Raising a Kid(s)

...so much so, that as soon as I put her down after her bath, she crawls out of her town and makes a run for it. Here she is, caught in the act.

BTW...Omar is nearly throwing a hissy fit just for posting this picture. You should know that there are some better, unpublished pictures of the cutest tooshie I have EVER seen. Tell him to chill out.

Sadie is a haas now. Well, sort of. She's finally made her way out of the 25-30th percentiles and is exactly average.

We hosted a massive dinner with Omar's family, an Iraqi refugee family, Sala (who owns the delicious Petra Cafe), our neighbors, and Leslie. Ikbal took over the cooking and now we have enough left overs to last a few months. It was de`li`cious.

Seriously. Six months. Already. And now she has decided it's about time to crawl. I have to say that it is perfect timing since Omar's parents are here, along with two cousins visiting from Scotland. To celebrate, I had to bake a cake, naturally (although Tara was responsible for the actual baking part...and she didn't burn the house down).

She shimmied-crawled from the pink blanket to her Jedu. He happily encouraged her with his fancy watch that no one else is allowed to even look at.

He let her drool all over it.

I was pretty excited about this week's contest. This is one of my favorite pictures! The ladybug is just so beautiful contrasted with the colors of the flower! Be sure to see the other great photos submitted to http://www.iheartfaces.blogspot.com/.

My little sister is now the proud mother of River Laylee Maxner, born at 3:26am. She weighs 6lbs 15oz and is approximately 19 1/4 inches. Allie was in hard labor for only 4 hours and did some serious pushing for just 30 minutes. She was a champ.

So this is Allie at her doctor appointment on Monday. Yes, she's eating sushi (don't worry, it's cooked). This is not out of character for my special sister.

The Maxner land is beautiful. Noah's mother has done a wonderful job creating a huge flower garden as well as a pretty impressive vegetable garden. In many ways, it is self sustainable, which I really appreciate. There are a lot of pictures here, but I couldn't decide with ones to not post. And trust me, there are maaaaany more that I did not. So hard.

The outdoor drying rack.

There are four goats on the farm. The two adults are milked daily. Here is one of the babies.

Herbs.