Swingset

Here are the completed pictures of our swingset! We love it and are so glad we found it. Now everywhere we go we are looking at swingsets and we like ours way better than most all of them that we see. The swingset and trampoline together cost us $600 and that was defintely a well spent $600. I am really proud of that deal as this swingset alone would cost well over $1000 new, and probably closer to $2000. A big shout out to my parents for majorly contributing to the purchase! :) Bailey, Zoe, and all your future grandchildren thank you! :)





















































And we finally bought Bailey a swing. I love the swing that Anthony's parents have, mostly because it has a coated chain instead of rope that will eventually get nasty and hard because of being outside in the elements, but I couldn't find one like that, so I had to settle for this one. But obviously Bailey does not mind. She LOVES to swing and I think it is something that will be entertaining her for many hours.

Weekend & Harry Potter

About this time 7 months ago I was recovering from my c-section, about to hold my baby girl for the first time. I cannot believe she is 7 months already. I have to admit, those first few months were rough, but she is getting easier and more fun all the time. I find myself looking forward to all the things we will be able to do with her as she gets older. I think that I always thought I would be so sad when the "baby baby" days were over, and I do miss how little she was, but it is just so much fun to experience new things with her as she gets older and be able to watch her learn more about the world. I am certain we have some fun days ahead of us. :)

We had a good weekend. It has been so wonderful for us all 3 to be home on Fridays. It always feels like Saturday on Friday, so we get an extended weekend. :) On Friday we went out to eat for lunch and made an expensive stop at Lowe's. We got Bailey a swing and a new storage thing for her toys in the living room (which I love by the way, pictures still to come). Saturday we went to a wedding (Paige & Stephen) which was lovely, and defintely had the best father speech I've ever heard (way to go Bo!). Sunday was church, Mom's, and then instead of regular Sunday night church, we had a picnic at Sherando Lake and baptism in the lake. It was a lot of fun and I hope we can make that an annual thing.

Then today Bailey, Mom, Zoe, and I went to the park and then to a couple of stores and then back to Mom's. Zoe and Bailey played in the sprinkler, which Bailey had a really good time with. She loves to play in water. Then when Anthony finished with school for the day, he came over to Mom's, and Mom watched Bailey for us while we went and watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and then ate dinner at Chili's. I liked the movie, of course (can't wait for the final movie(s)) and it was nice to have some "adult only" time.

On Saturday we are headed to Baltimore for a Red Sox game on Sunday. I am really looking forward to our little overnight vacation. Hopefully Bailey will do well with it.

Ticklish Bailey

Bailey is ticklish! I LOVE this laugh. :)

What Bailey Has Been Up To

Bailey went to her first parade on Friday! She enjoyed it (as much as a 6 month old can) till about half way through when she was getting tired. We fed her some oatmeal to occupy her through the last half of the parade, and she was such a good girl!

































Also, another first for Bailey - she went to her first wedding on Saturday. She was very good during the wedding and had lots of fun watching and playing with Kaylynn (Jeremy & Summer's little girl).

Bailey has recently discovered the fun of laundry baskets! She really likes sitting in them and playing with her toys and playing with the holes in the basket. She is so strong, and can pull herself up to a standing position while using the sides of the basket for support!
















Bailey also loves to listen to her daddy play the guitar and sing, although, as with everything else these days, she wants to touch it and put it in her mouth! :)

She is such a fun, happy little girl and sometimes, even now, 6 months after having her, I still can't believe that I am a mommy and have been blessed with such a wonderful little girl!

"New" Living Room

One of the things we did this past weekend was to rearrange our living room. I had been wanting to do something with it for a while, but I couldn't figure out what to do. I thought the room was just kind of hard to configure because of the shape and door/entryways. But a week or so ago, I came across this Icovia Space Planner on the Grand Home Furnishings website, and I went to work. I started measuring everything and "planned" everything on the space planner. I was just messing around really, with nothing specific in mind, and came up with this, and it seemed like it would work, so I stuck it away in my head. :)

Anthony was not crazy about the idea of moving things around, but he was a good husband and obliged me. I guess he never really moved furniture around in his room growing up, but I used to do it fairly often. I get tired of things being the same for too long. I LOVE how it turned out. The room looks so much bigger and open. I thought I liked having the couch "floating" and sort of dividing the dining and living rooms, but I like it way better this way! I have some 8 x 10 pictures of Bailey that I am going to hang above the couch, and I'm going to shift the wedding pictures a bit above the TV stand to make it look right. Here are the pictures of the room.

