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.

Everett is one!

Everett turned 1 on August 9. We had his party on Saturday, August 12. It was a tropical themed party, forced indoors due to humidity and rain. We had a really great time though. We had about 20 or so friends and family over and celebrated with bar-b-que and cake. My mom and I made a palm tree cake, which turned out really cute (see flickr for a picture). Everett didn't dive into his cake much at all...he was much more tentative, as he is with most things. He seemed to like it when he tried it though. I think everyone huddled in the kitchen singing and staring at him threw him off a bit. He got a lot of wonderful gifts and has really enjoyed having some new toys to play with. We gave out a prize (a pineapple) for the best dressed...which went to our neigbors, the Wu's. They both were decked out in tropical prints and thier little baby girl was too. She was too cute!

It's nice that Everett's 1 now, mainly because we are done with formula and baby food. It's sometimes hard figuring out the next phase, but at least it won't be so costly. Maybe we can even get our budget back on track. Ha! Ha!

Now that our summer travels and Everett's birthday are over, we feel like life will calm down a little bit. We're still plenty busy though. I've got a list a mile long of things I want to get done, but mostly everything on it is constrained by time or money. Allen also has his list, in his mind. Sometimes it seems neither of our lists get shorter. I guess that's life though.

Summer Travels

We're finally back from all of our travels. It started a few weekends ago with a trip to the beach (Seagrove, FL) with Allen's family. Seagrove was beautiful and we had a great time. We were there Thursday to Sunday and stayed at the Beachside Villas. Our villa had a view of the beach and we were just a short walk away from the water. We were able to take our monitor out the beach while Everett slept. It was wonderful! Everett loved being in the ocean and the pool.

Then on July 28 we headed on a long trip through Indiana and Ohio, to visit friends and family. We drove from Atlanta to Lafayette, IN, to visit my Uncle Pete and Aunt Sue. While we were there we also saw my other Uncle Joe and his wife along with my cousin's three kids and my mom's cousin and her husband. It was fun. From there we headed to Columbus, OH, to visit my two childhood friends, Trisha, and Becky. We stayed with Becky's parents in Millersport, OH, just east of Columbus. They have a beautiful old farm house and Glenda is an amazing Italian cook. It was great. Then we took off to Dayton, OH, to visit my other aunt, Sue, and two of her kids. My dad and Karin met us there too. The photo to the left is of a beautiful sunset we caught driving home from Sue's farm one night. We went from there to my dad's family reunion in Cold Spring, KY. We ended our trip there and drove back to Atlanta, driving a total of 1900 miles. It was a long trip, but a lot of fun too.

Everett Update

Everett was 11 months old yesterday and now has two top teeth coming in. What's funny is it's his two side front teeth, rather than the two middle front teeth. I can tell the other two top teeth won't be far behind. I'm glad he'll be able to eat more foods now that he's getting his top teeth. He's also now able to crawl up our stairs, which is fun but also a scary proposition considering he can't yet go down. He surprises me how easily he can stand up now and how quickly he gets around.

This morning we were rolling a golf ball back and forth and he could actually throw it to me, which surprised me. When I say throw it, I mean the ball got a little air and it generally went in my direction. He definitely favors his right hand, but he could throw farther with his left. Perfect since we're training him to be the first major league switch pitcher. :) He also can finally wave although not always on command. He's eating more and more and getting so tall. His summer clothes are getting kind of small. Luckily I bought a wide range of sizes because I felt like this would happen. He's wearing some 12 month clothes, but mostly 18 months or 24 months.

We're going to be doing a lot of traveling coming up. We're heading to Augusta this Fri-Sat for Allen's sister's (Lindsay) engagement party. Then we're going to the beach with Allen's family next weekend. Then the following two weekends we'll be on a long trip through Indiana and Ohio visiting various relatives and childhood friends of mine and attending my dad's family reunion. It's going to be a busy July!

Our Pet Deer

I thought after leaving Berry, where the deer to student ratio was 4 to 1, that I would never again come into such close contact with deer again. Little did I know that I would one day live in Peachtree Corners, where the deer roam free. We have evidenced deer being on our property many times due to things like all of our winter annuals being eaten and dug up throughout the winter. Also, this spring, our lilies and hostas were completely devoured down to the nubs. It was a sad morning that day. We also often spot them at night crossing our street. But today took the cake. I was doing dishes and looked out our kitchen window to our backyard. There, about 20 feet away was a huge doe. It startled me at first. We have a fenced in backyard, so it was especially odd. Allen urged me to take some photos. So, I thought it would also be worthy of a blog.

4th of July

We had a great 4th of July this year. We spent the day around our house, finishing the repair job on our garage door. Then we met up with friends from church, and new Peachtree Corners residents, Chad & Tracey, and their son Landon. We went to the top Tracey's office building's parking deck that overlooks Lenox. We met up with several other friends there and had a picnic and played games until the fireworks. Turns out that a big thunderstorm came and they didn't start the fireworks until we were already in our car and were heading home. We did get to see some through the back window though. Everett did well considering we were out until almost 10pm.

Everett is really moving around now and while his cousins were here he started really pulling up on things and also started clapping. It's so cute. We've been going to the pool (Best Friend Park pool on Jimmy Carter) a lot lately and it's been really fun. This summer has been great so far. We are in the process of planning Everett's 1st Birthday Party which will be August 12. He'll be a year old on August 9. I can hardly believe he's almost 11 months now.