I made it to September

I'm finally catching up!  September started with a trip to the DC Zoo.  With a lot of running around in August, we needed a family day.  Maryssa loved looking at the animals and had a great time on the giant pizza!

Our Hokies had a rough start to the season this year, but Maryssa is happy to wear her Hokie gear. 

At 9 months she loved to sit in her chair, stand at the glass door and play in the puddles.

This is her frined Logan.  I got her a little people set and she just loves it.  Glad to see she's not beating Logan up this time.

This is after an avacado and pea lunch.  We went straight to a bath after this one.  She does love her food.  She eats everything and she eats a lot of it.

Last weekend, Maryssa and I traveled down to celebrate Baby Mannion, Lindy Lu and Dan.  Lindy is part of the Super 7 (my girlfriends from high school).  The shower was a lot of fun and of course full of fun games.  Here's a shot of us girls...but we were missing Corker.

After the shower there was one more surprise in store.  Julie's (also pictured above) boyfriend, Paul proposed to her before they came to the after party!  It was so wonderful that we all got to celebrate with them.  You can see the excitment on Julie's face as she told us her proposal story!

This past Wednesday, Maryssa and I met up with some other mom's at Fun Land.  The giant blow up playground was a lot of fun.  Maryssa loved crawling around and bouncing on her butt...although I think she loved watching the other kids run around just as much.  Another favorite was the bubble machine.  Her first experience with bubbles was a blast as she loved waving her hand around in them.

September has been a month of big milestones for our little girl.  She has two teeth on the bottom and one coming in on top, crawling all over the place, pulling up and "cruising" along tables and couches, clapping her hands, shaking her head no, climbing the stairs, and will occasionally let go and balance while she's standing up.  Her personality is become more apparent everyday.  Her laughs, squeals and low raspy scarry voice are part of our converstations everyday.  She's also more oppionated now and will refuse things if she doesn't want them, and crys when she doesn't want her way. 

Here are a few more pictures from August...yes I'm way behind. 

Here is Maryssa playing with her good friends Taylor and Logan.

They both love the ball pit.

Sharing toys with Logan...I guess we're going to have to teach her to play a little easier.

The three little ones...man was it hard to get them all to sit still and look at you.

At the end of the month, I was fortunate to be able to join over 9,300 women at a Beth Moore conference in Richmond.  I've completed 2 of her bible studies and was so excited to hear her in person.  The experience was wonderful and as always she really made me stop and think.  Nothing like getting your butt kicked by a wonderful Godly women.  She's coming to Baltimore next fall and I can't wait to go see her again!

August CA Trip

The wonderful month of Auguat began with a trip to CA for Eric's cousin's wedding. Since it was such a long trip we decided to make it our family vacation this year. At 8 months Maryssa took her first plane ride. It was a good thing we were at the airport early because our stroller set off an alarm which lead to a search of all our carry on..a lot since we were traveling with a little one...which lead to 2 more alarms, what they call a triple treat. After being interviewed by the bomb squad..yes very weird and scary...we were allowd to get on the plane. Maryssa did great on the ride and loved socializng with everyone even though it was way past her bed time.
We arrived at 11pm west coast time, exhausted and hungry. So after getting a rental car and some food we got a good night's sleep. For my non planning husband we decided to wing the first part of our trip. First stop was Universal Studios. We didn't go in the park, but walked around the outside.

We took a beautiful scenic drive down the mountain to Beverly Hills. This was one of my favorite stops. We walked the nieghborhoods and looked at the houses before heading to Sunset Blvd. The walk was so peaceful and the houses were awesome. There was a really old tree near the sign that was very interesting.

Then we hit Sunset Blvd...wow talk about way out of my price range. We went in a few stores and there were some pretty neat but very expensive things. It was cool to look at though.

It was a quick drive over to Holleywood for our next stop. We found a great hot dog place and saw the stars, but overall I would say this was my least favorite place. Worth seeing once though.

An overook of LA.

We headed Noth to find a place to rest for our drive down Highway 1 the next morning. Although this isn't the bestt part of the drive (so we hear) it gave us a quick taste of the northern end. We went though Malibu (not as pretty as I expected) and then stopped at a beach for some lunch. We got our first dunk in the Pacific. It was so cold...our feet were good enough. Not many people were out so it was a great place for some family time.

These pictures are just south of LA in Palos Verdes.

And here is the beautiful bride, Maritca. The ceremony was beautiful and we are so hapy we got to be apart of the wedding.

The groom treated us to a Dodgers game. They lost to the Padres but it was a great time. We were so close to catching a foul ball. The guy across the isle got it.

After lots of traveling around and a night of wedding festivities, there's nothinng like taking a nap on the beach. We had a great time with family on Manhatten beach. Although the water was freezing, we managed to jump in after a few hours of volleyball.

Maryssa hanging out with cousing Michelle at the hotel poolside.

After a good night's sleep we all took a boat ride over to Catalina Island. The ride was beautiful and we saw dolphins playing in the wake of the boat...it was awesome.

Upon arriving at the Island there was a sea lion basking in the sun on the rocks near the swimming area. It was a cute island with shops and a casino. We snorkled in a near buy reef and walked around the shops. A nice treat was the beautiful sunset on the water as we traveled home on the boat.

We our last day at the Griffith Observatory...as seen in the movies Transformers and Inception. We learned about the stars, the sun, the roation of the earth, how the tides flow and space. My favorite ting I learned was that the Neil Armstrong and crew trained here to learn to navigate by the stats. They showed the chair they used and it was a lawn chair with a metal plate mountaed about a foot from the chair back at eye level with a hole about 2 inches in diameter cut into it. What a simple training tool. There were beautiful views and lots to learn.

We spent our last night with a take out order of Sushi (which was so delicious) on the beach watching the sunset. Eric and I agree that this was our favorite moment of the trip. Don't get us wrong, we had a great time in CA and feel very blessed that we got to travel out west for the first time, but the beauty of a God given sunset and family is hard to beat.

So these six feet and 30 toes boarded the plane the next morning sad to see the fun go. Eric headed to Atlanta for business which means Maryssa and I had to do it alone. Thankfully there were no problems at security and people on the plane were wonderful helping me with the carry on bag...I only used one this time :-)