Douglas and Carol

Out of the blue we asked Amina if she could smile for a picture and she did! I had no idea she new what that meant or how to do it Granted it’s a funny smile with her nose squished up and her eyes half closed… but it’s a smile We were at the Rainforest Cafe Saturday having dinner celebrating Doug’s cousin’s Ben’s safe return from Iraq. Amina got a cute balloon monkey made for her and we wanted a picture, so I asked her to smile. We had to ask her to do it several more times and we just laugh each time! It’s just amazing to me what kids pick up on Here are a couple of pictures of her ’smile’.

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Today was beautiful… we woke up to cloudy skies and the upper 50s and it was so nice to cool off for a change! The sun did come out this afternoon and it was nice but not too hot. Why all the talk about the weather? Well last week we had record breaking temperatures in this area. I think the hottest it got here was last Wednesday at 107. That is really hot considering most people do not have central A/C. We have a window unit that kept the house around 75-80 degrees, but that was nice and refreshing! Amina did well despite the heat! To keep cool we spent an extra long time shopping for milk at Safeway Monday afternoon. I usually have to wear sweaters in grocery stores but last week I was glad that it was so cool in there! Another day we got to spend a few hours at the Morency farm in their nice air conditioned home. Amina enjoyed dancing to high school musical songs with Stephanie’s daughters (who were obviously also there cooling off!). I just had to laugh… my girl sure loves music of any kind! Then Wednesday we went with my friend Rachael and her daughter Ashley (who is 6 weeks younger than Amina) to the Seattle Children’s museum. It was busy there but we enjoyed it! I’d never been before so it was really neat to see what was there! We got a later start because we had to stop by the hospital to see another friend who had just had a baby! Well I should say we were honored to stop by to see a 10 hour old baby and his mama! So by the time we let the girls play for a little while and join in the summer heat wave dance party they were exhausted and we had to head home. Thursday I finally got to go swimming… and it was really my favorite activity of the week, though that shouldn’t surprise those of you who know me! I’ve always loved the water. Amina is a little water bug too… she enjoyed just chillin’ in her ladybug float in the pool at her Auntie Maralee and Uncle Ben’s house. It was so nice to relax with family and friends cooling off in the pool. We finished our super hot week by having our friend Mindy over with her boys Logan and Turner. After the bees chased us inside for our picnic lunch we braved the outside to let the kids play in the kiddie pool. The boys splashed a bit more than Amina liked so she had to wander around the yard a bit. It was lots of fun to have our friends over to play and to enjoy some time with my friend. Sounds like it was quite the full week! Maybe the heat isn’t such a bad thing after all - look at all the fun we had because of it! I do have some pictures to share but they’re on the other computer, so I’ll have to add them later. Just wanted to let you all know some of what we’ve been up to! Oh, and Amina has just started repeating almost anything we ask her too! Her newest game with her daddy is ‘do you want daddy to tickle you?’ and she says ‘yeah’. She is such a delight and we are having such a fun summer with her!

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We have been SO busy this weekend getting our house ready to put on the market. We just decided less than a week ago that it is time to sell our house and move on to something bigger, and hopefully with more land. Our house is in great shape as we had planned on living here many more years, but we had lots of little projects that needed finishing, and a couple of bigger projects too. We’ve had great help from lots of family and a few great friends and have accomplished so much! But boy are we all tired now! Doug took Friday and today off from work and I think he’s actually looking forward to going to his normal job tomorrow so he can rest a bit! He’s been working so hard! The biggest thing we had to do was put in a new kitchen floor, but it looks great! I almost want to stay here now! Friday and Saturday I spent most of my time keeping Amina from getting hurt admist all the crazy house projects. Luckily it was hot and we have friends with a backyard pool so we got to hang out at their place and have fun for a while. Then Grandma and Grandpa got back from a trip and Grandma helped keep Amina out of trouble so I could get some packing and decluttering done the last couple of days. We are so grateful for our wonderful friends and family! I’ll just put a couple of pictures up now…

Kitchen Floor before:

Kitchen Floor after:

Front wall before (behind the cute girl eating):

Front wall almost finished (ignore the clutter, we aren’t completely done!):

Here’s one of our best helpers:

Well on our way… just a few more things go get done! But for now, the bath is calling

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Here are a few pictures from Father’s Day
and Doug’s birthday:

Amina and her Daddy on Father’s Day

Amina loving the waves!

