Nine Months?!

Natalie is about to turn nine months.  Nine months, can you believe it?!  The last few weeks have been amazing to just watch her grow and learn so many MANY new things.  We spent a week with her cousins and that started everything in motion.  She saw what they were doing and immediately wanted to try to.  Well, so it seems!  She is starting to attempt crawling, but hasn't got the hang of it yet.  She has only made it about two feet.  I think she is a little intimidated by the many head dives she has taken from the hands and knees position!  Her walker is still one of her favourite places to be.  We are still taking as many safety precautions as we can so she stays safe.  She would much rather just sit and play on the floor than to be held.  She can sit there for hours just playing, talking and dancing to the music!  She will sit there and spin on the spot and scoot forward a little bit at a time to get to a toy that has gone too far out of reach.  She has 6 teeth..... four on top, two on bottom.  She is going through this stage where she has to feed herself.  We are trying to work through it but it takes a lot of patience and creativity.  Welcome to parenthood I guess!  As for Dylan and I, we are doing pretty good.  Busy but good.

Here are a few new(ish) pictures!

Who knows what she was thinking in this picture?!

Her vibrating teether

The yellow thing she is holding is the upright part of the stacker rings.

The threads must feel good on her teeth!

The joy of being a mom

In the front carrier

Chillaxin' by the campfire

Hmmmm....

So, recently Natalie has been a little off. Not necessarily grumpy but just off. She hadn't been sleeping as much and she had lost a little bit of her appetite. Then the other day mom and I were in Calgary when I noticed that I could see four teeth. That is not including the bottom two she had before. They are not all quite through yet but you can see them. The first one on the top to come through was the second one on the left and the second one to come through was the right middle. So she looks a little funny right now but the other teeth with catch up so I am not to worried! When I get the chance to get a picture I will post it but as for now, you will just have to imagine seeing them! She chews on EVERYTHING so I know the others will come pretty quickly!

VBS

So today I decided that before we go camping this weekend I should take some time to update our blog! So I am taking time out of my busy schedule to give an update! Once again this year I was in charge of planning our Church VBS program. We decided to keep it simple and it ended up being more simple than we had planned on! Our theme was VeggieTales which the kids absolutely loved. We chose the first three videos of VeggieTales so not many of the younger kids had seen them. We printed the lessons off of the website so that part was planned for us. We came up with crafts, snack and games and away we went. There were a lot of volunteers and not very many kids (max 20) so we ended up doing everything together except for the last day we split the younger and older kids for the crafts and games! Overall it was a really good three days. We had a lot of fun! I really enjoy planning this sort of thing even though I sure am glad it is over for the year!

Here are some pictures of our crafts that we did. I can't put any pictures of the rest of our time because I want to respect the privacy of the people that were there. I never asked them for permission so I will just stick to the crafts!

Day 1 - Where's God When I'm S-scared

Daniel in the Lions Den

Day 2 - Are you My Neighbor

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

Day 3 - God Wants Me to Forgive Them?!?

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant

To and Fro

The other day Dylan and I final set up Natalie's swing. At first she wasn't too sure of this thing that kept bringing her closer to mom than take her away quickly. Once she figured out what was really happening, she was fine with the idea! Now every time we take her outside, she usually ends up in the swing for 5-10 minutes. The dog and cat come and sit right beside or in front of her and she of course LOVES that. The dog will lick her feet and she will giggle. At first I was disgusted by this because lets face it, Spencer is after all a dog and not a very clean one at that. Being a Chocolate Lab, he finds all sorts of dead things with his keen sense of smell and has to bring them to the yard as a trophy. We just make sure we wash her feet as soon as we get in. Thanks to Marv and Loretta for the swing! It was an excellent baby gift idea!

Our Little Tike!

So Precious

Movin' About

Seven months has come and passed and once again I find myself being late with the updates! Our crazy summer schedule has begun already and with the busyness of life, I seem to keep forgetting to update our blog. So here is a quick update about us. Dylan spends most of his days at work, and time that he is home, I usually find him something to do! Evening is his time with Natalie so then I end up doing the mowing in those few hours! My days are filled with many things. Of course taking care of Natalie is the top priority but lately I have been filling any spare time I have with VBS trying to get it ready for.... oh wow, NEXT WEEK!! I have kind of let the house duties slip so that I could get everything done with VBS but now it is very clear I need to dedicate a day to actually get my house clean! As for Natalie, she is still our bundle of joy. She fills our hearts with adorable smiles and giggles! Just recently we have started putting her in her walker. Don't worry, we have taken the necessary safety precautions. It didn't take her long to figure out how to move!! Now she has started getting into everything that opens! I guess this is just a glimpse into what is to come. She has not learned how to crawl yet but she is happy and content to just sit in one spot and play with her toys. Occasionally she will reach for something that is to far out of her grasp and will topple forward but she will lay on her belly until she is either bored or uncomfortable. She has an incredible eye for detail. Every piece of string and every tag on a toy gets investigated first by hand, and then by mouth!

We love our daughter so much and can not wait to see what she will learn next.

Yard Work

Dylan and I are not really known for keeping very good care of our yard. We do the mowing and weed whipping but the trimming of the branches and the weeding of the flower beds and the garden usually do not happen! So this year we (mostly me) decided to get it up to par! We started by trimming down the dead branches and the ones that were touching the ground. This made a huge difference! It was incredible to see how much that helped. We are still not finished but I promise to add pictures once things are done! Here are some pictures from cutting down the trees in the back!

Voles seem to be very popular around our area this year and both the cat and the dog have been enjoying them! I was working outside raking up some dead grass and one ran right in front of me. They are not very fast so I grabbed it and gave it to the cat. He played with it for a bit before it ended up to be his lunch!

This is one of the many nests that Spencer found! These ones were in an old Woodpecker hole that was about waist high. There were four little ones in total. Over the next few weeks I watched them grow. I was amazed at how fast they grew.