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.

8 Months Old!

Hard to believe, isn't it!? She's crawling around all the time and standing whenever she has something she can use to pull herself up. Her hair's getting longer, but it's still not curly. We're hopeful though!

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!