Breakfast with Aunt Mil

We just got back from breakfast with Aunt Mil at Mimi's Cafe. It's a great meeting place about half way from where we live. My ciabatta breakfast sandwich was delicious. Thanks Aunt Mil for breakfast and for Josephine's cute book.

October birthday celebrations

Morgan turns 6. Josie's first slide.

Josie's cute skirt is a hand-me-down from Morgan & Emerson

Emerson, Morgan & Josie w/ Chloe in the front

Our good friend Sadie holding Josie

Caleb turns 11 same day as Morgan

Josie loves to play with Caleb

Josie learned to clap with Aunt Tara

Dressed up for Rebecca's birthday

Thanks cousin Sophia for passing on your cute outfit to Josie

Helping Rebecca blow out candles and getting her first taste of chocolate frosting

Newly engaged and practicing to be parents.

Playing with Aunt Gaylynne

Playing the "drums" with Aunt Gaylynne and Bret

Gram & Papa come to visit

It was great having my parents here for 4 nights. Josephine loved all the attention. They came to watch swimming along with Josie's other Grandma. We saw a cool "exhibit" at Stanford where Monks were creating a sand painting. They took Josie for walks, played in the park and read books. 

Swedish song Rida Rida Runka - my grandparents used to sing that while I rode on their  foot.

Playing with Papa but distracted by.....

The Giant's game of course.

Snuggling with her Canadian moose that Gram & Papa brought back from Canada.

Showing off what a big girl she is by standing up.

Cousin Kurt came for dinner. Looks like Josie is waiting for a ride on his shoe. 

Clapping for the Giants

We are rooting for the Giants even though some of us are Cubs fans at heart. Josie's learning to clap just in time for the Giants to win the world series. In another week or so she'll have it down.

Bath time video

Swim Lessons

Josie's had seven weeks of swim lessons (baby & parent class). The first 3 weeks she was really scared and clung to my neck and cried a little and squawked a lot. She didn't fuss going under water so that was nice. Now she loves it and splashes around and plays all the games. She still doesn't mind going under. I was a little worried at the beginning that we might have to stop lessons for awhile until she was ready but it just took a few weeks for her to get used to it. It's an indoor teaching pool with warm water. Here are a few pictures modeling her swim suits. One is with Aunt Karen in Santa Barbara but just wanted to show off her cute ruffled bottoms with matching top. Today she wore her cute bikini and she has a cute pink one-piece as well.

Her little pony tail is sticking straight up. Keeps the hair out of her eyes when she's under water.

Old post from July

I found a post in my drafts folder from 2+ months ago. I just posted it today but it's with the July posts so if you want to see family pictures with our friends from Sweden visiting Angel Island and Alcatraz look under July in the blog archive.

Anderson Family Bluegrass Band - Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest SF

We were so excited to find out there Anderson's were coming to SF to play at the 10th Annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest last Sunday. Eric got home from a backpacking trip and took a shower and off we went. They were the last group of the festival on Sunday evening. We picked up our friends Theresa and Anthony and Theresa's husband Pat met us there. The concert was in Golden Gate Park and there were about 10 different stages. The nice thing about going for the last concert is that the crowds were dwindling. It was still crowded and it took probably 20 min. to find a parking spot but once we were there and got our hot chocolate (chilly SF evening) we were excited. The Anderson's sounded awesome and there were tons of people there to hear them. We talked to them briefly after and they were excited to see us. For those of you who haven't been following my blog for long the Anderson's are not related to us but we found them online and they played at our outdoor mountain wedding. They were one of the highlights of our wedding weekend. Here's their link Anderson Family. I have a great photo of the Anderson's on my camera but I'm back to not being able to download to my computer again. These photos are from my iphone.

Last time we saw the Anderson Family play Josie was 17 days old. 

Cross country runners & future olympic stars

We went to watch cousin Trent from Granite Bay in a Stanford high school cross country invitational Sept 25th. Wow, can that guy run fast. Last year as a freshman he came in 44nd place out of a couple hundred and this year he beat his time by 2 min. and came in 14th place out of 214 with a time of 16:13 (pace 5:13/mile). Josephine and I went to breakfast with Craig and Julie before the meet. It was very fun to spend time with them and watch all the runners. It turns out the night before I missed seeing some other fast runners. Rachel and Caleb participated in the Palo Alto Moonlight Run. They didn't train much at all and Rachel (17)  got 8th place in her age group for the 5k and Caleb (10) came in 4th in his age group for the 10k which was top 17% out of 1000+ runners. Congrats to all these young runners. It  must be fun to be so fast.

8 months old today

It's hard to believe we've had Josephine for 8 months! Time is going by so quickly. Josie is no longer content to just sit on her blanket with toys. She is a girl on the move. She's been crawling for about a month but just in the last week she's started exploring her world. She crawls into different rooms. She opens drawers. She pulls herself up holding on to whatever stable or unstable object she can find. She prefers to play with almost anything that's not a real toy. She touches and tastes everything, so curious. Fun to watch but much more time consuming since we have to always keep an eye on her. She's so full of fun and smiles and occasional belly laughs. She loves to be with all the people that adore her and easily goes to most people. She's still on a four hour eating schedule with solids in the mix as well. Most days she takes her 3 2-hr naps and goes to bed around 8:15 and starts her day at 7 with lots of smiles for mom and dad. We're so thankful for her and constantly pray God's protection over her. A few pictures of our big 8 month old.

So full of joy.

Her "toys" have taken over the shelves in the office/kitchen.

Two cute little teeth.

Can't wait to go riding with Great Aunt Gaylynne

Josie's buddy Caleb