Randomness

I cannot believe it is half way through July already! It makes me sad that summer is going so quickly and Anthony will have to be back to teaching and doing his own school, but I am kind of looking forward to not having to work anymore. Though sometimes I think that helps to keep me sane. :) I'm hoping that when summer winds down, we'll be able to do some more things with friends from church during the week, and get into a really good routine.

We had the best dinner tonight! I had gotten a $5 off coupon for any Jennie-O turkey product and we went to Martin's (cause I couldn't find any Jennie-O at Walmart) and got a turkey and gravy dinner for $4.99, so I actually made a penny on that deal! :) So I was making that tonight, but then Anthony was looking at the box, and there was a recipe on the back for an open face turkey sandwich type thing, with tomato, bacon and cheese on it. It was SO delicious!

Bailey is getting closer and closer to crawling. She does take a crawl or two every now and then and she can definitely get anywhere she wants to go. She is more used to spending time with just Anthony at home, and doesn't try to put up a fight when he feeds her the bottle during the day while I'm gone. But I SO look forward to getting home because her face absolutely lights up when I walk through the door and she sees me. :) It's so nice to be loved.

Plans for the weekend: Tomorrow we are going to the Stuarts Draft lawn party for some yummy chicken and Bailey's first parade! Then Saturday we are going to a wedding of some friends from church. We are wanting to go on a date to see Harry Potter and go out to eat, but I'm not sure when we are going to be able to do it... hopefully soon!

Here are a few of the latest pics of Bailey Girl. Sorry blogger is being stupid with the pictures and text!

(Picture 1) On her way across the living room.

(Picture 2) I think this is the cutest face!

(Picture 3) She had scooted herself from the blanket to right up next to the exersaucer.

(Picture 4) I think she looks like such a big girl in this picture. And she also reminds me of Anthony here. :)

And finally, please pray for Tyson and his whole family. He had an MRI last week and the tumor is back. They will go to meet with doctors next Thursday to find out what the plan is from here. I just cannot begin to imagine being in their shoes, but I know that Tyson's situation, as well as little Colton's short life, have made me so thankful to God for Bailey and her health. I am praying that God will do a miracle in Tyson's body and give him a long and healthy life. Please pray along with me for Tyson!

Swingset & Trampoline

So we had been looking around for a while, wanting to get a swingset for Bailey and Zoe to play on in our yard. Of course Bailey is too little to really play, but I did want a place to put a baby swing for her. Since Anthony has had a major break this summer, we thought this would be the time to do it, if he was going to work on it himself. At first we were looking at Lowe's and places like that, and Anthony was doing a lot of comparing online. But then he got the bright idea to look on Craigslist for a swingset. So we started doing that, but it proved more difficult than we thought it would be, because the swingsets get snatched up really quickly on there. There was one or two that he inquired about on the same day they were listed, but they were already taken by the time he emailed.

Finally though, we found one for sale in Ivy, which is next to Charlottesville. Turned out, they were also selling a trampoline with the swingset. So Anthony got right on it, contacting the person selling it. We went to look at it the Wednesday before last (after a little trouble finding the place because of bad directions!) and we both really liked the set, so we decided to buy it! The people who were actually selling it have moved to California, so one of their friends, who is helping them with selling some of their stuff, met us at the house that night and we paid her and made plans to come pick it up on Friday.

So Friday, we rented a U-Haul, and Anthony went over there, by himself, to load it all up and bring it home. Let me tell you, I have SOME husband! There are some seriously big and heavy pieces to this swingset, and he wanted to break it down the least amount as possible, so it was easier to get back together. This house had a pretty serious hill in the backyard (making the backyard pretty much unusable except at the bottom where the swingset was) so he couldn't pull the truck down the hill, so it had to sit at the top in the driveway, and he had to carry/drag all the pieces up the hill.

When I talked to him early that afternoon he said he was thirsty. Neither of us had thought for him to bring water along, duh! So I felt like it was pretty important that he had some water, so I drove the 40 minutes over there to bring him some (the water at the house was shut off). And it's a good thing I did. I'm pretty sure he was close to delirious when I got there, and he probably would've needed a hospital visit to be rehydrated if I hadn't come. Anyways, all that to say, my husband is incredible! When he got the truck home, my mom and dad came to help unload it and we were all beyond shocked that he had gotten all of that into the truck by himself.

So anyways, here are the first pictures I took of the stuff. We got the trampoline put up the first night we had it, and the swingset is done now, but I haven't taken pics of that yet. Will get those up shortly. And in the last picture, which was not really taken to see the trampoline, you can see a deer that was in our yard the other morning! We had two that cut through our yard while grazing on their way back to the woods. :)