Walla Walla Fair

So Labor Day weekend we had our annual Fair and Frontier Days and for some reason I still at 27 years old get extremely excited about this weekend! Maybe it is the fact that when I was young and showing horses I practically lived at the fair so I came to love everything about it and I hope that my children do as well. Needless to say most of our experiences went well and some did not but I think that the pictures to come will explain what I mean!

 

We kicked off the week with theRodney Adkins concert which was fairly fun but the people that we usually go with did not go this year so that was a bummer. Patrick and I did have fun however especially since we had a babysitter (thanks Lori and Summer!), and we got to hang out with my parents and a couple of other friends. No pictures from that night though. The night after that we went to the demo derby and that was fun as well but once again I don't really have any pictures of that.

 

The real family fun started Saturday morning where we got to go to the parade as a family! Riley, needless to say, totally bought in to the parade experience, waving her flag and eating the popsicles, she had a blast!

 

Aunt Miranda marching with the Wa-Hi Dance Team



 

There were also a couple of days that we tried to get Riley to go see the animals...not a fan...at all! The first day Riley and I went with our good friend Megan, poor Megan haha. Riley hated all of the animals. This picture was when she thought for a second that she liked the bunny that the boy was sharing with her and then the bunny moved, that only confirmed her feelings of hatred toward all of the animals. She especially hated the horses, which of course broke my heart. I am hoping that she grows out of this and wants to be a cowgirl like her mama was!

 

 

Once daddy was there the second day that we went to see the animals Riley was a bit more ok with the idea but still a bit skeptical of them.

 

After we went to see the animals we got to go to the rodeo for the first time with Riley! She loved it so much that she proptly passed out after the bronc riding which just so happened to be the first event of the night! Thankfully we got a couple of pictures with her before that. She loved Patty and her bling, I'm thinking she is going to be a rodeo princess someday!

We got to hang out with a lot of friends at the fair, mainly in the beer garden which was a blast! Here are just a couple of pictures of some people we saw. Not to mention we got to hear 2 of our friends in their bands. We saw Nate in Shanks Pony and Ty in The Froghollow Band. Both of them were very fun to listen to!

 

Lincoln City

While we were at the beach for Andrea and Greg's wedding we did have a little free time to play around and take Riley to the beach for the first time! It was so fun and Riley love it. We of course dragged Nana and Papa with us and then Uncle Andrew came for a night as well!

The 7 hour drive was something of a worry to me but Riley did awesome. She was a gem almost the whole time and just such a happy girl. This was just a quick rest stop and you can tell that she just loved traveling and being around family. She loved the drivers seat, definitely can wait until she can actually drive though.

She wasn't so sure about Uncle Andrew

 This was the first time that we were all on the beach together. We definitely should have gotten ready before taking our family picture haha. Riley loved the sand. She kept trying to eat it and then realized it didn't taste good at all but then kept doing it, it was just so interesting to her!

Every time she found her toes in the sand she would crack up!

9 months old...already!!!

Oh my goodness how the time has passed. Riley is now 9 months old and all I can think is I have to start looking on Pintrest to plan her 1st birthday soon!!! I guess I have some time but it is definitely sneaking up on me faster than I would prefer. She is getting so big and has reached a whole new level of cuteness. She is trying extremely hard to walk and in the meantime getting all the bumps and bruises that come with it. She is eating as much food off my plate as I am. She is talking and copying people and you can tell she is so proud of what she is saying!

We had her 9 month checkup with Dr. Wren yesterday and all went well...no shots! It made me get butterflies when Dr. Wren walked in the room she just wanted to snuggle up to me, she never snuggles so this was an amazing feeling. She ended up weighing 18 pounds 10 oz which is the 46%. She was also 28.5" tall which is the 81% percentile! She is a tall skinny girl. Dr. Peterson says she will still have a long ways to go to get skinny thighs which makes me laugh because she is very muscular, just like her mama!

