Selected Christmas photos.

This is going to have to be a "mostly pics post" because there are lots of photos, not much time to write captions, and my fingers are too cold to type! For lots of Christmas pics, visit our Flickr site.

This is just before my mom and brother ended their Christmas visit with us. (The restaurant was out of high chairs.) We were all really glad they came up for the holiday and glad Cal won their bowl game.

My good friend, Wendy, lives in Germany. She sent these adorable tights and the cutest hat over for Ava. Thanks, Wenner!

Art got a kick out of Ava enjoying the wrapping paper more than the gift. :)

Ava and Aunt Sheri finally met!

Getting up to speed.

Ann says it's rained more than 16 inches since we started construction. That, paired with difficulties with bank draws and the holidays, have made for not much progress on the job site. Here's a photo of what we've got so far:


That picture was taken a week ago, and it looks the same today. You may notice it's a little blurry... I took it from inside the car. What?! It's cold and wet here! (Andy did buy me a pair of work galoshes for Christmas so I can get out there and help build the house in my free time. Ha! Free time! That's funny.) So yeah, those are forms, and they're ready to pour the exterior wall of the foundation when it stops raining for enough days in a row.

Speaking of Christmas, we had a good one, and we hope anyone reading this did as well. I've used up my quota on our flickr site this month, so there will be Christmas photos coming in 2009. (That makes it sound so far off... maybe it's just me. I am still dating checks 2007.) And, right on time as usual, I have our "New Year cards" ready to go out, just need to get around to doing it. Too many things to do, not enough time. It's going to be rough when I go back to work full time. (Nothing's for certain yet, but it will happen sometime in 2009.)

the latest.

There are more adorable photos of me on my flickr site.


We are now a two-car family. We bought this '03 Toyota Rav4 from a nice guy here in Eureka. It was a deal!


This is the best built pump house ever. We know this is an indication of building to come, and we are thrilled for what this means for the rest of our house. We're meeting with a couple of the subcontractors tomorrow to discuss things. We anticipate them starting the septic system tomorrow, too.


I went walking with my co-worker, Heidi, last week and captured this with my cell phone. Now imagine it looking 1,000 times more awesome in real life. We walked a few yards further and a flock of little shorebirds flew right at us, split around us and then reconvened just past us. It was so cool to hear them chirping and flapping their wings as they realized we were standing there in their path.

Ground has been broken!

Nothing says "construction zone" like orange fencing. (Hooray! We have a construction zone!)


The full length of our driveway was scraped and covered with gravel on Monday, Nov. 17, 2008.


This is the end of the driveway, and the dirt rectangle is where the house will go.


On Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 Adam and Dustin (our general contractors) built the concrete forms for our pump house/tool shed. The first concrete on the job site was poured on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008.


Ava, the foreman on the job, makes sure they're completing the work properly.


Looks good to me...


Adam's dog, Koa, and the cow next door decide that good fences really do make good neighbors.

More to come as progress is made!

7 months.

It's hard to believe, but Ava is already 7 months old. The other photos are me at six months and Andy at 9.5 months. What a bunch of cute kids.

Halloween 2008.

October 31, 2008. Halloween. A good day to sign your life away to the bank? We hope so.

We did it. We now have a mortgage. We went to the bank with our adorable ladybug and signed all the papers. We'll start construction as soon as it stops raining... there's supposed to be a break in the weather sometime next week. Forgive me for not being more excited, but I'm actually terrified. With all of the awful things that are happening with the economy right now, I can't help but worry.


Halloween evening, we went trick-or-treating on the Plaza. We didn't collect any candy because we already had too much at home. We dressed Ava as Flava Flav from Public Enemy, and we were two S1Ws, lesser-known members of the same 80s rap group. Not many people got our costumes, but that's okay. We got plenty of looks anyway. Here are our inspiration photos:


We had a good time showing off "Ava Flav." There are more photos of us and some of our friends on our flickr site. (Click the animated rectangle on the right.)

100th percentile for cuteness.

This morning was Ava's 6-1/2 month well baby checkup. Excuse me, she feels like typing... I must oblige or feel her wrath:
qwzlhh,m nyh v a MNJK KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKJZKESIU87 JMHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRYRDF C B.

Okay that's enough.

She's over the 100th percentile foe height, at the 100th percentile for head circumference and 90th for weight. She's a big girl for her age, but since it's all proportional, she's all good.

As far as percentiles go, I've had it explained to me like this. Someone took a random sampling of 100 female babies every month for X months. They made graphs of the height, weight and head circumference data. 0 was the smallest baby, 100 was the largest. So, in the case of height, Ava would be taller than all 100 other 6-month-old baby girls.

We're glad she's healthy. Period.