Budding Cyclist

Here is what our little fireball is up to these days:

Cycling the Old Highway along the Columbia River Gorge (okay so this is just the parking lot right now):

We've just started her on this adventure and she seems to enjoy it thus far. We hope that she continues her love for it, because she's really out of luck in this family if she doesn't :)

A Camping We Will Go!

Noella enjoyed her first true camping experience. She is such a lucky little baby. Not only did her first camping trip involve a gorgeous campsite along the Lewis River in Washington State with her mama, daddy and doggie, Zeb; but she also got to spend that time with new friends who will hopefully be a part of her life for many years to come.

We headed North across the Columbia into Washington friday afternoon, where we traveled curvy roads through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We arrived at our camping spot, which our trusty friends, Meredith, Dan and Autumn Graham saved for us on the busiest camping weekend of the year. It was the perfect spot for two couples with babies. There were three amazing river waterfalls all within hiking distance of our campsite. The trail that goes along the Lewis River is 33 miles long and is supposedly an epic mountain bike trail. Adam and I can't wait to go back and bring the mountain bikes (and perhaps some loving family to watch our sweet baby girl....?)

Needless to say, we overpacked. How can you not on your first camping trip with your 8 month old? I bought a budget 6 person tent the week before.  This tent is more like a small house.  I should have taken pictures of the inside. Noella slept snugly in her pack 'n play (well, maybe as snugly as she could have in a cold tent). She woke with the sun...... or maybe she beat the sun to it. None of us slept much, but what did we expect?

It was really cold and early in this picture. 

You guys aren't trying to sleep are you? 

We all took a lovely 5 mile hike saturday to the Middle and Upper Falls, which I, sadly, did not get pictures of.  The Lower Falls were just about a quarter mile from our campsite which was so fun! We all played by the falls saturday afternoon.

Dan fly fishing

Lower Falls

The babies even got their floor/ground time in. We found this perfect huge old blanket for she and Autumn to crawl around on. It was all in vain though, as Noella immediately crawled off of it and onto the dirt, where she proceeded to try and put pine needles, rocks, leaves and sticks in her mouth. Here, we were able to persuade her to stay and play with Autumn on the blanket for at least a little while :)

We have definitely missed camping, and while it is MUCH more work with a baby (especially an extremely active 8 month old), we were encouraged to have to it work as well as it did. I forsee much more camping in Noella's future. And how wonderful to have shared our first experience with wonderful friends. We truly feel blessed!

SO BIG! And Other Things....

Well, we've always known this, but Noella thinks she is so big. The only difference is now, she can express it herself (sort of). She's teething (of course) so this video ends in fussing. See it at the end of this post.

Also, Uncle Alex requested photos of the soccer jersey he sent from Belgium. Behold our future soccer player:

And because all of our blogs are really just to post cute new pictures and video of Noella, here are some other new randoms:

Date night with Liam (her bf). You can tell he's more thrilled than she.

Taking a break from trying to eat the deep freeze

Carhartt Baby Model

All this picture posing makes "Moose America" thirsty

Summer is slowly slipping away from us here, but we don't mind. It means cool mornings and evenings, beautiful sunsets, and, of course, the coming of fall. We can't wait to go through the seasons with Noella.

Beautiful Sunset over the Columbia

I'm sure we will have more news in the upcoming weeks. We have visitors from Southern OR this weekend, and then we are taking our first (*deep breath*) camping trip with the dog and baby labor day weekend. Yeah, why not make your first camping trip with a baby on the busiest camping weekend known to man?

And who can believe this was almost exactly a year ago? :

Noella Lately

Here is the latest video of NoJo. I literally recorded this morning. We miss all of you lots!

Child Labor

We decided that Noella is old enough to do some work around here. She can't just crawl around and play all day. She must work to earn her keep. 

So we have her doing parenting research for us. Here she is in action: 

We also needed the front door painted, so here she is at work on that. She smudged a little, but we'll let it slide this time.

And swimsuit modeling. This one is the most lucrative career choice I believe. 

In all seriousness, we are just hanging out and being (or trying to stay) cool. A heat wave is sizzling the Gorge right now (but we are only in the upper 90s with little humidity, sorry Missourians -- this is as bad as it gets here!).

Crawling, Standing, Babbling Baby

Seven Month Itch

Our Baby Bear is already 7 months old! And she thinks she's even older than that! Here's a tally of all the skills/milestones she's achieved thus far:

-crawling (for over a month now)
-pulling herself up to stand (on everything in sight)
-eating finger foods and loving every minute of that (she prefers to feed herself)
-three teeth
-banging with her hands
-dadada, bababa, mamama

Some "firsts":  She's eaten her first leaf, and was pretty upset about it. She's had her first bruise (on her cheek). The first of many I'm sure. Her first time away from both of us when Adam and I went to a concert and our friends in Portland watched her..... Time is spiraling away from us! Where is my little tiny baby?

In other news, Mom came out for the week last week. We all packed it up and headed to Bend for the weekend (our favorite getaway). Adam and I got to go mountain biking. Together. TWO days in a ROW! This was huge for us. Now we don't take outings like this for granted. It's amazing what having this little person in our lives has done for us. I feel that now we are simply more grateful for the little things in life (like getting a couple of hours to go mountain biking together). Thanks mom for the help!

Everyone expected lots of good pictures. Well, I hate to disappoint. This is literally the only one we took on our little vacation:

For some reason we took a picture of her when she woke up from a nap. She was soooo good on our trip. Slept like a baby. 

Shifting gears: I mentioned her affinity for feeding herself. We remembered we had some frozen apple pieces from making applesauce last summer. She thoroughly enjoyed sampling them. 

Well, okay, it took a little while to get used to the cold.

Here are some other of the latest shots. I think I'll post some video of her crawling and standing since it is kind of a big deal. 

Please excuse the clutter in the last photo. She's just discovered the "baby" that lives in the back of our closet.

We will all be back for a good stretch in September. Can't wait to visit with everyone!