Amina loving the sand!

Doug and I enjoying our day

That was fun!

Doug just getting his kite up on his Birthday

Hard at work!

Walking with Daddy

Is it naptime yet?

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Oh dear abandoned blog… we have been keeping in touch with people using facebook these days and have abandoned our blog… but part of me would actually like to keep up with it. I don’t want to forget all the fun things we’ve been up to. So perhaps I can slowly start to put a picture and a story up here and there again. But no promises on how regularly that will be! We shall see…

This week we got to celebrate Father’s Day and Doug’s birthday! We had similar days for each, but both were fun. Father’s day I got up and made biscuits and gravy and then we headed to Dash Point State Park to fly kites. It was pouring down rain when we left our house but when we got to the beach it was sunny and warm and we rolled up our pants as far as we could because we were too warm dressed for a stormy day! I fed Amina some lunch while Doug took a walk down the beach getting his kite to fly! It wasn’t very windy at first, but he was able to get his new low wind kite up for a while. It just took him some work to do so! Then Amina wandered around playing with her ball, watched her daddy fly his kite, and watched the teenagers play on their skim boards for a while. She finally had to get wet so she walked to the water. It was much warmer than I thought it would be so I stripped her to her onesie and let her play in the water. She knows how to get soaked! She had fun splashing in the waves, picking up seaweed, and stomping her feet in the sand! She is a beach lover like her mama! This was our second time playing in the ocean water in her clothes, so this time I knew to strip her down and rinse her off before heading back to the blanket and towel. Last time we tried this I didn’t think that far ahead and she was completely covered in sand from head to toe that we couldn’t get off until her bath time that night. You live and learn, right? I’m sure we’ll have many more sandy escapades this summer! After playing in the water for a while we quickly packed up and left as a storm was coming in across the sound. We made it back into the car and out of the park before it started pouring again. Then we went for a longish drive so Amina could get a nap in and we went to Redmond Town Center for some fun shopping. We had to stop by the fun toy store there, followed by Uncle’s Games (our favorite!) and then Border’s before heading to Canyon’s for dinner. The food wasn’t really that great but we enjoyed our day thoroughly! And did I mention the sun was shining by the time we got out of the car again? That’s my kind of weather Ordered it up special for Father’s day.

Then yesterday we celebrated Doug’s birthday! The night before I tried my hand at making strawberry-rhubarb and strawberry-banana freezer jams, and then on his birthday we had homemade waffles with fresh jams to top them. And of course whipped cream! Amina kept sucking the whipped cream off the waffle and handing it back to me for more! That was definitely a special treat! After our leisurely morning eating outside in the sunshine Doug watered the garden and we headed for Seattle. We ended up at Golden Garden’s beach park where Doug again got to fly kites. This time we had more wind, so he didn’t have to work quite as hard to keep them up! We enjoyed walking along the rocks and sand at low tide and then playing in the sand with shovels and buckets. This time we kept Amina out of the water as it was colder that day, though it was hard to keep redirecting her away from the water! There were more sail boats, tug boats, and ferries to watch from this beach so that helped! We spent more time at the beach on Doug’s birthday than we had on Father’s day. Afterwards we headed to Southcenter to eat at Famous Dave’s BBQ. The meal was much better than the one on Sunday and we enjoyed eating outside on the patio. There was even a dog sitting under the next table so Amina enjoyed watching him and saying ‘woo woo’ to make sure we noticed the puppy. We got home before Amina’s bed time, gave Doug his picture frame gift, and just enjoyed a relaxing evening at home. I’m so blessed by my husband every day and I enjoyed spending time with him on his birthday. I’m so glad he was able to take the day off!

