Checking In

Our week long celebration of Shiloh's birthday has been going well so far! I finally have some down time so I thought I'd check in. Our visit with the Tolbert family was great...as is every visit with them! I so wish we lived closer! Tailgating was fun. Both Shiloh and Ella did amazing! We arrived on campus around 9:30 am and I didn't take the girls home until 6:30 that evening. Not one meltdown took place....there was some fussiness but nothing we couldn't handle. I already miss them!

Our trip to the zoo was a ton of fun! Shiloh walked around at the zoo at least as much as she was pushed in her stroller/carried! I'm telling ya, this kid is nonstop! There is a petting zoo in the actual zoo and Shiloh had a great time there. Her favorite animal was the pig. Her favorite zoo animal was the flamingo. At least that was the one she responded to the most. Later that night Brittany and AJ came over to give Shiloh her birthday present. They can't make it to her party but they wanted to make sure she got her gift...the picture below says it all.

Today Adrienne and I took Shiloh for her one year pictures. Let me just say, too cute!

Here are some pictures from our week thus far....

Shiloh meeting UGA VII

Shiloh and Ella after their bath together Shiloh's first carousel ride (the zoo)
THANK YOU Brittany and AJ

ETA: Also, today Adrienne taught Shiloh to hold up her pointer finger (signaling #1) when asked how old she is!

I Should Be Cleaning...

but who wants to do that?! I don't have much to do anyway. I'm too excited for the arrival of Laura and Ella...and later on in the day, Lee!! This is going to be a great weekend!! I haven't heard from Laura yet but she said they'd be leaving Alabama, hopefully, no later than 8 am....which is 9:00 our time so they should hopefully be arriving no later than 3...I think.

At Toys R Us the other day I bought the girls the cutest Halloween shirt. It's an orange with black lettering and says "Daddy's under my spell". Laura and I have already decided we're going to make the boys hold the babies and get pictures of the four of them together with the Shiloh and Ella in the shirts. We're dorks, huh?!

I'm also beyond excited for the game tomorrow! It's going to be even more exciting now that Oregon State beat USC last night!! HA-HA! As much as I hate hearing about Georgia especially with how not good Ohio State has looked so far this year, I will be glad to see Georgia or more likely Oklahoma at #1 instead of USC.

Hopefully the girls (Shiloh and Ella) will be able to handle of the tailgating we have in store for them tomorrow. We were originally planning on heading down to Campus around 1:30 but earlier this week they announced this would be Georgia's blackout game of the year and that College Gameday was going to be there! Now I believe we are aiming to be at campus no later than 11 am....for a 7:45 game. It's going to be a long day for them! Laura made a comment about us going up later if we need to for the sake of the babies. I told her Shiloh would suffer through it if need be. There's no way I'm giving up being at College Gameday. I've given up many things since the birth of Shiloh (not complaining) but I'm not passing this up. I think Shiloh will do pretty well though.

Well, Shiloh will only nap for so long this morning so I am off to finish my cleaning.

Wordless Wednesday

Keeping with my decision to do newborn pictures until Shiloh's first birthday, here are today's pictures....

The first one was taken the day before Halloween. Shiloh was two days away from turning one month old. This is one of my favorite pictures of her. I think she looks like a little baby doll!
The second picture was taken the morning she turned one month old. This was Shiloh's third smile ever. My sister, Andrea, was holding her after we did her one month photo shoot and she gave Andrea her first smile. I immediately ran and got my camera and captured her third one.

"up"

Shiloh said "up" for the first time today and I think it just might be her favorite word! I can't count how many times she said, "up, up, up, up" at Gymboree today. During our drive home she said it again for Aunt Adrienne and multiple times for Rich and Brittany this evening!

The Calm Before the Storm...A Good Storm

Next weekend begins our week long Happy Birthday Shiloh Extravaganza!! Not really, but we are going to be extremely busy! Our Alabama friends (Lee, Laura and baby Ella) will be in town all weekend for the Georgia/Alabama game. The six of us will be tailgating downtown Saturday before the game and then I'll be taking the babies back to the house while the others go to the game. Since the T family will not be in town for Shiloh's birthday party the following weekend we'll be having a mini birthday celebration while they are here. Both Laura and I are so excited to have Shiloh and Ella together again. The last time they saw eachother Shiloh was 5 months and Ella was 3 weeks old so there was no real interaction between the two of them. Hopefully during this visit they will actually play together some.

Sunday morning after the T family leaves Rich, Shiloh and myself will be heading to the airport to pick up Aunt Adrienne! From the airport we'll be going to the Atlanta Zoo for a birthday visit with Kim (Shiloh's birthmom). I am so excited as this will be Shiloh's first visit to the zoo!Anyway, Adrienne will be in town to celebrate Shiloh's birthday with us and then flies down to Orlando Thursday for a weekend in Disney World with Joe!

The same day Adrienne leaves Grammy arrives! She will be flying down Thursday evening and staying through the weekend. Then Friday Aunt Andrea and a friend of hers will be driving in from North Carolina. Andrea will be over 6 months pregnant then and doesn't want to make the drive alone so a girlfriend of hers is coming with her. Daniel has to work all weekend so he can't make it.

And then that will bring us to Shiloh's birthday party on Saturday! Like I said, it will be a busy week but I am so thankful that so many people want to take part in the celebration of Shiloh's first birthday! I can't wait to see everyone and I can't wait for everyone to see Shiloh again! Although, we will miss Grandpa, Uncle Jeff and Brayden. We'll make sure we eat a piece of cake for them.

