Family Retreat

We had our family retreat at Sandy Cove. It was awesome of Lindy to put it all together, and Benjamin said it felt like a free vacation, so thanks Lindy!!! We had rainy weather most of the weekend, but the bay area was still beautiful:

My mom and Lindy made an agenda for the weekend that was packed with activities. Some activities, like a walk to the lighthouse, were canceled because of the weather. But that was fine because craft time was a big hit:
Some family members painted a still life of fruit with watercolor. Others painted whatever came to mind. Apparently the things that come to mind are scary fish with giant teeth and lots of owls. Zinnia was, if nothing else, seasonally appropriate in her choice to paint a bunny.
Maya was especially proud of her work, though she did keep claiming Dayna's painting as her own. (Seriously... Dayna's is the blue/purple background still life right above Maya's painting. Maya kept changing her mind about which painting was hers.)
I was especially impressed with Willow's owl:
And Anna makes the best collages:
Saturday night we had the pool to ourselves for "Family Olympics". We all had to sign up for various events. I won the floating contest (thank you, babyweight!)
Anyway, here is Lily's first pool experience. This was 7:30 at night, a time of day when she usually either naps or goes to sleep for the night. So she wasn't really feeling up for adventure. But she looked great in her suit, at least. :)

The air in the poolhouse was really warm but the water was a little cool, so she didn't spend much time in the water.
Meg, however, spent the entire evening jumping off the side of the pool into the arms of whoever was willing to catch her. First it was Lisa, then Anna, then me, then Benjamin, then Anna again. It was a lot of jumping. She kept cheering "Myself!" which is her "I'm going to do this because I'm an awesome big kid" exclamation. (Anna and I even have a "Myself!" victory dance we do with Meg.)
After Lily spent a few minutes in the pool she passed out and slept through most of Family Olympics.
After some time in the pool we had a belated birthday party for Anna.
Lindy made some delicious cupcakes. I think Meg ate several.
Sunday morning we had breakfast, packed up our rooms, and headed outside for a family photo by the pier.
On Friday night we got to meet Lindy's new friend Mike. Unfortunately by the end of the weekend Mike was no longer with us. Poor Lindy. :( But that's a story for another day...

My Mind is Blown

Lily rolled over back to tummy to back this morning! Yay!

I have a super long post to work on about the family retreat we had over the weekend. I've also got errands to run, so in the meantime, read this:
http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_12024729?source=most_viewed
That is our neighborhood. I am just so thankful that no one was hurt. And I am amazed that we escaped the madness with just one dent in Benjamin's car. I think had we not been through last summer's hailstorm when both cars looked like some kind of swiss cheese we would be more upset about a dent in his car, but as it is we just feel very blessed. :)

Busy, Busy, Busy

We've had guests! Here are some pictures of Peanut playing with Grandpa. Unfortunately these were the only pics we got before they left yesterday. We'll have to try to get some more when they come back on Tuesday.
I had to include the pictures of Lily playing/fighting with her monkey box. :)

Also, we're having a family retreat this weekend with my side, so we'll try to capture some of those shenanigans for the blog, too. So be on the lookout for those next week...

And This Morning...

Lily rolled over! Back to stomach. And then she cried. It was a little bit sad but mostly adorable. She had rolled over before but it was always kind of accidental and stomach to back. And now she's so mobile that she's scaring herself. Poor baby. :)

A Year Ago Today...

I saw Lily for the first time. Amazing!

I Can't Keep Up!

Again, sorry I haven't been posting. Benjamin has been sick with some kind of awful cold thing and yet continues to deny that he's sick. I'm supposed to be doing a design job for my Aunt Nancy, who asked me for help in redecorating her living room and now seems to not actually want to change anything in her living room. So not much progress there, either. In other struggles, Lily has been sleeping terribly at night. Like spending ~2:30-3:30 kicking and yelling, then spending the rest of the night/morning half-sleeping and tossing about. And by the rest of the night/morning I mean until the usual 4:30 or 5 am time that she has us up for the day. She still isn't really rolling over on her own, but she sure does scoot around a lot. She managed to get herself sideways in her pack and play the other night:
Note the screaming face and the lack of socks. I've said it before: this baby is fierce.

Yesterday we went to my mom's house for another family birthday party. My grandfather turns 85 this week and Willow turned 12 yesterday (pi day!). That was my second trip to Oxford this week, as Peanut and I spent Thursday with my mom, who had just gotten back from her Egypt/Jordan trip on Wednesday. We went to visit Lindy at her new job at Sandy Cove, where we'll all be headed for a family retreat later this month. On the way back from Sandy Cove we stopped at an antique store where I found an old-school Fisher Price boat and Little People to go with it. I'll try to get some pics later. This was one of my absolute favorite toys when I was a kid, so finding one to have for Lily when she's older is great fun. You know the boat: it has a deck, a captain's chair, lifevests, a diving board, a little lifeboat that comes off of the main boat and can float around in the water... GREAT TOY! I found a pic online here. I was so excited about this find (only $5! New Little People sets cost $30 and they're junk!) that I told Benjamin about it on my drive home. He didn't understand my excitement until I got home and showed him and he said "Oh, that thing! I loved that toy!" Ah, childhood in the 80s... :)

Recovering

I finished the pants I've been knitting. Considering I just started on Thursday night, I think I made pretty good progress. But we've been pretty house-bound lately because we've been a bunch of sickies. This morning was still a little rough, but as of this afternoon we're all recovering and Benjamin is on his way back to work. And here's Lily playing with her new pants (we didn't get a picture of when she was chomping on the enormous ruffles):

Four Month Old Gooney Bird

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I've been working on this in my little bits of free time:
Pants for Lily. :) I hope they're not a total disaster when they're finished. But so far not bad for my first real knitting project, I think.

Anyway, on to the important stuff! Lily is four months old today. She is doing new cute and funny and bizarre things every day. She's gone pretty wild with the jungle bird screaming in public recently and it's a little embarrassing (but mostly hilarious). She discovered her feet this past week- adorable! I'm pretty sure they're her new favorite toy. It's always been hard to keep socks on her; now it's just impossible.

And the following video definitely requires a disclaimer: if you don't want to hear me burping, don't watch.

Anyway, we discovered this afternoon that Lily thinks my burps are funny. This turned into a great way to record her laugh for everyone else to hear. Sorry. :)

Lily and I were snowed in up here on the hill today. I think she may be a little bit sick. There's a million things going around right now. Yuck. :( Anyway, she mostly slept all day. It was kind of sad. Like this:

And tonight I laid her on our bed so I could go brush my teeth and when I came back she had fallen asleep, posing like the tragic creature that she is. :)