The last few weeks have been exceptionally busy, but at the same time full of a lot of exciting events!
First of all, my birthday was in September. Kyle suggested that we invite a few friends over for an outdoor potluck and movie on the big screen, which I thought was a fantastic idea. However, we're in the middle of a VERY rainy, rainy season...so we did a potluck and movie on a big screen indoors. We had about 24 people over, for the first time in our current house. The funny thing is that a couple days before someone commented that it would be funny if the electricity went out in the middle of the movie. So the morning of my birthday, at breakfast, Kyle prayed that the power would stay on during the movie. About 20 minutes later, it went out...and stayed out for the entire day. It did come back on for a little while as we ate dinner, but went out again after we started the movie. We ended up borrowing a generator to power the projector, computer, and speakers, and a great time was had by all!
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| Juliana with her friend Madelyn |
Since Juliana can now get out of both her crib and pack & play, we've had to take her mattress out of her crib and put it on the floor (we're waiting for the school to bring a toddler bed over for her). There's nothing to keep her on the mattress, so she ends up sleeping all over the place. And finding all kinds of toys to sleep with her. I have found her on the floor (both the rubber mats and the cold tile), in her tent, and on the couch in her room.
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| This is a pretty common occurrence during nap time... |
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| And so is this... |
It's pretty amazing how quickly Juliana learns new things and you never know what she will come up with each day! Lately she has started playing hide & seek and finding small places to get into. She really likes taking all of our shoes off the shoe rack and then either getting inside the shoe rack or wearing my shoes all over the place. I may have to get a hanging shoe rack or I just might lose my mind :) Her new word of the week is "UP", which she says all the time when she wants to be held. And she has started trying to jump (from a standing position on the floor), dresses herself (which whatever random clothes she can find) and is pointing to people (either in a picture or standing in front of her) and can sometimes identify them...so far she has Mama, Dada, Nana, Amy, and Titi (Adriana) down well. She also likes to make animal sounds and shhh people (which makes for some pretty interesting times in church)!
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| Wearing mommy's shoes (and the exta dress she decided to put on that day) |
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| Where's Nana??? |
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| She played so hard she fell asleep during lunch! |
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| Reuniting at the Ottawa airport |
Our biggest excitement is that we went to Canada for a week (just returned yesterday). We were going for one of my former roommates' wedding. Amy and Heidi, who I lived with for 3 years, are both living in Canada, and Amy's wedding was Saturday. Amy is living in Gatineau, Quebec, but the wedding was nearby in Ottawa, Ontario. After we flew in on Friday we met Dom, Amy's fiance, as well as several members of his family and some of their other friends. They then took us into Quebec for some true Canadian food. If you don't know, French is the language spoken in Quebec and it pretty intimidating to walk into a restaurant and have no idea what the menu said. However, Dom and Amy had us order Poutin, which was absolutely DELICIOUS! It is a plate of french fries, covered with gravy and cheese curd. Sounds a little weird, but we'd highly recommend it. Anyways, we had a wonderful time at the rehearsal and the wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and we both decided that Canadians are more friendly that pretty much anywhere else. If it weren't for the cold winters, we'd probably be tempted to move to Ottawa. After the wedding, we stayed for a couple more days to spend some more time with Heidi and visit Parliament and a national park. Thank you so much, Heidi, for finding us a place to stay and driving us around the whole time! And thank you to Amy for planning such a fun wedding...and for getting engaged last year so we could pay for this trip while I still had a paycheck...we're so glad we could be there to celebrate with you :)
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| Most of Kyle's day was spent keeping Juliana entertained |
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| What a beautiful bride |
We got back home yesterday afternoon and Kyle jumped right back into work, in fact today he worked until about 7 pm. This coming Saturday is Family Game Day at the school, which Kyle is in charge of. I'm sure everything will come together and everyone always enjoys the day, but it is definitely time consuming for him.
I think that's about all for now. I have posted more pictures on Facebook, so check them out if you would like to see more!
