All Grown Up

I feel like Audrey is so much more grown up today than even yesterday! She is learning so many new things lately and getting so much bigger! What a joy she brings to our lives! This last week my sister Eileen was in town (that deserves it's own post) and Eileen made Audrey laugh for the first time!! It was so adorable! Today she laughed again and I caught it on video! Also, Audrey is getting close to being able to roll over. She tries but her arms get in the way. She does, however, spin in bed. I put her in bed vertically and sometime during her sleep (or when she is awake playing in bed) she spins around facing horizontally. Funny kid. I think she is really proud of all of her tricks too. Audrey is such a happy girl and willingly gives out hugs and smiles!

She looks so chubby in this one! Here she is looking proud of herself after getting turned around 90 degrees in bed.

Audrey was so happy in Dad's arms this morning as we were getting ready for church.

How did my baby get so big so fast!?!

These are the videos of her laughing. Please try to ignore me as I say "Picaboo!" over and over. It was what was making her laugh and a mommy will do anything to make her baby laugh.

Photo Upload

I have a few photos, not many stories. I thought I'd share what I have.

Friday night we went downtown to do some exploring on the University of Wisconsin- Madison campus. It's really big and apparently a big party school too. Got to have a picture with a cheese head!

We got some delicious ice cream at a wonderful little shop. Yum! We were standing in line and Mitchell says to me "did you read the nutrition facts?" I said "why would you ruin a perfectly delicious treat by doing that?" I see now why. Haha, it lived up to every accusation! Mmmm...

No post would be complete without pictures of Audrey. Here she is being cute. :)

Today was the first day she really interacted with a toy. Before I got out the camera she would shake the rattle then grin. So cute!

Crafty

Recently I decided that I would like to sew a quilt. I have sewn a few things before and I am getting more confident with my small (but growing!) skill set. I set out to find a cute quilt pattern that isn't just squares sewn together in straight lines, those are cute but I want more of a challenge! I found a nice looking pattern that isn't too hard! In my searching through MANY crafting blogs I am amazed at how many wonderfully creative and talented people are out there! Thank you crafty people for sharing your ideas! I'm not so good with original creativity but I can sure copy well! This is my new favorite blog! I'm "obsessed"!

http://obsessivelystitching.blogspot.com/

Here are the fabrics I chose for my quilt! It will be a twin size bedspread type quilt for Audrey when she gets older.

Summer Fun

I think I may have already mentioned that we love Madison! We are having a great time here! Audrey and I have explored a lot and have had many adventures already. Mitchell has been working everyday but we try to explore with him in the evenings and on the weekends. Here are some of the fun things we've done so far!

This is a yellow watermelon that we picked up at the farmer's market last Saturday. It was delicious! Tasted just like the normal pink variety, maybe a little sweeter. The farmer's market was fun! There are so many local farms that you can pick up just about any fruit or vegetable grown locally. In addition to the yellow watermelon Mitchell got me some lovely flowers: sunflowers and gladiolus. I actually heard on the radio just this morning that Wisconsin has the second highest number of farmer's markets per year after California. Somewhere around 350+!

He had this one coming to him... Mitchell and Audrey were playing airplane soon after she ate. Apparently she was a bomber not a fighter plane! Haha!

I sewed this little sun hat for Audrey. It comes in quite handy when we play outside on the lovely summer days we are having. She wasn't too thrilled to be photographed at the time.

I don't have a photo for this one but it was more of an audio experience anyway. Last night we went downtown with 2 other couples that we have become friends with. We set up a blanket and a picnic dinner on the lawn by the state capitol and listened to the Madison symphony perform a free one hour concert! It was awesome! They call it concert on the square and the symphony performs every Wednesday night all summer long!

I realize that these videos are essentially the same but I thought they were each so cute! I was also really happy to finally catch her talking on video. Usually when I get out the camera she stops doing whatever it was that I was hoping to capture and just stares at the camera. She is quite the talker lately. She spends the day smiling and giving long addresses. I love it!

2 month stats

Audrey is now 2 months old! Actually, closer to 2 and a half months now! She is doing so well! Of all her new tricks my favorite is her smile! The first time she smiled I hovered over her with the camera for the next 30 minutes trying to get her to do it again! It is so cute! She also grabs on to things now, especially my hair- ouch! She still loves tummy time and can hold her head and legs up at the same time. It kind of looks like a superman stance. Our new pediatrician was impressed when she saw how strong Audrey's legs are and how much control she has over her neck. Maybe she'll be a marathon runner someday with those strong legs! That's my girl! She has started "talking" or cooing so much! Yesterday morning she woke up at 4:00am and was talking from her bed so loud! You would have thought she was lecturing a huge crowd or something! She makes really good eye contact and loves to look around at everything she can see. We are loving watching her grow up and change so quickly!