Champions

So Patrick finally got to play in the championship game for his softball team and the City tournament was this week and they WON!!! Back to back champs but he actually got to play this year. Riley was a champ through the whole thing too she stayed up until 9 and was a trooper through the whole thing, didn't fuss at all and stayed awake just long enough to take a picture with daddy before she passed out for the night!

Riley also had her first taste of blackberry's and as you can tell she loved it. Unfortunately we made quite the mess but it was worth it!

8 Months Old

Wow it has been FOREVER since I have written it seems like. I have tons of updates on Riley and believe it or not I have a couple of projects to post as well. But first lets update you on Riley, because she is the cutest baby in the world!!!

Riley is officially 8 months old now and I feel like I am going to miss telling you about something because it has been almost a month since I have told any stories not to mention she is changing every day lately.

- About a week ago we started the crying it out method of going to sleep...I'm not a bad mom but it was taking anyone who wanted to put her to sleep at least an hour to do so and that was a crying, wiggling baby. It was so hard. So Pat and I decided to try this and see how it worked, I am upset that we waiting this long to do it because it is working WONDERFULLY!!! The first night she cried for 45 minutes, Patrick and I sat there upset and then finally broke out the wine so that we could get through it without going in and trying to snuggle her. After the wine was gone she finally fell asleep and we lived too! Needless to say she slept all night which I basically thought was just because of the crying. However the next night she only cried 15 minutes, we didn't need wine and she slept all night again! The next night she cried 8 minutes and ever since she has only cried 1 or 2 minutes a night. It is wonderful, she gets better sleep, she sleeps all night and we aren't so frustrated with her or each other trying to get her to sleep every night.

- Riley got a rash a couple of weeks ago. It was bad. It started out right on the edge of her diaper which I noticed when she went to bed. When she woke up in the middle of the night it was covering her body. She didn't seem to be too bothered by it but of course it worried me because it was all over her face and I wanted to make sure that she was having an allergic reaction. Turns out it was an allergic reaction and the only thing we can think is it was some sort of food allergy. So we gave her some Benadryl and took her off food for 3 days and it cleared up. So now we have to be especially careful of what we feed her. I don't know it did happen the day after I stopped breast feeding so maybe it was lack of my immunity that caused it but nonetheless we are being very careful now.

- A couple of nights ago I came home from work and she was eating with daddy in the rocking chair but she heard me so she sat straight up and reached her arms out to me with the biggest smile in the world. It warmed my heart so much. I ended up feeding her and she fell asleep in my arms, just so content.

- 2 days ago she learned how to wave. Patrick put her in bed with me and said "Bye girls" and she waved to him, without any prompting. It was adorable and now that is the new thing she has been doing, she thinks it is so funny.

- Riley has been doing this adorable thing where she comes up to me when I am sitting in front of the mirror doing my makeup and she pulls herself up and rests her head on my shoulder and watches me put on makeup. Of course she wants her own makeup so I pretend put some blush on her and she just giggles. I just love that she is a girlie girl and that is starting to become very snuggly!

- She has discovered how to climb into things. Usually it is her carseat but she just discovered her swing. She proceeded to crawl into the swing, stand up and try to rock back in forth. She thought this was hillarious, I thought it was dangerous so the swing got lifted so that she can't crawl into it by herself now. She does love to sit in the swing and try to swing it herself now though.











- We had our first play date at the park a couple of weeks ago with McKenna, Lucas, Q and Ashton. Riley did really well, it was perfect weather and it was fun to catch up with my friends, if feels like I never get to see them anymore. The babies are growing up so fast it is sad, soon they will all be running around together and hopefully they will be friends!

Patrick's best friend Jeff came for a visit from Brazil which was very fun and very short lived. He brought his wonderful girlfriend Juliana. The are such a cute couple and we were able to have a short visit with them at our house where they got to meet Riley for the first time. We also got to go to Public Houe 124 and eat with them and catch up one night. We totally wouldn't mind traveling to Brazil to visit unfortanately I don't see that happening anytime too soon but we will keep dreaming.

