Our Girl is ONE!

We had a wonderful time at Cady's first birthday party. We had it at a beautiful park by a river, it was the perfect setting and we couldn't have asked for better weather! We had raspberry lemonade, cucumber-lemon water, wine, tomato-cucumber-feta salad, macaroni salad, a variety of sandwiches, cookies, dried papaya, chocolate dipped pretzels and cake. Here she is opening her presents!
And eating cake!

Here are the birthday girls with Jenny.

We're going to do Cady's hand print on canvas every year on her birthday. Here was the process on birthday #1. It didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. Next year, we'll do a practice print first :)

We're still waiting on our house. We are supposedly in the final stage of the short sale approval process, once we get approval in writing, we can get on with our inspections and get a closing date set. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

We're on the move....

Well, actually, we've been here and there and everywhere in between. Dan's still going between Southern California and Northern California, with a trip to Cincinnati in the middle. Mom, Cady and I are mostly in Northern California, with my exception being a quick overnight trip to LA and then a trip to Memphis next week. We're in contract on a house! It's literally just across the street from the house I grew up in. It's a really nice sized lot, and a house that will be just right for us, for the long haul. It's a short sale, you'd fall over if I told you how much money the seller had in it. Let's just say that if the bank approves the short sale (which is what we're waiting on), they will be selling it to us for just under 50% of what the people owe. OUCH! But it would be good for us. Cady will be starting at her fancy pants day care next week. We are all so excited for her. She's going to love it. We LOVE the place and are looking forward to seeing all she learns and experiences there. She is eating "big people" food now, and all kinds of things. We still haven't found anything she doesn't like. We took her to dinner at Super Taqueria last week and she devoured it (smart girl). You'd think we never fed her. She tore into her tortilla, avocado, and chicken with both hands. She's extremely close to walking! It won't be long at all!

10 Months Old!

Another month has flown by! We've been busy with pre-move planning. Thank GOD for my mom. She's been so unbelievably helpful with Cady, and making this transition as smooth as possible. And thanks to my Dad too, because he's ok with my Mom being here as long as she needs to be. We're so lucky.

Let's see, Cady's using her "walkers" a lot, but not really trying to walk on her own yet. Every once in a while, she lets go and finds herself standing, but then plops down. She has a new high chair, and really likes to be in it. She's eating all kinds of things, and LOVES feeding herself things like cheerios, steamed carrots, egg yolks, and avocados (which might be her favorite). We'll sure miss our avocado tree when we move up north.

Here's her Valentine's Day photo, if you haven't seen it.

Here she is at 10 months, eating her avocados like a good California girl.

If you're not up-to-date on what's happening with our move, this should catch you up:

1. Cathi got the job in Salinas and accepted it. Salinas is an agricultural community, Steinbeck country! It's beautiful, set just about 5 miles inland from Monterey Bay, with row crops everywhere you look. We're headed into the busy harvest season for lettuce.

2. The first house-hunting trip was a complete flop. Eight houses, none quite right (and one or two were downright wrong - like should be knocked down). Our search was primarily in Gilroy.

3. Cathi spent last week working in Salinas and staying in Gilroy. The job is going to be great! Saw another six houses, this time in Morgan Hill. Sent dozens of pictures home for Dan to look at, and had her good friend Jenny walk through one of them as a second set of eyes and sanity check.

4. We put an offer on that house, it was verbally accepted, but then came with a written counter offer with a number of "as is" conditions. We did not accept their counter offer, because we're worried about just how bad things must be if they aren't even willing to consider any repairs or a home warranty. We know there is some termite damage, so we're worried it might be pretty bad. The home was on the side of a big steep hill, which posed some earthquake concerns in itself.

5. The people who were going to do a lease with the option to buy on our current house flaked out. Probably a blessing in disguise. Come to find out their marriage is a bit shaky and they've had some credit problems in the past. Better that we found out now, rather than a few months into this program when it's too late! When a man's word is worth nothing, that man's worth is nothing more.

6. We're going to explore selling our current house. Our house in Ohio is still on the market. We're going to drop the price soon, just to get rid of it. That can't happen soon enough!

7. We're looking at the MLS every day. We have two new houses on the list to go see, and one other that's priced way too high for the neighborhood it's in, is on our watch list. I'll be taking a look at those next week when I'm up there working.

8. We'll be moving up north soon, we're just not sure exactly where we are going and for how long. Keep your fingers crossed that we find our new house soon! We know we will, and it will be perfect for us.

9 Months Old!

We've had a busy month! Not sure what we've been doing, but it's been busy and it's only going to get busier over the next few months.

