Eleri Cate @ 6 months

Eleri Cate at 6 months old

Eleri was not much for smiling today, but I thought she looked cute anyway!  I always have each girl's professional portrait taken on big months as well as their birthdays so that we have a nice portrait of each one in the house.  I always use coupons or get them for free, that is the only way to go!

Eleri Cate is 6 months old

Today Eleri is 6 months old. It has been half of a year since she was born, and again, I just can not believe it. We have really enjoyed her sweetness. At 6 months old, Eleri enjoys blowing raspberries and growling. Eric is very proud of the fact that he taught her to growl, and they growl back and forth at each other. It can be pretty funny! Eleri also likes to move and move. Right now she is rolling from place to place or scooting on her back. Sometimes she even "poses" on her side. She seems to have the strength to sit up, but would rather be on the move. She isn't crawling or sitting up yet, but that is okay with us. Mali sat up late so I'm not worried. I just think our girls would rather be moving than sitting!:) Eleri has started baby food too. So far she has had avocados and sweet potatoes. So far I'm making all of her baby food because she seems to enjoy eating it. She really gobbled up her sweet potatoes. We are going to go to the Farmer's Market later this week to get more vegetables for her food. Eleri also now has a sippy cup. Right now she enjoys chewing on the spout, but does not enjoy when she hits herself in the head with it. Which brings me to her sensitive little personality. Eleri DOES NOT like to get hurt and will let us know. She screams and cries over her injuries! However, she is still a pretty happy little girl. She has made many a person's day by giving them a big, loving smile. I really love that even at a young age, my girls are ministering to people by giving them a smile. It seems that nothing can make someone's day quite like Eleri's innocent, warm and full of love smiles can...especially my day!:) Eleri had started to extend her napping period-right before our Austin trip. That was so nice. I actually felt like I could accomplish something. However, since our trip, she is not napping well or sleeping well at night right now. Oh well, what do I have, 6 more months of this? I would rather be up at night than the alternative of not having our sweet baby girl. Eleri loves to play with her big sister; toys that are not really toys like paper, phones etc.; and in her excersaucer. While we visited the McCulloughs, Eleri tried out a jumper-roo, She LOVED it! We are going to borrow one from the Dallas family so she can have more fun! I think that is a good summary of sweet Eleri Cate at 6 months, as always, I'm sure my sleep deprived brain will think of more later!
I have had the awesome privilege of borrowing two excellent cameras since mine stopped working after our Austin trip. I have Brandon's Canon EOS and Terry's Nikon COOLPIX...so enjoy the better quality pictures that I got to take!

My Sweet Daisies!

While we were at the cabin over the 4th of July, we came across a beautiful grove (if that is the appropriate word) of daisies! Brandon took our family pictures and pictures of the girls. It was beautiful. I could have stayed there all day!

This is my prayer for my girls, that they would honor the King and know Him as Lord, who has created their beauty:
"The king is enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord". Psalm 45:11

First Veggies

Eleri is on the cusp of 6 months old, so while we were on our trip to Austin we decided that we would try out her first vegetables....avocados.  She really seemed to like it.  So when we came home I took new pictures (since my camera and cartridge are not working any longer) of her eating avocados.  She eats about half of an avocado for dinner and is doing great with it.  However, I just realized that avocados are actually a fruit, oh well!  Tonight we are going to try sweet potatoes...I think they are really vegetables.

Coaching School

This last week we traveled with Eric to coaching school in Austin.  This is an annual conference for Texas High School Coaches. I have gone one time with Eric, last time it was in Austin, and he prefers to take me with him. This year since I was nursing Eleri, she had to come, and then he felt bad leaving Mali so we all just came along.  Here is a summary of our trip, and unfortunately I have NO pictures to capture the moments in time.

