Lauren and Paul's Baby Shower

We celebrated the upcoming arrival of Lauren and Paul's daughter Sosi Marie with a baby shower on Saturday. Everybody had a great time - we had over 40 guests - and Lauren and Paul received many generous gifts from family and friends. Joey did a fantastic job grilling the meat, he handled both grills while his "helper" chatted with all of the guests. Nathan enjoyed playing with the other kids and showed all the guests how he is able to climb up to the second story all by himself. I was exhausted at the end of the shower, but it was definitely a wonderful day.

Playdate with the Kampfes

Today Nathan and I went over to my friend Brenda's house for a playdate with her two adorable daughters, Natalie (4) and Melanie (2). Nathan had a great time playing on their swing set and diving off of their gymnastics mat. Brenda's neighbor Amy came over with her daughter Ella, who is 2 weeks younger than Nathan. The kids had a great time playing together and it was a lot of fun for me to catch up with my old friend Brenda.

Strawberry Baby

Since Nathan will be 12 months old next Friday, I thought it would be ok to give him his first taste of a strawberry. Grandpa brought home some big and juicy strawberries from a local strawberry patch, and boy did Nathan take a liking to strawberries. I think we may have found his new favorite food! He practically attacked me when I had a bowl of strawberries and he ended up eating over half of them (he would have eaten more if I would have let him). I'm glad to see that he enjoys healthy treats.

Mmmm-mmmm. Yummy!

Nathan's First Haircut

I finally decided that it was time for Nathan to get a haircut. Despite the fact that he doesn't have a lot of hair, the hair that he does have has gotten to be quite long. My original idea was to give him a mullet, but I feel that would be cruel and unusual punishment for my sweet little boy.

Here is Nathan before his haircut. He was fighting me on those before pictures because he really wanted to climb up the stairs in Grandpa & Grandma's house.

Cutting Nathan's hair wasn't much easier than trying to get a before picture...he kept turning his head around to see what I was doing. I ended up just cutting his hair as quickly as I could. There was no time to check to see if the sides were even (luckily he doesn't have a lot of hair so you really can't tell). I was happy with the outcome, even if you can't really tell that he had a haircut.

What a handsome little man!

Amber's First Post

I finally decided to get on the blogging bandwagon when I visited my brother and sister-in-law's place last weekend and saw the cool book Lauren had made out of their blog. Instead of spending lots of money and time making scrapbooks, I realized that it would be cheaper and easier to maintain our blog and then create a book out of all of our posts. It's also a great way to let family and friends know what's new with our family.

I am currently hanging out with Nathan in the office. He loves getting into our desk drawers and pulling all of the contents out. He recently discovered a stack of CDs that he finds fascinating, and he likes to bang blocks on the mirrored closet doors. It's hard to believe that his first birthday is right around the corner. It seems like yesterday we were taking him home from the hospital, and now he's on the verge of walking and talking!

I hear Nathan ripping up paper, so that means it's time for me to go...there's never a dull moment with Nathan.