A Trip to Buffalo

What seems like a lifetime ago, we traveled to Buffalo for Ian's grandpa's funeral. Although we were there for a sad occasion, it gave Sophie the opportunity to meet Grandma Schmidt's side of the family, including one of her great grandmas, Grandma Dennis. I think she really took to her Dennis side of the family and loved meeting and playing with them all. Here are a few generational pictures with Grandma Schmidt, Grandma Dennis, and Sophie (and one with Ian too).

Sophie really enjoyed watching the planes on this trip and loved to look out the window to point out the "bop-bopfs" (which is her term for any vehicle).

"An Uneventful Week"

I ended my last post with something about looking forward to an uneventful week. I should have knocked on wood! On Tuesday afternoon, Sophie's daycare called to let us know that she had a fever. We picked her up a little early and we could tell she didn't feel well. Her fever lasted until Thursday! I stayed home with her Wednesday, Thursday and Friday! She had a little rash that the phone nurse said was chicken pox, so for about a half of Wednesday, we thought she had chicken pox. That night we went to the doctor because her fever still hadn't gone down and he verified that it wasn't chicken pox; it turns out to be just some viral thing connected to her cold. So, Sophie just returned to daycare today, and I think she was ready for it!

Here are some more pictures from her trip to California. I'll try to post the few pics we have from Buffalo tomorrow.

Grandma and Grandpa Fine and Uncle Matthew took Sophie to the Big Bear Zoo, which is a pretty small zoo in the mountains near their house. She seemed to enjoy her time there and learned to howl like a wolf:



Sophie's Great Grandma Linda and Great-Great Grandma "Grams" visited on our last day there. Sophie enjoyed giving and they enjoyed getting kisses! Sophie kept trying to push Grams' wheelchair around for her!

A Long Week

We're sorry it's been a while since we posted. We have lots of pictures still from our trip to California and to Buffalo, but I'm sure you all will understand when you hear about the last 7 days!

I'm still really busy, so I've pasted here what I wrote to Sophie's Grandma Schmidt yesterday:

It's been crazy around here. Last week Sophie got bit by a mosquito right on the bridge of the nose, and since she's mildly allergic to mosquitoes, her whole eye area swelled up. We took her to the doctor and they just said to keep giving her benadryl.

Then on Thursday night we had a big storm come through, and lightning hit a tree and/or some power lines in our back yard and started a fire at 2am! Because it was electrical, it kept burning and ended up blowing the transformer. Really scary...we had to evacuate the house and call 911! The fire department came and watched the fire, but since it was electrical, they couldn't do anything until the electric company turned the electricity off. It took them over an hour to do that...I think we finally crawled back into bed at 4:30, but then the electric company showed up at 5am to fixed the transformer and lines. All is well and the house is safe, but we weren't sure that the house wouldn't catch on fire for a little while there.

So this weekend was nice, but Sophie's had a little cold. She woke up this morning (Monday) with her eye glued shut by gunk, so I assumed she had pink eye. When we got to the doctor's, they said she has a double ear infection that caused an eye infection as well! Whew! So now she's on antibiotics and should be fine in a few days, but I'm looking forward to a very uneventful week!"

Visit to California

Ian had a conference in San Diego a couple of weeks ago, so Sophie and I went with him. Sophie visited with Grandma and Grandpa Fine while I enjoyed being back in San Diego after a 3 1/2-year absence. Sophie had a good time playing with her grandma, grandpa, uncles, and great grandma and great-great grandma!

Grandma and Grandpa Fine bought a few toys to keep at their house, and Sophie really enjoyed playing with the rocking giraffe:


Here she is pretending to sleep with Grandpa Fine:


And playing with her tea set with Grandma Fine:

Autumn, at last

We have been enjoying some nice fall weather here in Kentucky, so we've tried to take Sophie outside whenever possible. (It's just too hot in the summer to go out too much.) Here are some pictures of us playing in the front yard last week:


In these two pictures we were throwing leaves at her:


This one is daddy's favorite from the series:

Our Mad Scientist

We have a lot of pictures to catch up on, so I'm going to work from the most recent backwards. While we were in San Diego, Grandpa Fine's boss gave Sophie a couple of presents when she visited Lowe's. Apparently, they have a kids program, and although Sophie's too young to be involved, she received what other kids get--an apron, a hammer, and some goggles. Sophie has never liked to put sunglasses on, but she doesn't seem to mind the goggles (and actually wanted to wear them while playing the other night). I think she looks like a mad scientist!

She also has been imitating facial expressions lately, and her favorite is the furrowed brow when she's annoyed at something. When we discipline her, we often make a frowning face and tell her "no," so I think she must be imitating us! Here are a couple of her recent favorites:

Catch Up

I just realized how long it's actually been since we've posted anything here. We've been extremely busy with work, travel, and some unexpected events.

Sophie's great-grandpa Dennis passed away a little over two weeks ago, so we made a last-minute trip to Buffalo so that we could all attend his funeral. Sophie was able to meet her Grandma Schmidt's side of the family for the first time. We have a few pictures from that weekend, so I'll post them as soon as I get a chance to upload them to the computer.

We were home for 3 days after that weekend and then made the trek to California. Ian had a conference in San Diego, so we took Sophie and left her with her Grandma and Grandpa Fine while Ian and I went down to San Diego for a couple of days. Ian was busy with his conference, but I got to enjoy the San Diego sun, food and shopping! We have pictures of Sophie's time in Apple Valley as well, but as with the other pictures, they're still on the camera (or at Grandma and Grandpa's house).

Fall break starts at Centre tomorrow, so we're hoping to have some time to relax and catch up on things like Sophie's blog, things around the house, and sleep. We've all been sick during the past three weeks, so we're hoping that this weekend we'll all be well again. (Ian and I are even planning a date night for tomorrow night! That doesn't happen too often, so we're excited.)

I'll try to catch everyone up with pictures this weekend and during the next couple of weeks.