I’ve clearly used up my quota of words on the blog for the month, so I better end now and go find some pictures of our adventures!
Whoops, I left the camera in Amina’s diaper bag which is in her room where she’s sleeping. As she just finally fell asleep about a half hour ago I am not going to dare try and go in to retrieve it now! So the pictures will have to wait for now… hopefully I’ll get to them soon!

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I’m back to post those pictures I mentioned the other night… just a few random pictures of Amina over the last month or so…

The whole family was snacking on snap peas one evening, and Amina wanted to try one so we let her… she liked how it felt on her gums.  This picture cracks me up

Amina likes to ‘help’ with laundry.  Mostly she likes to take things out of the basket, so now I try to have 2 baskets and she can pull out the clothes that aren’t folded yet… but of course she really wants to pull out those nicely folded clothes much more than the others!

For Christmas, Amina’s grandparents in Sudan asked us to pick out a toy for her, but we didn’t know about it until after Christmas.  So she got one gift a little late, but it is one of her all time favorite toys - the Fisher Price Noah’s Ark toy.  She loves the animals! She puts them in and takes them out over and over again. Here’s one of her first looks at it…

And a few more pics of Amina enjoying her toy…

Bruin’s pillow is so comfy!

Here’s my sleepy-head in her monkey pjs and her bunny slippers… which she just had to pull off her feet as soon as she could Now she wears them longer though.

I’m a happy girl! This picture must be a few weeks old, because this has a great view of her upper gums and they are bare.  She now has 2 teeth on the top too!

I don’t have a picture of this yet, but I wanted to mention that Amina has started to use the sign for ‘more’ now.  It’s so cute to ask her if she wants more crackers or cereal or whatever and have her put her little hands together to say ‘more’! I tried to get it on video today, but of course she wouldn’t do it for me when I was holding the camera. Maybe next time

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For those of you who check our blog faithfully I have to apologize… I’m just not that great at updating it! We do put pictures and videos on facebook fairly regularly though now. But here I am, with my quarterly update! (See if I say quarterly than it’s good to have one every 2 months - that’s more frequent than quarterly) We had a good Christmas this year - we took a trip to Virginia to visit friends and family and had a wonderful time. I was sad to miss all of the snow that dumped on the Seattle area this Christmas as I don’t know when we’ll ever have another white Christmas with everything blanketed in over a foot of snow around here! If you know me you know that I LOVE snow and I always get super excited whenever I see the white stuff falling. But despite missing the snow we enjoyed Amina’s first Christmas with her! She loved being at her Grandma and Grandpa’s house! And she even lasted through opening about 2 presents before needing her morning nap. It was fun to have an extended present opening time - continued after a nap in daddy’s arms with her new kitty stuffed animal. Amina enjoyed playing with her cousins on my side of the family too! Holly and Madison were fighting over who could hold her… ah to be so desired She does really well playing with the big kids.

Since we’ve been back it’s just been normal life Amina is growing and learning every day! She’s so interactive now. She loves to bring things to me from across the room and she points at everything to draw your attention to it. She’s getting so good at walking too - walking all the way across the house now. Amina is quite the climber - a couple weeks ago I left her playing in the family room and came back to see her standing on top of her toy box banging on the wall! We don’t leave the top on the toy box now when we leave her in there by herself! She also loves to dance and clap her hands to music. It’s so sweet She also gives ‘fish face’ kisses and is learning to blow kisses too. I can’t believe she’s going to be 11 months tomorrow and her first birthday is quickly approaching! She doesn’t even look like a baby anymore… she’s growing up too fast! But every stage is fun and I look forward to all the new things she will be able to do in the coming months. I’ll be back later to put up some pictures… Amina’s too interested in trying to type on the computer with me to get them up now!

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