at their house in good ole' small town Arkadelphia. The girls enjoyed playing with each other. Rebecca however was very protective of her new talking blue chair. It was quite cute! If Savannah didn't have a thousand other chairs I might be tempted to get her this toy chair for Christmas. While Kathryn was making our lunches to take to the park, Rebecca pulled out the cheerio box and dumped it all over the floor. It was really a funny site and look at the face captured in this picture...

We ate our lunch at the little park down the road. The girls liked the car swings and Savannah had fun just running around everywhere. Our trip was cut short when nap time arrived, but it made for a peaceful drive back.

Today was an overcast, but pleasant day outside. Savannah and I made our weekly Thursday trip to one of the local thrift stores for $3 a bag clothes day. Savannah played around in the driveway with her cars and I played around with the camera. This is one of my favorite shots...

I realized today that Savannah's hair has really grown a lot in the past 6 months. We might not be wearing pony tails yet, but it is definately getting thicker. She had fun in the back yard tonight letting the dogs lick and tickle her.

Tomorrow night Aunt Kathryn and Rebecca are coming to spend the night. This should be a fun surprise for Savannah, if she is still awake when they get here. I think I've about decided not to drive to Bham on Sat for Kid's Market. I hate to waste my contributor ticket and not go, but it's a lot of driving for one day just to shop. I'm sure I'll be back in Bham in a few weeks anyway.

Trip To Destin

We got back from our little trip to Destin yesterday. We have all been looking forward to a little getaway for several weeks. We left from the Bailey's Thursday morning and drove down. Savannah did pretty well in the car until the last 45 minutes or so. We were all antsy by that point. We checking into out hotel and ended up trying to get Savannah to take a nap. We spent a lot of time trying to get Savannah to take a nap on this trip. She slept well in the pack and play at night, but it was harder to get her to squeeze in a nap during the day. Friday we had our timeshare sales pitch meeting with Wyndham Resorts at 11:00. We drove down the beach front road and oohed and aahed at the multi-million dollar houses. Jonathan agreed to let us take Savannah for a walk on the beach before our meeting. I wanted to get some sweet pictures with her linen dress on teh beach. I had this assumption that Savannah would love the sand immediately and take off running. HAHA! She DID NOT LIKE the feel on the sand on her feet! Jonathan had to carry her around the whole time! Savannah managed to behave for the most part during our sales pitch. The deal they were offering would be great in the long run, but we really have no intentions of getting involved in a timeshare at this point. We went to the beach to swim and play around 4:30 that afternoon. It was the perfect time, wasn't so hot and the sun wasn't very bad. We found out that Savannah LOVES the water in the ocean! She would have floated in her pink car all day if we would've let her. She did warm up to the sand a little bit to play with her pails and shovels. She really liked dumping water from her watering can or bucket on the sand over and over again...It's all about the water! We went to the beach again Sat morning. We didn't really stay that long either time, but it gave Savannah a chance to play. Later that afternoon, Jonathan finally gave in and let us go back to the beach to take some family photos. This is one thing that I wanted more than anything from this trip. We went across the street to the state park. The sky and light was perfect since it was approaching sunset. We had the tripod set and trying to get the 3 of us all together. We never got that "perfect" shot, but my subjects weren't as patient as I am with taking pictures. We got take out once again that evening and watched our Auburn tigers beat up on Florida. We learned a lesson during this trip. When going to the beach again with young children, it would be worth getting a room/condo on the beach with a balcony overlooking the ocean. That way we don't have to travel in the car, and we can still enjoy the view while trying to get little ones to nap.

Savannah managed not to sleep any on the 7 hr car ride back yesterday. We made it back in time for afternoon worship services and then went over to the Smith's after church. Needless to say, she crashed when we finally got home.

I will leave you with some of my favorite photos that I've edited.


Savannah looking at the gators at Fudpuckers.


We did not like the sand touching our feet!






She would have rode the waves forever!


The beach shoes did come in handy for Savannah to play and walk on the sand.