Amelie's 1st Birthday

We celebrated Amelie's birthday with a barbeque with family friends-- the Johnsens, Singers, Burgers, Clarks--  plus Auntie Kenny & Nate and Aunt Janelle, Uncle Mike, Lucas, & Axel.  It was so nice to have a summer birthday with good weather where we could all be outside. Here are some pictures from the party. I did not get any pictures of Mike & Janelle, but they manned the grill & did all the clean up so we could enjoy the party, and Auntie Kenny was baby holder and photographer-- thank you!

Levi & Amelie

The one year olds.  I'll have to keep an eye on Kenny, looks like she's handing out alcohol to minors.

The whole crew... next year I'll remember to get a better picture

I am one!

Logan was pretty psyched for the party.

Levi showing Amelie how its done.  He had practiced the weekend before.

Post-cake

Post cake cleanup

A few of her first birthday presents:

Dress from Grandma.  Mom, why did you sit me in this poky grass?

Book from the Smialowskis

Chair from Grandma

Happy Birthday Little A!  We love you!

Amelie- 1 year

My baby is one! Its funny how each day can be excruciatingly slow but a year goes by so fast. A year ago yesterday I remember playing with Logan outside, and feeling kind of melancholy that his days as an only child and sole focus of our attention were over, that our lives were about to be irreversibly changed. And then we got Amelie and realized how lucky we were. She is a joy every day. Both she and Logan are. They're also whiny and clingy and demanding and exhausting every day. That's how it is at this age, I think. You are loved and wanted to the point of exhaustion... to the point that you might hide under your covers hoping for just 5 minutes alone. But I know someday the tables will turn and they will not want me anymore.  I know I should feel lucky for these years when I'm loved to the point of exhaustion.

At one, Amelie is an expert crawler, motoring all over the house.  She crawls as if on a mission, swiping things out of her way as she goes.  We have only 2 steps in our house, and the top of one of those steps is of course her favorite spot-- she has tumbled over it once already. She pulls herself up on everything, cruises around the furniture.  She likes to stand at the deck door, and on her changing table looking out the window.  She can see the neighbor's horses from there.  She loves the horses. She points at them to show us-- they are the first thing she looks for in the morning. She loves Logan's legos-- she takes a particular joy in pulling them out of the box and throwing them around the room one by one.  She also likes her picnic basket and wooden vegetable set, and loves to pull the magnets off the fridge.  She got her first tooth just a week before her first birthday. She's recently turned into quite the mama's girl.  She likes to flirt with new people, smiling and pointing at them, but then hiding her face in my shirt as soon as they smile back.

Amelie is 27 1/4" tall (5%), 17lb10oz (6%), and her head is 45.5cm around (60%).

Lake Granby camping

We are not really campers. We do camp now and then, but mainly to facilitate some other activity like climbing. This past weekend, though, we went camping for the sake of camping. Our friends the Johnsens reserved campsites 6 months ahead of time, since that's what you have to do in Colorado, and we spent the weekend at Lake Granby. I was pretty excited for a weekend at a lake. A lot of the lakes in Colorado are reservoirs that you're not allowed to swim in, but Lake Granby is an exception. I have fond memories of growing up swimming at Rowledge Pond, and I envisioned lots of swimming and canoeing and sandcastles and that sort of thing. I forgot, however, that CO mountain lakes are FREEZING. And full of rocks. They don't exactly lend themselves to swimming. Plus, it was about 50 degrees when we arrived Friday afternoon. We were in hats and puffy jackets.