People we Saw (or happened to run into):

• Carrie, Dan, Luke, and Claire McCullough
• Andrea and Matt
• John, Katie, Ashlyn, and Paige Bimmerlee
• Kisha and Josh (MiMi and Papa too)
• Amarillo High Coaching Staff (of course)
• Brittany, Dan and Teague Arlitt (Sad we missed seeing Troy)
• Kathryn Bixler (She was in Brandon's grade in Ouray and we ran into her at the bridge on Congress and watched the bats with her)
• Aaron McNeely (nine30 alum and bass player; I ran into him in our hotel lobby the last morning)

Great food we ate:

• Joe T Garcia's in Ft. Worth
• America's Best Coffee
• Spaghetti Warehouse
• Chuy's!!!!!
• Rio Grande
• Rio Grande
• Eddie V's Riverside Grill (that was an experience that wasn't so great)

Things we lost:

• My camera (hence no pictures of the trip)
• Eric's credit card that all expenses were going on since the school reimburses them
• Mali's 1 hour old stuffed animal

Miles traveled:

• Amarillo to McCullough's home in Arlington, TX  359 miles
• McCullough home to Joe T's in Ft. Worth-30 miles round trip
• McCullough home to PGA superstore in Frisco-36.9 miles
• Frisco to downtown Austin-220 miles
• Hotel to outlets in Round Rock, lunch at Chuy's and back to hotel-42 miles round trip
• Austin to Amarillo- 513 miles

Things that we saw or experienced (some numbers may be an estimation):

• 1001 bats
• 26 wind mills
• 3 dead animals
• 30 outlets stores
• 127 cows, horses, goats, and sheep
• 1 golf course
• 1 4ft swimming pool
• 2 cozy queen beds
• 3 poopy diapers
• 1 new DVD player
• 3-times we watched/heard "Tinkerbell"
• 4-times we watched/heard "Horton Hears a Who"
• 6 spankings and 7 time outs 
• 16-ounces of Starbuck's decaf Cinnamon Dolce Latte's that I enjoyed each morning in our lobby!
• $5-cost of two buttons created by a deaf artist depicting the bats at Congress bridge.
• 21-average minutes of Eleri's naps during our trip.
• $21.65-cost of a new blankie for Mali
• 0 minutes of crying and complaining....way to go sweet girls!!!
• $$$ amount of money spent on a good family trip with lots of memories, although I need to add some dollar signs now that my lost, but found, camera is officially inoperable!

Little Fish

This week Mali had swim lessons for the first time.  She really had fun and looked forward to her 30 minute daily lessons.  I think she was also excited that Mr. Andrew was her swim instructor.    We were so proud of Mali and how much learned.  Today we got to watch her on her last day.  She did great!  I got a little nervous at one point when she was underwater for a while. I did notice this week that she was pretty much the only child that DID NOT stop moving!  The only down side was that Mali cried and cried about going down the water slide. I'm hoping her new skills will come in handy while we are in Austin this coming week. 

What Mali learned:

Move through the water independent of adult support using a Power Swimmer Floatation device

Go underwater and come up fro air-breath holding and control

Front float

Back Float

Kicking on the front or back

Paddle stroke

Ask permission to go into the water

Pool and Class Rules

Hold on to the side of the pool

Enter and exit the pool safely and independently 

Here are video clips of swim lessons!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

From the mouths of babes...or one at least

Mali and I have spent a lot of time talking about Jesus in the last few months and she has asked a lot of questions, and hopefully I've answered them with wisdom.  Out of those conversations have come the following cute sayings:

We went to the doctor with Eric for his checkup the other day, and there was a cross section model of a heart.  She brought it to me and asked "So where is Jesus?" I tried to explain you couldn't see him in your heart, just feel Him in your heart. She then said "I think he's there is the web part."

The other night, her and Eric were reading, and she said "Know what my favorite book is?  It's the Bible." (Said very matter-of-fact.  And I wish that were really true for me and her!).

I won't include the OTHER sayings Mali has come up, I'd rather forget those.  But lets just say she repeats what she hears and is very honest!  It just reminds me that we can not take credit for the good in our kids, or we have to take credit for the bad too!  Everything good in both of my girls is through God and His great mercy!  And, honestly, the bad is probably my fault, or at least some kind of reaping what you sow from when I was a child!:) (Not really, I DO NOT believe God works that way.)