We went out with the Underhill's last weekend on their boat. It was a wonderful and beautiful day and so much fun. Their family is so fun to hang out with because everyone is relaxed and just trying to have fun. Riley got to stay with Nana the whole day! Patrick and I both got to surf for the first time and caught on pretty quick, it was fun. Patrick tubed and wakeboarded for the first time and did so well, he got up on the first time! Unfortnuately we both got super sun burnt but it was worth it, we would go out anytime!

Helping daddy with the broken vacumme

Baby Leg Warmers

 Isn't she the cutest baby you have ever seen, or I am just a little biased because she is my wonderful baby! I made these leg warmers for my cousins baby Callie on her one year birthday, that is why these leg warmers are a little big on Riley, she is only 2 months old in these pictures! Despite them being rather large on her she loved being the model and is ready for some of her own.

These leg warmers are great for when baby's start rolling around and crawling, especially if you have carpets so that they don't get rug burn on their little knees. My daughter is now trying to crawl so I am just about to make some more of these cute leg warmers and since a lot of her clothes are cute little dresses they work really well for our cooler walks and it makes it really easy to change her diaper! So here is a short and easy tutorial of how I made them with my inspiration coming from Our Little Beehive.

What to Buy:

1 pair of women's socks

Matching thread

14" total of elastic, for the bottom of the leg warmers, I used 1/2" wide and make sure that it is fairly flexible to work with rather than stiff.

Step 1: Cut your elastic into 7" strips and sew together with a 1/4"-1/2" overlap so you are left with two elastic circles. Throughout this project use a zig zag stitch so that it can stretch. Depending on how big you need the leg openings, if they are a chunk a munk you may want to make them slightly bigger.

Step 2: Cut your socks as shown in the picture.

Step 3: Fold your cuff inside out and place the elastic over the top and then fold over to make a cuff.

Step 4: Place the cuff over the bottom of the leg warmer so that you see 3 raw edges that you need to sew. Sew around the edge. I choose not to pin because it is hard to sew this to begin with that I usually end up poking myself. Just make sure if you do it this way that you make sure you have all three layers under your stitch when you sew.

Step 5: You are done. Just smooth it out. I made 3 of these during Riley's nap today which was only about 30 minutes so these are very easy to make!

This is Riley today wearing her leggings. Although the color white matches almost anything I do have one warning, they will get extremely dirty, especially with all the dog hair that she happened to pick up so a darker color may last longer!

4th of July Weekend

Happy 4th of July Weekend everyone. Our little family didn't do a lot to celebrate because we had to work but I did get a nice surprise visit from my family at work. Patrick and Riley also went out to Grandpa Mike's house to visit also. Then the 3 of us went to Nana and Papa's house and BBQ'd and they watched her for a couple of hours while we went to Rocky and Ryan's land to watch fireworks. This was kind of amazing because they have a view of the entire valley so we got to see all of the fireworks and the moon came up over the mountains and it was so pretty. Unfortunately we didn't take the camera out to get any pictures of the view but I'm sure we will be there again soon!

4th of July with Aunt Ashley

So we had a great weekend. Riley hit a couple more milestones this week. For the first time we walked in to get her from sleeping and she was standing up in her crib...guess it was about time to lower the mattress anyhow. She is also cutting her second bottom tooth so she is a bit more cranky than normal but hopefully we will get over that soon. And we decided this weekend to paint her toenails, actually mama decided to do it while she was asleep!

Just got her toenails painted, ignore the evil look on her face!

Riley also got to go swimming for the first time yesterday. We went to Mia and Cooper's house and Hadley was there too and she did wonderfully. She loved it, she went straight into splashing which I'm not so sure Hadley was all that thrilled about and she was in the pool for the better part of an hour. She also went down the little slide, so officially we are going to buy her a little kiddie pool today so that she can have her own!