Cady's 9 months old today. She went to the doctor this morning and she's 27.5 inches long and weighs 20 pounds. She's going to have a blood test this week to check for lead, since we live in an old house. Just a precaution. She's been eating all kinds of baby foods. She also drinks smoothies when we make them for breakfast. Yesterday she had some avocado from our tree. Today she had some curried lentil soup and pastina (little star shaped pasta). She seems to have a sense of adventure with her appetite, hopefully she always will.

Here she is doing her latest "thing," we call it the "crinkle face." She's also wearing her new teething necklace.

We might be getting more teeth...

She's back to chewing on EVERYthing, and drooling a whole lot. Nothing's coming through yet, but we think it's coming soon!

Happy New Year!

Yes, our window is that dirty. Keep in mind that it's Chico's post, and his nose is up against it most of the day. Anyway, Cady and Chico enjoyed looking out the window at the rain this afternoon.


Talking about the weather, I'm sure.

This was our lunch. We made a delicious ham yesterday, and couldn't wait to put it on a pizza. I used a packaged crust mix and added some garlic, parmesean, basil and rosemary to it. I always bake the crust for about 10 minutes with nothing on it because there's really nothing that tastes worse than soggy crust. Then I added some LaRosa's sauce (thanks Stephanie) from a pizza place in Cincinnati. I used just a little bit of cheese and then heaped on the ham and pineapple. Put it back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes, took it out and topped it with crushed red peppers. I'm doing a 52-week photography challenge, so this is actually from that. You can go to my photography blog if you want to see the photos weekly.

We've spent the first weekend of the new year cleaning out our closets and cabinets. Dan just got back from the Goodwill, where he dropped off 3 huge boxes of clothes, shoes and miscellaneous stuff.

We're also cleaning out the kitchen. Get this, our goal for January is to buy NO groceries (except for produce). We have so many things to make, we just need to make them. We're both planning to do a whole lot more cooking this year and trying a bunch of recipes we've never tried before.

Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

Happy Christmas Eve! We just finished up our traditional x-mas eve dinner of Hawaiian Steak (like the one from Houston's restaurant). This year, we paired it with tarragon mashed potatoes and tomatoes in ginger soy dressing. It was excellent.

Each year at Christmas, we'll take a picture of Cady with this book her GG made for her. It'll be fun to see how much she grows.

Here we are, wishing you and your family a very happy holiday!

Crawling around the room

That's what she likes to do. Today, I made her model a hat I made. A lady in Ohio ordered it custom for her daughter from my online Etsy shop. I think it turned out really well! Anyway, the top two are of her in her hat and the bottom two are of her crawling around her room. The pictures are a bit blury and low resolution, sorry they aren't super clear, you get the idea though!

Looks what's happening now...

We walked in to Cady's room to see what she was doing. We were hoping she was about to take her nap. Nope, she was standing there, in her crib, laughing. So we're lowering the mattress today. We're also doing a lot of holiday baking. In the oven now, is a two-colored squash bread and butter pecan cakes. Later, more toffee crisps and some chocolate chip cookies.
Here's Cady's 7 month picture. We've been taking pictures of her on the 7th of each month, here she is in December! Two teeth (on the bottom), sitting up very well on her own, crawling (she goes a few steps then lunges forward), and now, pulling herself up to standing regularly.

Cady and her tree

Too cute. She loves being in her room and crawling all over it, from corner to corner and back again. She's trying really hard to pull herself up to standing. I'm sure it'll happen for her very soon. We put a tree in her room and she loves looking at the lights before she goes to sleep. We don't let her watch TV, or have any of those toys with crazy lights (not yet anyway), so this is kind of a special treat. Thank you GG for the ornaments!

Happy Holidays from our crib to yours!

We started decorating last night and finished most of it today. The trees are up, decorations are out and the baking was in full swing today. I made pumpkin cheesecake muffins and the first batch of what has become my signature holiday sweet, nutty chocolate toffee crisps. Lots more batches to do.

We did a little rearranging in Cady's room today, and in the midst of that, we decided to play around with her and some lights. We love the way it turned out. She's wearing our favorite PJs too. You may remember them from this post. We loved them so much that we found them in a bigger size and bought them. Lucky us, they were on clearance!

Thankscamping Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving weekend camping with our neighbors at Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest. We are thankful to have such good friends in our neighbors, especially when we can't be with our families. We are lucky in so many ways, and have so much to be thankful for. We're so glad Cady's first Thanksgiving was something fun and memorable, maybe we'll make it a tradition!

