Everett and his Toys

Everett kept climbing into his toy basket this morning. I guess he wanted a more close up view of what was in there. It was too cute, so I thought I would share some photos...

Look...no hands!

Everett is now standing up on his own, but hasn't quite taken any steps yet. He's 13 months old so we're hoping he'll be walking any day now. It will be so nice to get out and enjoy this nice weather without him scraping up his knees crawling around. He just got a really short haircut, compliments of his daddy. It sticks up a little in the back now, but it's pretty cute. It has had several edits over the past couple of days. I've learned that it's better to cut one's hair in the daylight. :) He can say four words now...ball, balloon, more, and mama/dada. He's a cutie, huh?

We had our two huge pine trees taken down last week and it was amazing to watch. It took them almost two full days 7am-7pm to get them down. They were really big trees. I had my first ever migraine the first day they were here...what luck! Now we are clearing away the debris, which is taking a long time and getting ready to plant some grass seed where they were. It will be so nice to have grass growing there soon! Now we have no more pine straw on our roof and clogging up our gutters. Yippee!!

Allen's summer league softball finishes up tonight but they are playing right on through to the fall season. Last week they beat the #1 team in their division 9-8. It was very exciting. It's been a fun summer but we're looking forward to fall.

The Two Trees

Here are some photos before and after the first of our two huge pine trees was taken out...

Here is one of them chopping up the first tree...

New Photos

We have a ton of new photos of Everett and our family. These were taken when Everett was 10 months old. They are on our flickr site beginning on the bottom of page 7. All of them were taken by Kathryn McElvy, who has done several photo sessions for us. Enjoy!

Latest News

Everett and I had a wonderful visit last week to Wilmington, NC. We went to see our dear friends Sam and Trevor and their little girl, Maddie. They all just moved to Wilmington a month or so ago. It was a 7 hour drive with Everett, but he actually did remarkably well. I was very thankful for my new "snack trap" which you can see Everett holding in the photo with Maddie to the left. It was a lifesaver in the car. We snacked our way through many hours of driving. :) Sam and I went to Wrightsville Beach which was only about 15 minutes from their house on Wednesday. Tropical storm Ernesto hit Thursday, the day before we left. It was pretty scary and very loud. Parts of Sam and Trevor's neighborhood were flooded. Luckily their house was fine. On our way home last Friday we didn't experience a drop of rain. It was a blast and great to see them and their new house.

Although we had a great trip, it was sad to be away from Allen for so many days. It was great to come home and have the long weekend together though. We are heading to Augusta next weekend for a visit.

Everett is now great at climbing up and down the stairs...yeah! He's getting very tall...able to reach the doorknobs now...hopefully it will be a while before he figures out how to turn them. He can also say ball...his first word. He's eating anything and everything. It's a fun, yet exploratory age. Yesterday he pulled two outlet covers out and started chewing on them. Then he ripped the cable out of the wall. Then this morning he knocked over our torchere lamp and shattered the plastic top part. (Haven't told Allen about that one yet.) We'll see where he takes us next.