California Pictures

Ryan- This song was chose just for you! :) Enjoy!

No Pictures Yet!

Sorry, I have been trying to upload our picture/slideshow and it is not working. I have to go for now, but will try again tomorrow.

California Vacation

So, we have been back for two weeks now and I am just getting around to posting our pictures. It has been a crazy month with our trip to California and then Thanksgiving.
We had the best time. Gretta did awesome flying out and back. She enjoyed Sea World and the Zoo in San Diego and Elijah and I really liked the Sequoias and Santa Barbara. I actually loved everything about the trip. We got to see so much. PLUS, we got to hang with our really good friends Carrie & Ryan who we haven’t seen in a while. We will definitely go back. I would love to retire someday in Santa Barbara the beaches are beautiful and the whole environment is just fabulous I can’t even describe it. I have been told that there is a Mini Marathon or Marathon there so maybe I will look into that. Either way I would love to go back there and stay a couple days, week, maybe a month, ha, ha…
Elijah’s favorite thing was the Sequoias. This probably won’t surprise anyone since he is so outdoorsy (if that is even a word). We got some really nice pictures there. We got see a few bears when we were driving up the mountain which was really cool. I love seeing wild animals like that, as long as they can’t get to me.
I think one of Gretta’s favorite things were the two cats and dog she got to live with for 9 days. Carrie & Ryan have a dog Jellybean, a cat Big Boy and another cat Berkley (aka: Mullet).
Okay, so here is a summary of everything we did Day 1 we hung out around Bakersfield (where Carrie & Ryan live), had lunch with Ryan which was tons of fun!! ; Day 2 Sequoias loved it! Plus we stopped to see Ryan’s big project-Waste Water Treatment Plant, Carrie & I could hardly pull ourselves away; Day 3 Drove to San Diego and went to Sea World; Day 4 San Diego Zoo, got kind of lost it was such a big place. Good thing we had to engineers with us…ha, ha…; Day 5 Drove back to Bakersfield; Day 6 Santa Barbara, Heaven on Earth; Day 7 Carrie & Ryan had to go back to work so Elijah explored in Bakersfield ended up at the mall; Day 8 Carrie & Ryan @ work Elijah, Gretta and I drove up to a mountain town called Kernville. Lots of old western movies had been filmed there several with John Wayne. Was a beautiful drive. Day 9 ha, ha..probably not the best, but oddly enough it was the thing that I was looking forward to the most, Hollywood. What a disappointment. It was dirty and scary. I was terrified that someone was going to kidnap Gretta. BUT we got to eat at the California Pizza Kitchen which is my new favorite place to eat. YUM! That night we said goodbye to our SUPER friends, Carrie & Ryan and we stayed at a hotel near the airport so we were ready to fly out Sunday. Day 10 we entered a chaotic LA Airport and it took us hours to get to our gate which is crazy. But we arrived home safely and that is what matters most!
We had such a great time and we really appreciate everything Carrie & Ryan did to make it soooo much fun!!

Fall Fun!

There is not a whole lot going on around here. We have pretty much been keeping up on our home chores and hanging out with friends and family. Elijah has been plugging away with the final touches of the kitchen, trim mainly, and we are pricing to find out where we are going to order our kitchen countertops. Gretta seems to be learning new words every day. Most of you have probably seen her do the little hand gesture when she doesn’t know something. Well, now she is actually saying “don’t know”. It is super cute. She has mastered the word “up” when she wants you to pick her up however she also has been saying “up” when she wants down. So, we always try to say you mean down and then we put her down. Well, I started noticing yesterday she asked me to pick her up and then she wanted down and she said “dup”. I know it is still not correct but it’s a start.

This past weekend we had a lot of fun. We had some friends over and had a cookout and watched a movie. Gretta was the only child there so she got lots of attention and she enjoyed that. She even made a new friend. Which Elijah and I were kind of surprised. It usually takes Gretta a while to warm up to someone but our friend Matthew when we were watching the movie she just crawled over and up on his lap and spent quite a bit of time there. It was super cute and his wife, Kelly, was frustrated because she had been working all night to try and hold Gretta.