Last week Audrey and I left Mitchell home alone and ran off to California. Audrey was able to meet her great grandparents on my side, her grandpa, aunts, uncles, great aunts and great uncles, cousins and so many other friends! It was a great time! A highlight of the trip was having portraits taken of the girls! My mom, sisters and niece Summer along with Audrey and I had a lot of fun with this photo shoot. It was a great trip but we are happy to be home. Poor Mitchell almost didn't make it with both of his girls gone.

We are loving Madison so far! We are all settled in to our new apartment and we like it. Our ward at church is so wonderful too! The ward is loaded full of young families with one or two kids so we fit right in! Mitchell is doing well at the new job too. For the first several months he is in training and has a lot of classes and tests to take. Today he found out he passed the second test!!

Oh I almost forgot...here are Audrey's 2 month stats:

Height: 24" (89th percentile)

Weight: 11lb 10.3oz (53rd percentile)

Head Circumference: 38.4cm (24th percentile)

Europe Recap and Pictures

You know when you are so totally behind on blogging that you don't want to even start to try to catch up? Yeah, well that's me. Here is the Europe recap. We had a wonderful time!!

On our 8 hour flight from New York City to Frankfurt Germany the flight attendant asks if we would like the bassinet for the baby. Um...I didn't know there was one but YES! We happened to have been seated directly behind the bulkhead which is the only spot on the plane that has the attachments for this awesome bassinet. Audrey slept like...well, a baby.

This was our day in Luxembourg. We drove there and first stop was the National Museum of Military History. It was a wonderful museum! Audrey enjoyed snuggling up in her little carrier. Good thing too because she spent the vast majority of the two weeks in it!

We also visited the Clervaux Castle which was built in the 1100's! We learned that Luxembourg is called the land of the castles because there are 22 castles in that tiny Duchy. Inside the castle there was an exhibit with scale models of each of the castles.

This was on a darling little residential street in Clervaux Luxembourg. We realized that we had several pictures of Mitchell and myself but not many of Audrey. Doesn't she look thrilled?

There isn't a picture of this but another highlight of the trip to Luxembourg was lunch! We ate at a little French cafe in the main part of downtown. I had the absolute best fillet I have ever had! It was pricey but what a delicious steak!

A highlight of our whole trip was the several days we spent in Munich. We could have stayed there for months and not seen everything! This building is called the New Town Hall. It isnt very new though. It was built in 1867. The large clock tower is the famous Glockenspiel. Every day at 11:00am, 12:00pm and 5:00pm it opens up and music plays and the dancers dance.

In Munich we took an extended walking tour of the city. It was called the Third Reich Tour and our guide talked about Hitler's rise to power and about the Nazi Party. We learned that Hitler spent a lot of time in Munich as he was growing the Nazi Party. Hitler gave several famous speeches in this beer hall.

Near Munich is the Dachau Concentration Camp. We toured the site one day and it was fascinating. It's hard to really find the right words to describe the experience of being there. We didn't take very many pictures there because it didn't seem very appropriate considering the spirit that was there. The air was definitely very heavy at Dachau. Above are 2 of the crematoriums that were used and below is the gate at the entrance of the camp. One of the many cruel elements of the camp is that the gate has the words "Arbeit Macht Frei," "Work Makes You Free." The prisoners there were forced to work but for most of them they were only set free when they died.

This was an adorable little town called Rothenburg. Most of it went undamaged in WWII so the buildings are all in medieval style. The gate to the city was built in the 900's AD and most of the buildings within the city were built before the 1600's.

We stayed the night in an inn. It was complete with the restaurant downstairs and crooked walls and floors! Seriously, there wasn't a square corner in the whole building! I guess if it has been standing for 500 years already it must be sturdier than it would seem. The floor in our room was so slanted that I thought I would fall out of bed!

This is the tower above the gate to the city. The entire city used to have a wall around it for protection. This tower is several hundred years old!

In Rothenburg we visited the Medieval Museum of Crime and Torture. Some of the torture devices were really awful! They did say though, that many of the devices were intended to be more for intimidation and fear than for actually using. Most of the torture devices were, fittingly, down in the dungeon/basement. Upstairs there was a huge exhibit about medieval law. It was somewhat hilarious! There seemed to have been legislation against everything!! And their punishments were pretty funny too! Our favorite was the neck violin (basically like a human-sized wooden yoke), it was used to attach "quarrelsome women" together until they could get along.

When we came back from Rothenburg we spent the next couple of days sightseeing closer to the Roach home. We went twice to the best amusement park ever! Eifel Park! Mitchell and I enjoyed it just as much as the kids!

One afternoon we went to the Manderscheid Castle ruins to look around. It was neat to be able to explore the entire castle! What a gorgeous view!

Thanks again Roach Family!!!

Madison

Our family picture taken the first week at church here

Hey! We made it here to Madison and are getting settled in. In all of the busyness I wasn't able to finish posting the rest of the pictures from Germany or anything from the move! Don't worry, more complete posts to come, as soon as I get internet in the apartment! Also to come posts about the 4th of July bash in our new backyard, the move, Mitchell's first days at the new job and about Epic Systems! We are well and happy!