what a day

Belle, Kimberly and I went to the aquarium in Baltimore today. It was a nice little visit, but my back and shoulders are KILLING me!!! I bought a backpack from a friend (who I still haven't sent a check to... sorry Amy!!) for Belle, but that little girl is still really freaking heavy to carry around for 4 hours! holy smokes! It was really nice though. the aquarium wasn't anything like I expected, but it was alright. Belle was most people watching and not really fish watching, but eventually she started watching the fish... shortly before she fell asleep! :)

Now - I have to tell you - Belle decided that she was going to start pulling herself up yesterday... and today the bumps and bruises started... first - my fault - but, i was changing her diaper in the back of the car today and she turns over and starts crawling - backward. so, not wanting her to fall off the tailgate onto the concrete, i gave her bottom a little push forward. and she fell. on her face. and her new tooth on the top cut her little lip and it was bleeding... :*( the poor little hunny! I felt so bad!!! But she only cried for about 5 seconds and then was done with it. then, after the aquarium trip, I left her with daddy so i could go get the things we need for the week (diapers, baby food, etc) and when i got home, he said "she hit her head and got a bruise". so i look - yup. BIG OLD bump and bruise on her forehead. apparently, she tried to pull herself up on the end table, lost her balance and fell and hit her head on the corner... poor little chica has been having a rough day!

well, that's it for today. i need a shower and off to bed!

9 month photos

stolen

I just stole that quote under the title from someone else's blog that amy follows... it was perfect. :)

9 month checkup

We had Isabelle's 9 month checkup today. She is doing great! Doc had nothing but good things to say about our healthy little girl. She is now 23lbs 10oz and 29.5 inches long! She is in the 90th percentile for both weight and height. Since her 6 month checkup, she has gained 4lb 8 oz and grown 3.5 inches!!! Crazy how big she's getting! :)

We go in for 9 month photos tomorrow. I will post them when I get a few minutes. :)

a few things

before i forget - i got notice today that all my paperwork did, in fact, make it in to the engineering board and i will be sitting for the PE (professional engineering exam) in october... i was secretly hoping that it wouldn't all get in and i would get to wait until april to take it (that's the procrastinator in me). but i guess it will be good to take it and get it out of the way and, maybe, get a raise for it or something... don't know if gsipt gives raises for licensing, but we'll see - if i pass it! best get started on that studying thing!

now, about our vacation. we arrived late in alpena on friday night. poor little belle didn't go to bed that night until 1:30am so she was quite tired saturday. she and i slept in saturday until 10:30!!! it was great! :) then we went to aunt pat and uncle neil's 50th wedding anniversary party. it was great because we got to see everyone, but it was so HOT!!! we aren't used to that hot, humid michigan weather anymore without having the lovely AC waiting for us inside! we were sweating our tails off!

sunday, we had belle baptized, then went to the lumsden family reunion for a bit, then went to the lake! :) ahhhh... love that lake! :) and belle did too! she played in the water for about 2 hours until she was tired and turning a little blue! :)here is belle in her pretty baptism dress

us at the family reunion (gloria, adam, belle, howard, nick and me)

nick and belle swimming at lake avalon

belle and william swimming. she was loving all the attention from her cousins and had a sweet spot for william! :)

we had lots of visitors on our week up at the cottage. grandma and grandpa hietikko, schonnie and josh, aunt mildred, grandma flint and grandpa brunk, uncle jeremy, andy, jeff and adam. and of course, grandma and grandpa lumsden and uncle adam came to visit often. :) we had a great time and belle was crawling all over the place. she also decided that she loves to chew on shoes and she is trying to pull herself up. she also got another tooth while were gone. poor little hunny was fighting the pain all week and that dang thing FINALLY broke through on sunday morning! so we now have 3 teeth - two on the bottom and one on the top. she is getting another one on the top too, so she's been a little fussy. but we discovered these all natural teething tablets and boy do they work!!! it's almost instant too! i would highly recommend them!