Then Saturday we got to visit with our good friends The Farnys. Noah is growing so much. And I got to hold him a couple of times this visit. So, that is always a good thing. It seems like we don’t get to see each other as much since the kiddos came along, which is kind of a bummer. But when we do get together I always enjoy it. And someday Gretta and Noah will probably be great playmates and will be able to go off and entertain themselves. Hopefully they won’t get into too much trouble together. Ha, ha…

So, we continue to plan for our trip to California, it is only about 2 weeks away before we leave. I am extremely excited and I have started to strategize how we can pack and try to fit all our items into one suitcase so we don’t have to pay as many luggage fees. But we’ll see I am not sure how that is all going to work I usually need two suitcases just for myself, one for clothing and one for makeup/hair supplies. Anyway, I am sure we will make it work. Well, that is all I have for now. Enjoy the photos from this past week.

Month 14

Gretta and I had the pleasure to go and spend somtime with her Grandma & Grandpa Shannon plus two cousins She is working on her P sounds and last night we were looking at pictures and she said "pap" when she saw grandpas...yeah!! And we think she might have tried to say Caleb. Which is Elijah's brother and Gretta's uncle.

She is learning some pretty crazy dance moves. She has started doing this thing where she bends down somewhat like the yoga downward dog pose and the she will lift one of her legs up. Then she does the running in place like she is dancing as well. I will try to capture these smooth moves on video and post them. I don't where she gets her dancing skills from but one of these days she is really going to be bust a move. Okay well that is all I have for now. She doesn't go back for a Dr. check-up until December 1st. But we can tell that she is growing and developing each and every day. I hope you enjoy the pictures that I have posted from the last couple weeks.

A Summer Favorite

Summer End

So, Labor Day has come & gone and it is now time to prepare for fall. But wait I am not the best blogger so let me give you our summer summary. We kicked the summer off with water babies. Gretta loved getting in the pool. She couldn’t do much but splash, but she was loving it! Elijah celebrated his first Father’s Day it was unforgettable I’m sure, however I can’t seem to remember exactly what we did. I am confident that we had a great time whatever it was! O yeah we threw Noah and his parents a baby shower and we got to see our good friends Carrie & Ryan (clear from Cali) in the process. All I am going to say about the party is that the cake was amazing. Ha..ha…We had a good time getting everybody together. Elijah & I celebrated our 9th Wedding Anniversary with one of our first evenings out since Gretta arrived. We missed her terribly! On to July….first off I left my work at the YMCA and became a full-time Mommy. One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made. We celebrated the 4th in style with my parents in Carmel, IN. The Carmelfest was a bust! It was rainy, the parade was a disappointment, but we got a lot of laughs out of it. Thank goodness for the mall!! July, july, what else happened??? We continue to work on the kitchen. Not a whole lot else going on. Moving on to August. Of course the big 1st birthday happened which I did get posted. We had such a fun party with all our family and friends. We are so blessed. After the 1st birthday party we headed down to Brookville Lake for our annual week long camping trip. It was Gretta’s first camping experience and I believe she loved it. We three slept in our tent. Which she seemed to enjoy playing in during the day time. We got wet, a lot more than any other camping trip I’ve ever been on, but it was still a good time. We went to the State Fair!! Yeah!! I love the State Fair. Gretta loves animals and really enjoyed see all the different ones. Except for maybe the pigs, she wrinkled her nose and did her stinky snort that she does when she smells something stinky…so cute!! Elijah had an ice cream fiasco. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. I believed he called it a “disaster”… basically what happened is the boy ordered to big of an ice cream cone and it was melting faster than he could eat it...hilarious. Another one of Eli’s food dilemmas. LOL very funny. Gretta wrapped the month up with her 12-month check up. She weighed in a little smaller than expected but she is happy and healthy so no need to worry about weight gain at this point. We just hope she puts on the pounds here the next couple of months. And here we are in September. So, needless to say we had a really fun summer. I am still chuckling about the ice cream “disaster”…sorry, I’ll move on.
So, want a glimpse of what is in store for us this fall. We’ll we hope to have more play dates with Noah, Aubrey and Grandma Shannon. We are looking for the perfect dog Halloween Costume. And even more exciting we are heading out to California the first of November to visit Carrie & Ryan our friends. Yeah!! And we hope to have a kitchen counter top by the end of September actually. I am continuing to try to find my groove as a stay-at-home mom. So, I am working on getting the kitchen all organized, planning a closet that Elijah’s going to build for our bedroom, and getting my laundry room organized. Well, that is the Welch update for now. We hope to post more in the coming months. I am also working on some pictures from this summer to get posted. Those should be out soon! Until next time…happy blogging!! (I am soooo cheesy!)