Visiting Family in Northern Indiana

A couple weekends ago Melanie and I traveled up to the northern part of the state to visit family. It was a combination of my Grandmother's 90th Birthday, seeing my Aunt Elsie's new home, enjoying Essenhaus buffet breakfast (the best biscuits and gravy in the world), and of course hanging out at my parent's house.

The next several pictures were taken at my grandma's surprise birthday party. Happy 90th, Grandma!







My niece, Danae, used to play with this playhouse when she was a little girl. It has been resurrected in the basement of my parent's house. Melanie played with it for the first time when we visited. She could not get enough of the swing on the porch. She would spend at least 30 to 40 minutes in constant play each time she sat down in front of it.


The Saturday evening up north Melanie had a bath, got dressed for bed, and then played with some small toys before going to bed. She is forming her own likes and dislikes. Melanie is pretty good about communicating what she needs.

Case in point: "Shorts, mommy. No pants"... this what Melanie normally says when I get her pajamas together. When it comes to bedtime Melanie is pretty insistent on wearing shorts -- no pajama bottoms allowed! I'm not sure where she has gotten her love of shorts, but as long as she is comfortable and sleeps we're good with it.

You'll see in the following picture how Melanie's hair is getting pretty long. Since we have not cut her hair yet we keep it back with a ponytail or barrette.

I want to extend a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Our families did not get together this year but Matt, Melanie, and I enjoyed a good day together. We had a Taco Turkey Day; Melanie dug into her food with zeal.

I did work a little bit from home but nothing too extensive. I will be heading into work tomorrow for a full day of work. I am on-call this week; it has been pretty normal so far. On Monday it will shift to another person.

I went to Meijer tonight to get some dog food. It was pretty obvious they were stocked up and still stocking up for big sales tomorrow. The store wasn't busy. I found myself wandering aimlessly through the book, video, office supply, and kitchen aisles. Those are normally places I spend money for no reason at all. Tonight the will power kicked in and I didn't get anything off those shelves.

Matt and Melanie are reading a book in preparation for our baby girl's bedtime. It is a late night for Melanie. She slept in quite late today (8:30 am) and had a late afternoon nap. Both of those things add up to a later nighttime for our little girl.

Again... Happy Thanksgiving. May God bless you.

Play Date

Late in August, we had a play date at Hummel park with Mason and Amanda. Amanda took some pictures, and these are from those. Sorry they are so late.

They took a little while to get along, but not too long.

After getting to know each other, naturally some chasing ensued.


They enjoyed each others snacks.



Melanie had numerous climbing adventures. (and no, daddy didn't help her on the way up)




And she did sit still for a pretty unexciting picture with daddy.

Miscellaneous Pics and Updates

I have included some pictures that I uploaded from my phone as well as some taken with our digital camera.

Melanie's daycare had a Pumpkin Patch day a couple weeks ago. They took pictures of all the kids picking out and decorating their pumpkin. This is a picture they had posted on a bulletin board, I snapped a picture of it with my cell phone. It is a little fuzzy but you can still see her determined look as she carries her pumpkin around.

Several months ago the daycare had Melanie and her classmates put together a construction paper flower. My understanding is the children placed the smiley face and leaves on.... not too bad for someone who was not quite two years old yet.

Melanie was especially happy the other day on the ride home from the daycare. She was playing with her toys and making up some stories. I pulled into the driveway, opened up the back door, and snapped this one with my phone. It turned out pretty well! :)

A couple months ago it was pretty sunny and warm outside. Melanie would take advantage of her swing set as much as possible during that time. This picture was captured by Matt one afternoon while the two of them were outside with the dogs.


The next two pictures were taken this morning. I asked Melanie, "Is that a pumpkin on your shirt, sweetie?" My goal was to get her to smile for the camera. Instead she looked at me and proceeded to pull the pumpkin up to her mouth. Her response to my question was "Yes, Mommy. Pumpkin kiss."



Our household is getting healthier by the week. I am back to being healthy. Matt is on the upswing thanks to a minute-clinic at CVS and the all powerful NediPot purchase he made. Melanie is doing well, also.

Melanie's daycare week went well. She had another good week of potty training at home and at the daycare. When I pick her up at the end of the day and she wants to keep playing with her friends it warms my heart. That is a sign to me that she is in a good place. It is hard to believe she is now 2 yrs and 2 months... and has been going there since she was 12 weeks old. Most of her classmates have grown up with her at the daycare.

This past Wednesday and Thursday evening Debbie and I had our annual Bed-and-Breakfast trip for her birthday. Check out where we go every year... it is AMAZING.... http://www.1875homestead.com. Our time was filled with relaxing, catching up with the caretakers of the BnB, and napping. I also took advantage of the time to finish the last book in the Twilight Saga. It got pretty addicting to me. I started the first book and finished the last book (4 books in the series) in less than 6 days.

Tomorrow I return to work. I am thankful for the extended weekend as it gave me a mental break. I look forward to returning to the office tomorrow.

General Silliness

This morning I was standing in the back hallway starting to work on laundry. I gave Melanie a couple infant blankets to play with. Pretty soon she came running down the hallway saying, "Mommy, blankie bears". I followed her out to the family room. Sure enough, she had a couple of her bears wrapped up in the blankies. As I stood there giggling, she took the changing pad from her diaper bag and proceeded to lie down next to them. Snap! I got one picture out before the batteries died.

Arrrrr Maties! Melanie's Halloween outfit was a Pirate Princess that Matt picked out. Matt is fighting a bad chest cold and Melanie has a little cough. We decided to stay in for the Halloween evening to not escalate their symptoms. That didn't squelch my desire to get her dressed up! I couldn't get Melanie to sit completely still. She loved to mess around with the hat. It is too bad they didn't have a "big girl" version of it, I would have dressed up to match her. In the following picture you can see how she kept putting it on and off, on and off, on and off.....


"Love you, Jessie." Melanie has a strong bond with Jessie. Jessie is so unbelievabily patient with Melanie's toddler-ness (if that is even a word). Melanie loves to pat Jessie as much as possible (to-be-read-as: pull, tug, pinch, and prod Jessie). In this very common moment, Melanie reached down to lovingly "pat" Jessie and say that she loves her.


Welcome to Gnomeville! There are so many reasons why this picture is precious. Let's start with the fact that she looks like a garden gnome. Better yet, there is the fact that it is funny since I'm short and gnomes are, too. There is something completely adorable about her affection for hats. In this picture I found many moments to smile at.