Birthday Weekend

This weekend we went to our niece's (Brooklyn) 1st birthday party.

It was lots of fun. Here are some pictures of the event.

The two girls sleeping before the party began.

 The movie The Princess and the Frog was the theme. This was her awesome cake.

Also, this weekend we have found out that Ali has secretly been learning Pilates.

This is a pilates exercise...

And this is Ali most of the time...

We got home tonight and decided to make some yummy breakfast food.

Happy Father's Day

Ali got a visit from her Uncle Allan, Aunt Suzanne, and Rachel (Suzanne's sister) as they were passing through Birmingham to see family.

We still laugh at the resemblance in Ali's smile and Uncle Allan's smile.

They both have blue eyes too.

Ali continues to have fun with her feet now that she has found both of them.

She even plays with them while she eats, but it can be a challenge doing that when she is reaching for them.

We have done some serious stocking up on baby food. She is loving all of the flavors. She eats peas, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, rice cereal, and applesauce. We got lots of new things to try too. She loves to eat!

We also restocked all of our food storage so our cabinet is pretty full.

Here is the baby food in the cabinet.

Look What I Can Do!

Ali has been doing something for about 2 weeks now...

But we are just now getting a picture of it to the blog.

She can stand up!

She likes to stand. The picture below shows it.

It's blurry though because she moves when she gets excited.

She will be moving around before you know it...

mainly because we don't get it posted to the blog until 2 weeks later. :)

Ali sporting some blue jeans.

Yes... that matters most

The small and simple things were pointed out to me today.

The things that bring small tid-bits of joy.

Today, it was leaving my work with work still to be done, but leaving knowing I had done my best... and

that was alright.

It was getting 100% on a small homework assignment, but it made all the difference because it gave me confidence that I could always learn something new.

It was taking Ali outside our home for the first time to let her see me water our small cactus and see her stare at the water pouring and splashing around the plant.

All these things give me the many titles I hold: hard working claims adjuster (aka superhero), foreign language student, future occupational therapist, husband, daddy.

However, the last two are the best ones, and yes,

they matter most.

This video helped me remember it all. And I hope I always will.

-

A Birthday & A Service Day

Ali gave me a present for my birthday yesterday.

A picture of her finding her feet.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to help with a home building project for a family.

This family experienced alot of losses from the tornadoes in Shoal Creek Valley.

See a video about their story here.

The work started yesterday at 6:00 am with one group, and they had part of the back wall and a side wall up. 

I arrived at about 8:00 am with a group of volunteers and some other volunteers arrived later in the morning.

This is what the home looked like when we got there.

Here is part of the crew that I was working with.

Once different crews started working on different sections of the house, the work went quick.

I left for a Birthday dinner at 2:00 pm. There were 3 small walls remaining to be put up, but here is the final product of the day after they got them put up.

We were able to get all of the frames up in a day. More work still to be done though.

Watch Me Grow

Ali is growing ... 

Ali was recently weighed at 15 lbs.!

And she is 25 inches long.

She turned 7 months on May 27th.

Her most recent food is squash, and even better news: she is opening her mouth better to eat.

(Instead of spitting it out.)

It is amazing that we have come from this...

to this....

It is interesting how she likes to watch everyone.

Take the following for example. We got together with family and we were trying to take a picture of some of the grandkids together. Ali is on the left, and in all of the pictures Ali was watching the commotion.