At Home in the Mountains

A post with tons of pictures. Well, what kind of parents are we? For her birthday, Maddy went to therapy and got a new kind of hand splint for both hands. These are supposed to help her bear weight better on her arms and hands and help her with things like pushing into a sitting position. She cried and fussed the whole time they were making them and when she had to try them on at therapy. Then when we got home I fed her and then got them out to put on for the picture. She was just as happy as could be and very curious to see what the new "toys" mom was putting on her hands were. She likes banging them together and hearing the plastic click. Of course they are pink. She looks pretty cute wearing them. The birthday girl this morning. We sang happy birthday to her when she got up but her attitude was pretty much, quit this singing and give me my oatmeal. Let's just get on with the day's routine people! Maddy absolutely loves Houdini. She is always trying to get him to co...

Here is what I've been working on. I made a logo tonight to put on my pics so that no one will steal them. Not that anyone would want to, but you never know. I've been taking pics of Maddy with my snapshot digital camera and then editing them in photo shop. I don't know why but I hate formal studio portraits so thought I'd try my hand at getting some decent shots of her. Still working on getting pics but Aaron and I both like these pretty well and it turned out good for my crappy little camera. Getting a new camera is in the works but for now I'll have to play around using what I have.

This past weekend my very sweet husband did without me and Maddy for four days so we could go spend time with great grandparents in West Texas. When I first planned the trip I didn't realize that my parents would be at my Mema and Papa's house at the same time as us so that was an added bonus. My cousin's kids came over on Friday and Maddy wanted to see everything they were doing. She had a snack with them and sat at the table while they colored pictures. I was hoping it would be nice, but as you can see from the pictures, the first day of spring was cold, snowy, and super windy. Mema and Mom made me a nice b-day cake. I actually haven't had cake for my birthday in several years so it was a nice treat. The only bad thing about the trip was that my Grandma in Lubbock went into the hospital while we were out there. She had some complications from the surgery she had a couple of weeks ago. She is doing better but they may have to remove her gallbladder now. They are doing ...

I will be on the road, headed to West Texas tomorrow on my 30th birthday so I thought I would do this post today as a reflection on what a great decade it's been. When 30 started knocking loudly on my door (about January) I wasn't too sure what I thought. But as I've thought about it, I've come to the realization that I am excited for what this new chapter of my life holds. My 20's were great. God gave me some amazing blessings that are picture throughout this post. How can I not believe that he will give me even more amazing things in my 30's. I'm looking forward to more years with my wonderful husband, watching my daughter grown and mature and learn and be her funny wonderful self, additions to my extended family through niece/nephews and in-laws, a master's degree completed, and running more half-marathons, including the Pike's Peak Ascent, which I registered for today! There are many more things God has in store for my life that I am not even awa...

Yesterday was another gorgeous spring day. Maddy wore a very cute spring dress to church and after we came home and ate lunch we went outside to take some pictures. I am trying to take her one year old pictures instead of going to a studio. We took 121 pictures of the poor girl and got about 4 or 5 that we really liked. The two above are cute but not the best one. I need to run those through photo shop and I will as soon as I can find my photoshop book to refresh my memory on how to do a few things. I threw all of my books like that in a box before Maddy was born because they were in what is her room now and now they are somewhere in the labyrinth of our understairs storage. After that marathon photo shoot, Maddy was pretty tired and went down for a nap. This is when Aaron and I decided to go outside and work on making a garden plot in our backyard. We picked out a roughly 4x6 space in what seemed an optimal spot and began to dig the grass out of it. As Aaron dug up the chunks I was s...

. Thanks to a helpful tip from Brittany about great places to hike, we headed up to the Chickasaw National Recreation Area in OK today. It was beautiful and free! Thanks Brittany. Rachel and two of her former students, Desiree and Raven, went with us. We got up there around one and had a delicious picnic. Then we hiked to the Bromide Overlook. It was so great to get to enjoy a peaceful hike on a beautiful day in a fairly other people free atmosphere. I really really miss getting out in nature like that. I wish I had the chance to go to places like that more. All of the girls really enjoyed the day. Maddy slept through half of it but she still really liked being outside. We practically had to drag Desiree and Raven away from the overlook area. Now time to go to bed and try not to get too behind on sleep with the irritating time change tomorrow. Oh well. Looking forward to more daylight in the evenings.

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