It's About Time!

We're back! And with a fresh new look. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It's hard to believe it's been over three months since I last blogged! Ridiculous, but there just hasn't been time. Now that the holidays are over and I'm back to working four days a week instead of five, I'm finding a little more time to do things other than just the basics of living. Not only am I back to working four days a week but my day off is now Friday! How awesome is that? A three day weekend every weekend? I'll take it!

So what's new with us? Well, Ava is getting so big I can hardly stand it! At her 6 month check up she was almost 17lbs! She's in the 50th-75th percentile for weight and the 90th for height! We're not sure where she got that. She can do all sorts of things now. She crawls . . . well, she can crawl but for some reason she doesn't love it so she has to be pretty motivated in order to do it. She can sit up from any position and moves around like she's been doing it all her life. She eats baby food and/or cereal at all three major meals. And yesterday during what should have been her mid-morning nap, she figured out how to pull up and stand in her crib! I'm not so excited about that one. We struggle enough with naps without that new trick keeping her from sleeping. She's been teething a lot, but those darn teeth still refuse to actually come in. All in all she's doing very well and is even more of a joy now than she was when she was born!

The holidays were good, but crazy and a little hard. We spent Thanksgiving in Colorado Springs with Grandpa and Gigi. That was a lot of fun and there was tons of good food. For Christmas we spent about five days in Montana with Nana and Papa Ernie. Everyone was amazed at what a good baby Ava is. We've been telling them! We are so thankful to have Ava around as a distraction from the sadness of missing our parents. That was especially true around the holidays, and even for our extended families as well. She brought a lot of light and fun and excitement where there could have been a lot of sorrow and pain. She took her first trip out to Ol' Granpappy's grave on Christmas Eve. It was very cold and there was a lot of snow on the ground, but she was very good and almost seemed to understand the importance of the occasion.

Our new year is off to a pretty good start, although Tim has not been well. He's been suffering from shingles for almost four weeks now, and has a cold to go with it this weekend. We're really hoping the shingles gets better soon. Who knows why it suddenly came upon him (he's pretty far from the average age!) but it has really been a bummer. He won his Fantasy Football league, so that was pretty fun and exciting. A little surprise cash is always nice to have around! We submitted the plans to the Town of Wellington yesterday in order to get the necessary permit to finish the basement. So hopefully we'll be starting that project soon. It's going to be a long one. But first we're doing a quick remodel of the laundry room. It will be nice to have that done and have a little more storage downstairs!

That's about all the news for now. See the post above for some pictures from the last few months and hopefully I'll be blogging again soon!