Like Father Like Son...

Meet Chase's new favorite toys...

That's right. Chase loves these two objects. An unopened container of sprinkles and a bottle of travel hair conditioner. Carries them around everywhere. Actually cries when I take them away. Weird.

He likes playing with a pillow in the floor too. He'll stand in front of it and fall forward on it. Right now he's dragging it around the living room (with the conditioner in his mouth and the sprinkles in the other hand).

Other than that there's not really much going on around here. I'm just working on fixing the bugs on my website, Preston is busy with work and about to start grad school again for the fall, and Chase well...you can see what he's been up to.

My sister Leah has moved into her apartment on campus so now all three of us sisters are here in one city! It's pretty fun! It's been 10 years since we spent more than a summer all in one place. Love my sistas!

Here's another fun picture that I stole off of Judson and Amanda's blog. This is some of my friends and me at Super Suppers (where you make meals in advance to put in your freezer and make later). We have the best time!

Oh and here's a good one of Preston putting Chase to bed. Aren't they cute! :)

My New Biz

Hey everyone. Preston told me I have been slacking on the posts lately (though not as much as some of you blogging buddies...Jen...Mel.) The truth is I haven't been taking as many pictures lately. I should be fined by the parent's police! I'll try to do better. In the mean time I have something new to tell you about...

I have started a new online business called Photo Card Cafe'. I have been working on it for about a year now and have finally finished and it is fully functional! My customers can order all kinds of photo greeting cards. You can upload a photo, add/change your own custom text, etc. I'm pretty excited about it and am, of course, still in the process of designing more cards (by Christmas I'll have a ton more holiday cards than I have now). If you don't mind I would like for everyone who visits my blog to check it out. I'm still trying to get indexed by the search engines and every click counts...so visit often if you think about it!

Here's the link: www.photocardcafe.com

I have another request to make of my fellow bloggers and emailers. I'm trying a Blog of Mouth campaign. All that means is that I'm asking anyone who feels like it to make a post on their blog directing people to it or send out an email to their contacts. Don't feel obligated...just thought I'd ask. If you decide to do it I'll make it really easy...just copy and paste the following text on your blog or in your email...or do it yourself.

"Hey everyone! My friend Sara has started a new business and I thought you all might like to see it. Check it out online at www.photocardcafe.com. If you want, put a link to this website on your blog if you have one. It would really help her out!"

All over the place!

So just this week Chase has decided to become a "walker". Sure he has known how for a while but still crawled a lot of the time. Not anymore! He's all over the place! In the picture below he is actually trying to run a way from me! haha.

Here is some video for those of you too far away to see it much...

The other picture is of Chase and his Grammy at Pelican Bay last week. We had a great time during her visit!

PS - just now Chase walked into the office and dropped the garlic salt from the pantry in my lap...great. :)

A few things

Spoon Fed:
Chase has recently learned to feed himself with a spoon! Sometimes it's more messy than others but he's pretty good at it. He mostly just dips it in the bowl...not that great at scooping yet. Here's some video...

Our Saturday:
Preston and I continued working on our yard today. We've had lots of people out to help with the retaining wall but today it was just Preston and me...with Chase sitting on the side-lines of course. We finished back-filling it with dirt and put down some sod! It was great to see it finally coming together. Of course we're still not done but we made some real headway. Here's a few pics:

Love My New Toy!

Here's one of Chase's new toys:

And here's my new toy that we just ordered! (I mean, I'm no Betty Crocker but my current stove only has one burner that works...so annoying!) Can't wait for the new one!

Welcome to Jamaica Mon!

We had a great time on our Caribbean cruise with the Wattersons and the Holmes! It was a 7-day cruise where we had 3 days at sea and got to visit Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel! We loved spending time at the beach, snorkeling, shopping, and of course eating! Man, you can seriously eat your weight easily on a cruise...food all the time anytime you want it. The weather was great, no one got sea sick, Chase ate and slept well, etc. We didn't do any excursions but 2 of our land days we found a taxi driver that would stay with us all day and take us anywhere we wanted for a fixed rate per person. In Cozumel our driver even snorkeled with us...tough job! I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more for Chase to do on the boat but I think he still had fun...even if he doesn't remember any of it now! Kids have to be 3 before the activities for them start and they didn't even want kids with diapers or swim diapers in their pool! That didn't stop us though! ;) Anyway, it was a good time. I could have stayed longer!
See more pictures...

One Year Dr. Appointment

So Chase went to the doctor yesterday for his one-year checkup. He seemed OK while I was holding him but when he had to lie down on the table he completely lost it. That's before they were even thinking about shots. But as soon as it was over he was over it. Here are his stats:
Height = 30 in (50%)
Weight = 21.4 lbs (25%)
Head = 18.5 in (70%)

Guess Who Just Turned One!