so anyway, we had a wonderful vacation until our trip home. our flight got delayed out of midland because of broken windshield wipers so we missed our connection in detroit. when we went down to rebook, they told us they didn't have anything else for that night, but they could "get us a hotel and get us out first thing in the morning". well - clearly that just wasn't going to work for us, so they finally rebooked us through chicago and then back to baltimore. so we finally got back in to baltimore at 12:30am, just to find that they lost our luggage, including the car seat. so, we had to borrow a car seat from the air lines. we got our luggage back on tuesday - and it's still hanging out in the living room and in the bedroom and it will probably stay there until this weekend! well, anyway, that's enough for tonight. i am way past my bedtime, but i'm watching a movie and typing all at the same time... here are a few more pics for you...

grandma flint, belle and grandpa brunk

beautiful little blue eyed girlgrandpa brunk and bellegrandpa hietikko and belleuncle jeremy and belle

quck vacation pics

i know some of you have been dying for vacation photos... so here are a couple to hold you over until i have time to actually write about our vacation...after baptism with daddy

swimming with daddy

sleeping after swimming

well, that's it for tonight. more to come this week. :)

CRAWLING!!!!!

It's official!!! Belle is CRAWLING!!! She has really been working on it for a few weeks now and now she's got it! :) She actually started "crawling" last Friday at daycare, but she wouldn't do it for me all weekend, so I didn't count it until she actually did it for me! :) So, yesterday, I was watching her and she just started crawling! And tonight, she was going all over the place! I got some good video on my camcorder, but since I still can't get the video off of that, I got some not so good video on my camera.

And here are a couple little pics from tonight at bath time. :)

Loving bath time!

Eating the duck.

Wild hair.

Only two more days and we get to come home!!! I can't wait to see you all! (And neither can Belle!)

New and exciting!

So, I just discovered Google Calendars (thanks to the MommyCast) and it's AWESOME. But what's even MORE awesome is that I can link it to my blog so that you guys can all see what we have going on in our lives!!! Now, you can see when we'll be on vacation, when Belle has doctor's appointments, when Nick has softball, etc. It's all the way at the very bottom of the blog, but if you need to see what's up with us - take a look!!! I'm so excited! :)

it's been a while

I know it's been a little while, but we've been busy, so get off my back! :) Last weekend, we flew up to Michigan for a VERY short trip for my 10 year high school reunion. It was so much fun! It was great to see everyone and catch up and reminisce. I miss those people! We got a very little bit of visiting in with my parents, somewhere between the getting in late and leaving early and running to and fro. Like I said - it was a very short trip! However, we will be heading back up north FRIDAY for a MUCH NEEDED 10 day vacation! I cannot wait! We are going to be staying at a cottage on Long Lake in Hillman. If anyone wants to come visit, let me know and I will give you directions! :) We will be having Belle baptized on the 16th, so that's exciting. We are totally looking forward to this trip and not having to be rushing all over the place to visit with people. It will be so nice to have a place to stay at where people can come visit US for once!

Anyway, yesterday, we had my company picnic and they had a little kiddie pool set up for the little ones. Belle was the only one that really used it (a couple other kids came splashing through later on). Here's a picture and a little video from her pool time. She LOVES the water! It was way past her dinner time and she didn't even care! (Usually she's fussing if we are 10 minutes late with food and we were almost an hour late and she didn't even seem to notice). I wish we had a nice backyard to get one of these for her! She spent almost an hour in there just splashing around and eating all the toys. She was "dancing" to the music (or at least it looks like it) in the little video. Fun times! I can't wait to see how she does in the lake! Oh - and by the way - thanks for the bathing suit, Aunt Shannon! It's a little big, but it fits! I think I'm going to have to go pick up another one before we head up north. Her other one is a little tight around the belly! haha!Chewing on the alligator

Dancing in the pool!

We cannot wait to see you all! Only a couple more days! :)