Wordless Wednesday

I have no new pictures of Shiloh since I am without a camera again so I've decided to post some old pictures of her. Kind of flashback to the newborn days. I also thought it might be a nice way to lead up to her first birthday....which is two weeks from today!!

Anyway, both pictures are from the day we brought her home from the hospital (2 days old). You can't really see Shiloh in the first picture but it was a nice moment I thought I'd share. The second picture was one of the first pictures taken upon our arrival home. We didn't know what to do with her so we decided to try out the swing!

Daddy with his girls

10-6

At least it wasn't a blow out. But as I told my brother it almost feels worse than the Buckeye loss because the Buckeyes just did what everyone expected them to do. I'm sure most people (including me) thought the Browns didn't stand a chance against Pittsburgh, but they did. They came SOOOOO close. The game was within their reach and then what happens?? More bad play calling and penalties, in my opinion. Stupid penalties, too! Maybe the Browns would not have gotten that touchdown in the 4th quarter but it sure as heck was worth a try. Either way we're down a touchdown.

Going back to the Buckeyes, as much as it truly pains me to say this, maybe it's time to rethink our coaching staff. I can't see us beating any USC, Florida, or LSU team that we've played with Tressel as our coach. And to be honest, I'm not so anxious to see how we do against Wisconsin, Illinois or Penn State this year.

Crawling, what??

It hit me this weekend that Shiloh has not crawled since this past Monday! I think she has officially moved on to walking. She still stumbles a little but everyday she seems to have more and more balance! It truly is amazing to think about all that we accomplish in our first year of life.

While I'm talking about Shiloh, she caught her first bug this weekend. Yesterday Rich thought she was feeling a little warm but she didn't feel any different to me so I blew his comment off....yes, that's right, daddy knew best. Anyway, this morning there was no question about it so we broke out the thermometer. She started out with a temp of 101.2 but a few hours later it had gone up to 102.4. We gave her some medicine at that point and she's been doing well ever since. When I put her to bed her temp had gone down to 100.5 so hopefully tomorrow she'll be all better! I have to say she handled her first fever quite well. She had her fussy moments but for the most part she was still fairly happy and just slept a little more today.

I'm going to end this now so I can give my full attention to the Browns game. Halfway into the first quarter the score is 0-0....that's a good thing! Maybe the Browns will make up for the Buckeyes this weekend?! It's still early though. We'll see. It looks like what is left of Hurricane Ike is over Cleveland. Hopefully Adrienne and Joe are staying somewhat dry at the game!

I Hate Cameras!!

I am without a camera again! Exactly one month ago today I bought a new camera to replace the one that "I" broke. I had spent three agonizing weeks waiting on Rich to declare the camera dead. The whole time not being able to take a single picture of Shiloh. When I finally got the ok from Rich to buy a new one I spent what I think was a considerable amount of time looking over various cosumer report type websites educating myself on cameras in our price range. I then ventured out and bought one such camera that had great to good reviews on all the websites I visited.

Now I want to scream!! Exactly one month to the day the flash has decided to quit working!! I called the Sony Service Center today to see if there was anything I could do. After about 10 minutes of insulting my intelligence they decided I need to send it in for a repair. UGH!! Tomorrow I will be sending it out to Texas where it will hopefully only take 7-10 days to repair it....I won't be holding my breath though.

The last month of Shiloh's first year and I don't have a camera....I'm not going to cry.

Wordless Wednesday: Bathtime Fun

Walker

Even though Shiloh's been officially walking for about a month I just now got a good video of it. Usually anytime I pull out the video camera the only video I get is of her trying to take the camera from me.

Weekend In Review

I haven't really felt like blogging about anything these past few days, I still don't, but I feel like I should. Our weekend went well...aside from the Buckeyes horrific game against Ohio U...moving on...ECU beat (8)W. Virginia! I think I might have to add some purple to my wardrobe?? My sister's SIL, who attended East Carolina, informed Andrea that they have been wanting to move up to the ACC Conference (I believe it's that one) for the past year or so(???)but no one has been listening/taking them seriously. Well, I'd say they are making a pretty good case for themselves this year. GO ECU! Continuing on to Saturday night football...the Hurricanes put up a good fight against Florida until the beginning of the 4th quarter...if I'm remembering correctly. All I know is I turned the game off a little before 11 PM because I couldn't bare to watch what was about to happen. At no point during the game did I think the Hurricanes were going to win but it was nice to see them keep the game so close for a while. Oh, how I hate Florida.

Sunday morning I woke up with a scratchy voice and sore throat so I slept most of the day. I finally ventured out of bed around 3:15 and at that point somehow felt completely fine. I'm not sure what I had but whatever it was there were no signs of it Saturday and, like I said, it didn't even last all day Sunday. Which was good because Sunday evening was Shiloh's Gymboree buddy Kaylen's 1st birthday party!! Kaylen officially turns 1 on Wednesday. We had a great time at the party. All of Kaylen's huge family was so kind and welcoming and I got some great idea's for Shiloh's 1st birthday party! Rich and I also got to try some new food. Kaylen's parents were born in Kenya but are Indian. Aside from a few boxes of pizza everything they had was traditional Indian food. Rich and I sweated through everything there. I think we each went through 2 bottles of water during dinner. The funny thing is Shraya (I don't know how to spell her name so I'm spelling it how it sounds), Kaylen's mom, mentioned the kind of food they would be serving beforehand and told us when they have gatherings like this they tone down the spiciness so it wouldn't be too bad. I can't imagine how it usually tastes. When we left we made a beeline to Burger King for some milkshakes to cool down our mouths.


Disclaimer- Andrea isn't always the most accurate source for info.

Wordless Wednesday: Thanks Aunt A

Early birthday presents....