That's right folks! Chase turned one on July 12th! We celebrated with my family in Emory on the Saturday before and we celebrated with Preston's family on that day on vacation. I can't believe it's been a whole year.
See Chase's birthday photos...
Today is the 18th so a year ago today Chase was just about 1 week old here he is then and now:

Here's what he's doing now, at one year old:
Can walk, but prefers to crawl
Can say a few words and will try to copy words and sounds if he's in the mood
Blows kisses
Waves bye bye
Gives 5
Is partial to his mommy
Uses a cup not a bottle
Eats about anything we give him
Has 4 teeth
Etc......

Check back soon for more on our cruise vacation!

Family Reunion

We traveled to Austin yet again this last weekend. This time we were going for a family reunion for my dad's side of the family. It was really fun. It was great to see everyone and we had a great time hanging out in Austin. We swam at my cousin's house, shopped, ate at the Hula Hut (where we saw Quentin Tarantino by the way), climbed the 360 bridge lookout, etc. It was a good time.
Click here to see more pictures...
Here are some pics from the weekend: (1) Whole family, (2) Chase mad in the pool and his dad making fun of him, (3) Chase and his second cousin Boone, (4) a few of the cousins on the 360 bridge lookout.

We were home by the 4th of July. On the third we went to a huge cookout with some of our friends and played volleyball, ate, popped fireworks, etc. Then on the 4th we went to the Edmond parade which was really good but then Chase started getting really sick so we hung around at home after that. Our friends Adam and Heidi came over to say bye before they leave on their 2 year mission trip to New Zealand on Saturday. It was sad. We're going to miss you guys!

Look at me go!!!

Chase is really taking off now! Just today he has really started standing up on his own and walking a little....then he'll fall...then get back up...then fall...then get back up...then fall...then get distracted and start crawling. He still crawls most of the time but he's getting more and more confident. I wonder if it's because he was at Son Shine School today and saw all the other kids in his class walking. (He's the youngest and probably the last walker.)

Here's some great video that our friend Amanda took of him walking...

Chase spent all of last week at his Grammy's house and loved it. He really did so well. It was so fun to see how excited he was to see us when he came back! (It was a nice "vacation" for me too!)

Here is a picture of him at his first ball game. He went a few weeks ago with his MiMi, PaPa, Aunt Wendi, and Uncle Wade.

Splish Splash!

We took another long weekend and drove down to Austin so Preston could go to a guys weekend. But from Wednesday to Friday Chase and I got to be a part of the fun. We had a good time on the lake with a few friends. After the women and babies left I hear that the boys spent most of their time out on the lake and watching the World Cup while we just hung out, shopped, watched movies and had a relaxing time. Most of the pictures I have are from when we were all at the lake.
Click here to see more pictures...
Click here to see video of Chase and his friend Cooper...

Baby Steps

Chase took a few steps! It's mostly a falling walk but it's pretty exciting anyway! Click here to see some video...

Mom and dad also bought him a John Deere push/ride toy. He loves pushing it around. He just hasn't figured out how to turn it around after he hits the wall. Click here to see more video...

A little bad news is that Chase has (or had) an ear infection. (Mama Mel was right!) Not so fun for us a few nights ago. I think he's pretty much better now but is still taking meds. Other than that one bad night he really hasn't acted too sick and he never ran a fever....but that bad night was enough to make me take him to the doctor the first thing the next morning. I guess it's pretty good that he's 11 months old and this is his first time to be sick.

We had a full house over the weekend. Mom, Dad, Amy, Leah, and Pete were all here. We had a really fun time hanging out. We went to a graduation party for one of my second cousins. Here's a picture of all the family that was there as well as Chase in the pool and taking a nap with his granddaddy:

We are also working on putting a retaining wall in our back yard. The idea is to make the yard more level and allow us to put our fence back up so we can keep Lucy and walking 1-year olds in. It's a shame that I didn't get dad in a picture because he really helped us a lot this weekend. Several of our friends came over and helped too. Thanks guys!

Road Trip!

We had a nice long weekend with Preston's family. We flew to Alabama, stayed there a night, drove to Atlanta (thus the title "road trip"), stayed there 2 nights and then went back to Alabama for another night. We saw all of Preston's grandparents and everyone was doing great! The road trip was surprisingly pleasant considering it was 4 hours each way with 5 adults and a car seat in a full sized car. The last night we didn't have a crib so we "made" one as you can see from the picture below. It worked really well! Chase also did great on the plane for the most part...on the way there he got a little tired and cranky but never cried enough to annoy everyone around us. On the way home he just sat between Preston and I and played with his toys. Here are a few pictures from our adventures:

And here are some pictures from Chase's first time to brush his teeth.

Random

So I tried really hard to get some video of Chase saying something or of him standing up or just anything good. I didn't get much of that stuff but here's some random video of what I did get.

Click to see video...

Chase had a good time laughing at himself on my computer as I edited this video. He was like..."hey, look at that cool kid...he's pretty funny."

This picture is of him as I found him once yesterday. He had managed to get all the way in the cabinet all by himself. :)