lost a whole year

I just finished ordering a small picture book online. One of those deals where you put in your own pictures, and then create a book out of them. I skimmed through all of our digital pictures, and got together a couple dozen of my favorites and realized that I'm missing a year of pictures. I mentioned it to Steve and he looked and sure enough - we are missing July '08-July '09. It's when I got my new dslr camera, I must have started storing them differently and never backed them up somehow. Here's to the missing year, the only images that I have left are stored here on the blog. Boo hoo.

another video, this one cracks me up

Ethan loves this bus so much that the buttons that make noise have started to go funny. They only play the music occasionally now, so when that happens he gets really obsessive about them :)

videos

summertime!!

Getting used to the nebulizer mask

Ready for a dip in the pool!

Trying to get mama to open up for a big bite!

July 4th

babo!

Ethan calls Elmo "babo". It's the first character that he's become attached to. Any tv he sees, he zero's in on and shouts "babo". Well, he's now started spotting babo everywhere, including the cars that you ride at Walmart. In these pictures even, he was far too excited to sit still and smile for the camera :)

book review

Bound by Guilt by C.J. Darlington

I just finished reading my first novel by this author, and I just might have to look into more of her work. I am not sure why, but I was a bit skeptical when I picked it - I really didn't think that I would like it. I quickly realized that I would be pleasantly surprised. Bound by Guilt is a story about a small band of rare book thieves and a family that is left in the wake of their robbery. The book mainly follows the story of Roxi, a sixteen year old girl who no one has ever really shown love to. She grew up in the foster system since age 8 and is now in the care of a distant relative. The woman, Irene, and her teenage son Diego live off of money that they make stealing rare books from second-hand bookstores. Roxi isn't sure how she feels about their way of life, but since Irene is currently the only mother-figure in her life she goes along with it.

Abby Dawson is another main character in the book. She is a divorced mother of a teenage daughter and is starting to feel like she is failing at everything in her life, especially at being a mom and at her job of being a cop. Her brother owns a small, struggling bookstore and she is unwillingly drawn into chasing Roxi, Diego and Irene after a robbery at Dawson's Book Barn.

The book was a really easy read, and really enjoyable for me. The author has a fun way of weaving in fun facts about rare book collecting and it was fun to learn a few basics of rare editions of books. Some points of theology might have been a little off, but they certainly weren't the main focus of the book, and it ended up being a very touching story that does a good job of point out how God can use willing people to do amazing works of love in the lives of those around them who are hurting. It actually challenged me to think about my life and if I am reaching out to people that God might bring into my life.

15 months old!

I had to quick post the 15 month stats before I forget them, because I must have lost track of the sheet that the nurse printed out for me. Ethan had his 15 mo appointment and is growing more and more each day. At his appt he weighed 25lbs 1oz (55ish %ile, I don't really remember) and was 33.25" tall (80-85ish %ile).

He is getting very anxious to tell us what he is thinking and discovering, however much of it is still very unintelligible :) although the list of what he tries to say is getting longer each day it seems. He loves to point out airplanes and dogs while we're outside, and loves engaging people in peek-a-boo, and games where he bonks his head or we bonk our head on things. He's loving having his older cousins around this week, and is starting to learn how to interact with other kids.