We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving, with friends and family! Here's a few shots of our weekend. Clockwise from top left: 1. The Thanksgiving table with campfire cooked ham and turkey, fried turkey, stuffing, yams, potatoes and gravy, broccoli casserole, corn casserole, salad, green bean casserole, rolls (with homemade herbed butter with herbs from our back yard), pumpkin and pecan pie. 2. Dan with a sleeping Cady at the table. 3. Claire and Chico overlooking the lake. 4. Half of our group on a hike: Maddie, Lisa, Claire, Rod, Garrett, Jack, Mike, Connor, Danny, Kevin and Denise. 5. On the hike.

We're back!

It was a busy vacation, but so much fun! After leaving Cincinnati, we headed down south. We spent the weekend with my best college friends. Since college, our original group of four has expanded to include three husbands and eight kids! The weekend was great, we stayed in Fort Morgan. We did a lot of eating, watched Alabama football and played at the beach with the kids. Here's our whole crew.

After the weekend, we went to my parents' house. Unfortunately, Mom was just getting over a cold, Cady and I picked one up in Cincinnati, and Pop had it too. We kept it pretty low-key, since we'd been running around almost non-stop since we left LA and since most of us were sick. We did do a big family dinner on Friday before we left.

Cady's Cincinnati Debut

Our trip started with a redeye flight from LAX to CVG, where we sat behind LA's mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. When we arrived early yesterday morning, we took the shuttle to pick up the car, and we realized we left a laptop on the plane. Luckily it wasn't a turnaround flight, so we went back and got it. It was 32 degrees when we got in the car. By far, the coldest weather Cady's seen to date.

After a quick nap for all of us, Cady went to her first Gamma Phi Beta event, a Founder's Day luncheon. It was nice catching up with these ladies!

Then, we went to Mike and Stephanie's house where Cady met her cousins. She didn't cry the whole time, but she was pretty crabby after a short night's sleep on the plane and very little nap time during the day. From left to right in the back: Josh, Zack holding Cady, and Jake. In the front: Kelly, Jessica (Josh's wife) holding Maura, Alana, and Kelsey. She also met the majority of Dan's mom's side of the family. Yes, that's a whole lot of people. Needless to say, Cady slept very well last night.
Look at this adorable cake! Thank you Stephanie, we loved it! Today, Cady is six months old! We took a few pictures from Mt. Echo Park, with quite possibly the best view of Cincinnati.
We went to another family gathering late this afternoon. This time, Dan's dad's side of the family, also a whole bunch of people. They get together this time of year to celebrate Thanksgiving so that everyone can do their own thing for the actual holiday. Cady was really good, and her cousins were really helpful. They pushed her around in her stroller and did what they could to entertain her and keep her happy.

There will be two recipes to follow...once we get them from Kelsey and Stephanie. One is a spicy chicken dip and one is a Halloween candy leftover cake.

We have our first tooth!

Look what we found this morning!

Happy Halloween!

Whoops, it's been over a month since I posted something on our blog. Terrible! Anyway, we were pirates for Halloween, and Cady was our parrot. She makes such a cute little parrot, don't you think?

In other news this week, Cady started eating baby food! She had her check up on Friday and weighs in at 17 pounds and 27 inches. She seemed to be way more into the spoon than the food. We'll see how it all goes. Maybe we'll try sweet potatoes next, and then some avocados from our tree!

Cady's First Camping Trip

We spent the weekend at Silver Strand in Coronado. Cady seemed to enjoy camping, which is good since we have three more trips lined up. She saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and had her feet in the sand. We stayed Sunday night, which was a first for us. It's amazing how few people are there, it's really nice!

The 4 Month Check Up...

Cady weighed in at 15 pounds and 25 inches! She's growing so fast and is great at turning over from her back to her tummy (the hard way) but can't get the hang of going from the front to the back (the easy way) and she gets pretty frustrated about it. She's holding her own bottle sometimes, and loves to stand with a little bit of assistance. She loves being outside and loves music.

15-Week Update

Cady's had a busy month since our last update! We just finished our first girls road trip to Northern California. My mom is in town, and we went to Grass Valley and Morgan Hill/San Martin to visit friends and family. Here are a few recent pictures of our happy girl! We hope she keeps these gorgeous blue eyes!

Catching Up...

Cady's 11 weeks old today! Dan's parents were here last week to visit. We had a good visit. Cady's been to the Rose Bowl, although she won't actually go inside until the RB Flea Market in a few weeks. She's also been to Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles and the San Gabriel Mission. She's taken a couple of trips to Costco, and is so well behaved whenever we go out! Here are a few pictures to catch us up to her 11th week.

Her first trip to Costco...

Her new glasses for the summer.

A little tummy time.

At the mission in San Gabriel. It was built in 1771, and is so pretty.

Here are the proud grandparents during their visit.