Back on the wagon...

Sorry to all of my 5 loyal blog readers, I have fallen off the blog wagon. Today, I will attempt to climb back on...

So last month, Megan and I went to Indiana and spent a few days in La Porte with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Suzy, Jonathan and Ariana. We visited a few of my favorite haunts. The first day we went to Lake Michigan and Carlson's, the best root beer stand ever. Suzy and I also went to Shipshewana one day and I saw a few friends from high school and college although I didn't get to see as many as I wanted (Alisha, if you read this, send my your number via facebook...)

Megan loved the sand, but was not so into the frigid water.




I love this face.


Baby J got a little of Grandma's rootbeer float.

Cool Shades

This was the first time Megan actually kept her sunglasses on for more than 20 seconds, so I had to stop and take a picture in the middle of the grocery store parking lot. They still only stayed on for 3 minutes.

Mmm, Spaghetti.

I'm not sure these pictures need any explaining.

Splish Splash

Megan got a new pool for her birthday from the neighbors. Yesterday was a nice day, so we decided to try it out. She loved it. We also invited Lily and Caden to the grand opening of the Froggy Pool. They thought it was okay, but didn't spend nearly the amount of time in it that Megan did.

Here she is just casing the joint. The ducks were also from the neighbors. She has always liked ducks and 2 of her 5 or so words now are "duck" and "quack."






She didn't like crawling on the brick, so she choose to "crawl" (if it can be called that) on all fours with her butt in the air. In this picture, she was following Lily, which Lily thought was great. She (Lily) kept turning around and saying "comin" (as in coming after her) and giggling.





The pool, in addition to being cute and having a built in sunshade, has a spot to hook up the hose to that creates a little fountain. All the kids thought this was great. The only problem was that it was cold water and the original pool water had had time to get warmer. This didn't seem to bother Megan. She kept on going. In fact, I had to get her out twice because her little lips were quivering.

Oh, I forgot to mention...

Over the weekend, Megan also decided to take her first steps. Up to that point, she has been getting steadily stronger and walked very easily if someone would hold her hand, but she never tried to do it by herself. So Saturday, Chad had been walking her around and then took his hand away. I was a few feet away and called to her and she just took 5 steps right to me. Since then, she has taken as many as 10 steps at a time. I have only managed to catch it on film once and it was only three steps, but you take what you get.

Over the river and through the woods...

to grandmother's house we go.

We spent the weekend in the greater Cleveland area with Chad's family. We had a good time, although Megan spent most of Saturday out of wack with her normal routine... I didn't end up with many pictures, but couldn't resist taking this one:


She found some junk mail on the floor at Sherry's and played with it for an extended period of time. On the drive home, I let her play with it again and she ended up falling asleep with it.

1 Year Old

So, as usual, I am a bit behind. Here are pictures of Megan's birthday.

We had a picnic in the backyard and she managed to pull the hotdog buns off the table and when I came back in to the room, she was chewing away.



Opening presents.


Eating her first ice cream cone.






As you can tell ice cream was a big hit.