Nevertheless, as far as camping goes, it was a pretty nice spot. We had a little corner of the lake to ourselves, fell asleep to the sound of a big waterfall... until Amelie woke us all up a couple hours later and approximately every two hours after that. Amelie is at a rough age for camping. During the day she wanted to crawl around, but the ground was pretty rough for crawling and she would shovel handfuls of dirt and rocks into her mouth faster than we could get them out. At night, she had a hard time sleeping.  And also, I managed to come down with a 12 hour stomach bug that had me puking in the outhouse several times.  Nothing like puking in the outhouse.  Still, we made it to Rocky Mountain and had our best moose day ever-- we saw 6 moose including a mom and a baby.  We visited the Grand Lake Lodge, which Mark remembers from his youth, and walked around Monarch Lake which was beautiful.  Logan had a ball throwing rocks in the lake with Quin and Lucian. It was really windy, which was pretty fortunate because any time the wind died down the bugs set in.  We're really lucky to live in a bug-free spot. I forget how annoying they can be.

So, we had a good weekend... we made it through the whole weekend, which was a small victory.  But we unanimously cancelled our camping plans for the following 2 weekends and reserved a hotel instead. On the bright side, Logan did well... so maybe we'll try again when Amelie is 3:).

A & Logan at our campsite

Amelie's first camping trip

A at the campsite with Lake Granby in the background

Me & Amelie at the campsite

Mark & Logan hiking near our campsite

She was so excited to be let loose to crawl around the tent after being held all day

Mother and baby moose in Rocky Mountain

Moose thinking about crossing river

Moose crossing river

You can never have enough moose pictures.  (Except when you do... I think we took about 100)

A nest Mark spotted at the top of a snag on the edge of the lake.

Family picture at the Grand Lake Lodge

At Grand Lake Lodge.  They had really nice flowers.

Our second day camping was Amelie's birthday.  Here she is celebrating.  I missed this due to the stomach bug but I'm told she loved her cupcake.  She got sad at first because the frosting got stuck all over her hands and she couldn't grab the cake.  Mark de-frosted her and then all was good.

Oregon

We spent Father's Day weekend in Oregon for Bill & Rosie's wedding. We all packed into Karen & Marshall's house-- 1 family per room, 19 people in all. Karen & Marshall were smart enough to move out to their camping trailer parked in front. We got in lots of good family in  time. Logan LOVES his uncles, and poor Uncle Dan and Mike were probably worn out after that weekend.

The boys headed out for a bar golf bachelor party Saturday night, where they bar hopped to 10 different bars with a different drink at each.   They had a fun time... came home covered in glitter that lasted for days and gradually spread to the rest of the family.  We also did some hikes around Corvallis, made a trip to the Coast, went to a climbing gym in Portland that had a fun kids area with tunnels and slides, saw cousin Brett, and of course went to a fun country wedding. Some pictures from the weekend:

Billy got married!  Congratulations Bill and Rosie.

The whole family!  Its not very often we have everyone together.

The cousins

Bill & his groomsmen. .

Swings with Uncle Mike during the reception.  Logan had a ball racing around with his cousins and uncles.  Mom & Dad had a ball at the dessert buffet.  Everyone was happy:)

Amelie and Grandma

Line dancing with Daddy.  They tried for the bouquet during the bouquet toss but didn't catch it.  She's a little young for marriage anyways.

Dinner with cousins

Hike in the hills behind the house

Peeing with a view of Corvallis.  Logan takes every opportunity to pee outside. Like father like son.

We found a banana slug and spit bugs on our nature hike.

Legos with Uncle Dan.  Logan had been dreaming of these toys for months. Uncle Dan was a trooper.

Cousin Brett came down to see us! We snuck in a trip to American Dream and a fun game of Memory. Amelie was happy to see Brett, just not happy to be held... she's a Mommy's girl right now.

Logan in his cowboy hat at the rehearsal dinner.

We drove out to the Coast and got there at low tide to see all the creatures-- anemones, horseshoe crabs, starfish, and a million mussels.  I love the tidepools. It was rainy when we first got there, but the sun came out soon after.

Happy Father's Day!

Me & Amelie at the tidepools

Mark & Amelie at the beach. 

The Yaquina Head lighthouse near the tidepools

Logan was psyched to go to the beach... he only gets to go once or twice a year

We stopped for the traditional clam chowder at Mo's and a trip to the candy store in Newport.  Logan was pretty excited about his lollypop and his lego guy.

Amelie crawling