Happy Halloween!

Once again, I’m going slightly out of order, but because it’s Halloween I wanted to post the pictures of Sophie’s first visit to the pumpkin patch.  On October 10th we drove up to Bates Nut Farm in Valley Center (about 45 minutes north of us.)

They are an actual nut farm most of the year, but they also have a large pumpkin patch where you can wander around and pick out your pumpkin.

They also have a corn maze, petting zoo, inflatable slide, hay rides and pony rides.  Sophie’s a little young for these this year, but she did like looking at the ponies.

We basically spent the day running around using Sophie as a prop for photos.

We also brought along her Halloween costume (I think the monkey fur was a little hot out in the mid-day sun!)

Finally we picked out our pumpkin, weighed it, and headed home (I get the feeling we were overcharged!).

I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!

Here is a link to the full album:

2008-10-08 Pumpkin Patch

Sophie Firsts for October

Hello!  I know it’s been a while since my last post, so we’re going to do something a little different on this one.  I usually try to post events in chronological order, even if I’m a few weeks behind.  But today I’m posting some updates on Sophie because she’s had some important firsts this month and I didn’t want to wait too long to let you all know about them.

First of all, Sophie is able to go from lying down to sitting up all by herself.  She’s been able to do this for about a month now.  Most mornings when we come to get her out of her crib she is already sitting up waiting for us.  Here she is yesterday enjoying a card and stuffed pumpkin her Nana sent her (apparently some of the chocolate rubbed off on the card!):

(no, we’re not giving her chocolate yet!)

The next first is that she has her first teeth.  The two front bottom teeth finally broke through on October 23rd.  Here is a close up of them:

Then on October 25th when we were up visiting our friends Shay and Eric in Simi Valley (more on that trip in an upcoming post), she started clapping all by her self.  Here is a picture of her from today showing us how she claps:

And finally just today, October 31st, she started crawling!  She had been getting up on her hands and knees for the last couple of weeks, and she could shimmy backwards, but today was the first day she truly crawled forward:

Finally, just to embarrass her when she’s a teenager, here are some pictures of her sleeping with her butt up in the air:

So as you can see our little baby is all grown up (Oct 5 and April 25)!

Here is a link to the full album:

2008-10-31 Sophie Firsts

A Beautiful Day for Baseball

On Sunday September 27th we went to see the Padres final game of the season. Our friends Patty and Warren had an extra pair of tickets and they invited us along. Not surprisingly, the last-place Padres lost to the Pirates 6-1. But since we’re Red Sox fans we weren’t very upset.

Here we are arriving at the ballpark.

Our seats were just behind first base about ten rows back.

Here are Patty, Warren and Matthew.

It was a little too sunny for Sophie, so she and Debbie and Patty and Matthew went for a walk around the ballpark, where Sophie decided to take a little nap.

After the game, despite the nap she took at the stadium, poor Sophie was exhausted and fell right to sleep.

Once we got home, Sophie needed a bath to wash off all that ballpark grime. She got a little creative with her bubbles.

Finally, she ended her day by preparing her routine for “The Next Food Network Star” tryouts.

Thanks again Patty and Warren for taking us to the game.  You guys are the best!

Here’s a link to the full album:

2008-09-27 Baseball

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Sing and Play

On September 26th we had another Sing and Play gathering. As usual Debbie did a fantastic job leading the group in a whole bunch of different fun songs, even teaching the signs for a few of them.

Some of the kids also had fun playing with the Thomas the Tank playset. (Sophie’s not quite big enough to stand at the train table by herself yet, but she liked knocking over the trains and tracks!)

Here’s a link to the full album:

2008-09-26 Sing and Play

Staycation

On the weekend of September 21st we decided to go on a little “staycation” and remind ourselves of the reasons why we love living in San Diego. With everything we have going on I think we sometimes forget to take advantage of some of the things that other people pay lots of money to come here and do on their vacations.

One thing we did was head down to Old Town for their annual Art Festival. There were lots of people there trying to sell their ridiculously overpriced high-quality artwork, some of which was cool and some of which looked to me like it came right out of the garbage. We talked to one guy who had a painting of the Britt Scripps Inn, which is the old Victorian bed and breakfast where we spent our wedding night. He actually has his gallery in Old Town, so we wandered over to look at the original. We really liked it, but at $14,000 was a bit outside of our art budget. (Of course if anyone is looking for something nice to give us for our anniversary, let me know and I’ll give you his number…)

Here’s Sophie checking out the fountain at one of the booths.

Sophie tries to win the big jackpot at the Jack FM booth.

And Sophie and Dad hanging out under the trees in the main square.

The next day we decided to go for a walk down at Mission Bay. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Mission Bay is pretty huge, and there are all kinds of parks, islands and walking paths. On this day we decided to go out to the ocean side and walk along the beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

We then stopped and had lunch at a restaurant right on the boardwalk. As you might expect, the most interesting part was watching all of the freaks interesting people walking (running, biking, skateboarding, rollers skating) up and down the boardwalk.

And as always, our little peanut was exhausted at the end of it all.

Once she woke up from her nap she was so hungry she could eat cardboard.

We thought it might be a better idea for her to eat avocado.

We also tried out her new chair. It hooks onto the side of the table as an alternative to using a high chair.

Finally, at the end of the day it was bathtime. The kitchen sink was full, so we used the bathroom instead.

Here is a link to the full album:

2008-09-21 Old Town Art Festival

Talk to the Animals II

I know we just went to the zoo in our last post, but on Saturday September 20th we went to the Wild Animal Park with our friends Patty and Warren and their son Matthew. They were meeting some of their family there and invited us to come along as well.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and we saw most of the usual suspects, including giraffes, lions, elephants and rhinos.

Here is a picture of the newborn baby Black Rhino:

Here is the Northern White Rhino. This rhino is Angalifu, and he may be the last living male Northern White Rhino in the world:

The Wild Animal Park has a new feature where you can ride up in a tethered balloon. We didn’t ride it this time, but we will have to soon.

And here are some more pictures of our little family:

Click below for a link to the whole album:

2008-09-20 Wild Animal Park

Talk to the Animals

On Monday September 15th Debbie, Sophie and I headed off to the zoo with Joe and Nicholas.

Here’s Debbie and Sophie at the front entrance:

We went up to see the new giraffe exhibit. For those of you familiar with the zoo, the new exhibit is next to where the current elephant exhibit is. They have closed off the back portion of the zoo while they build the new elephant exhibit.

The zoo was pretty deserted since it was a Monday, so we pretty much had the run of the place. When we got to the panda exhibit we could just walk right in. (During the summer people wait hours to be allowed to walk by the pandas for a minute.)

And when we were there one of the keepers picked up the baby panda and carried it inside.

It was fairly warm out, so most of the animals were getting in their mid-day nap:

Our last stop was the orangutans. I think the brand name on the barrel says it all:

After our day at the zoo Elizabeth and Joe invited us over for dinner. Here’s a picture of their dog Roscoe:

Here’s a link to the full album:

2008-09-15 Zoo

Baby BBQ

Ok, so no actual babies were barbecued, but we did go over to our friend Elizabeth’s house (No, not this Elizabeth. Or this Elizabeth. I know, they’re so hard to keep track of!) for a cookout with the usual members of our baby group.

It was a pretty casual day, everyone was basically just hanging out and eating. The kids were having a great time playing with (demolishing?) the train set:

Julia got herself turned around a little:

We tried to take a group baby photo, but we had a few meltdowns before it even began, so this is about the best we got:

And, as usual, Sophie was exhausted and fell asleep on the way home:

Here’s a link to the full album:

2008-09-14 Baby BBQ