Christmas in July

Last weekend was Downtown Starkville's 3rd annual Christmas in July in conjunction with the season Grand Opening of the Community Market. I love this early morning picture of Delia, Amelia, and their friend Olivia, all with their breakfast juices.

"I don't know about you Mister..."

The chef of our favorite restaurant, Restaurant Tyler, put on a cooking demonstration. He served up sweet potato pancakes with peach and fig sauce (fresh from the market!) and some homemade maple butter. YUM-MY.

Peppers peppers everywhere!

I saw our friends Ryan and Brandy and their baby Will while I was visiting stores taking pictures for next year's Christmas in July ads. He is getting so big!

They all ended up coming over for dinner on the grill. What a sweet face!

Where's DaDa?

Grady left today for a 10-day MSU trip in upstate New York and we are missing him already. When we got home today, Delia was calling her dada, so I ran in, got the video camera, and then got her to do it again. She is talking so much!

Summer videos

It seems like Delia is learning SO much new stuff every day. Whenever we get a kick out of her latest word, skill, etc., we grab the camera. Unfortunately, we rarely post those online. Here is a quick sampling of the past few weeks.



Delia loves to rock her baby dolls. That is funny though, because we do not rock her to sleep...haven't done that for months. I blame the grandma for this learned skill, which is cute here, but a pain in the @ss when it is Delia's bed time.



After we switched from satellite to cable, we lost our DVR with the My Morning Jacket videos on it. So, Delia's next favorite video was a DVD called Petting Farm. This is her watching it for the first time in a couple months...she now quickly and easily recognizes all the animals. This little part was showing chickens.



One of Delia's new skills is pouting when we scold her. This was one of her first attempts, as you can see. She is MUCH better now.



Despite falling into the bushes after a broken rope several months ago, Delia loves to swing (or "weeee," as she calls it). She is always in a pretty great mood whenever she swings, but this was over the top.

Dave Gets Hitched

One of our dearest friends got married last weekend in Tuscaloosa. You may know him as Dave, David, Davey, Big Gay Dave, or Hottie HotPants. Whatever you call him, he's precious and he married a precious girl named Christina. I am so happy for them and there are a LOT of wedding photos I need to edit in the next few days. For now here is a teaser of the happy couple. Do they look like they just stepped out of Bride's Magazine or what?

More 4th, John's 40th

From Delia's 4th of July Day Care Parade. Hard to take pictures when you are pushing a stroller in the parade, but I got a few.

"MMMMM! COLD!"

Thursday night we went to our friend John's (Amelia's dad's) 40th birthday. It was at a new Mexican restaurant and the food was great. Delia was trying to get out of the high chair in this picture. She enjoyed walking around the restaurant and checking it out.

Carmen put together an amazing slide show for the party that had us rolling one minute and tearing up the next. Then she printed out some of these gems to decorate the tables.

His shirt says "(at Recess"!) behind his hands. Whatever - he STILL loves school!

A super sleepy baby on the way home. Don't worry - I took this at a stop sign.

Help Erica Win $$$!!

My friend Erica, who lives in Chicago, entered the Apartment.com Roommate of the Year contest and she is one of their 13 finalists! The grand prize is rent for a year (up to $12K) +$10K! You can view her video here, and it's super easy to register with apt.com (just use your junk email address!) so you can vote for her every day from now until Aug 2. So take 2 minutes, enjoy a funny video, and help this girl score some cash!

More BBQ

A great pic of the World's Largest BBQ Sandwich (with our friend and newly-elected Starkville alderman Jeremiah) that I just had to share.

4th of July World Record

This 4th of July weekend we got to be a part of a Guinness World Record! The Bistro at the State Theatre downtown cooked 1000 lbs of pork to make the world's biggest BBQ sandwich. Grady was a volunteer for the Starkville Young Professionals and he pulled pork for several hours that morning. Read Starkville Daily News' article here. See StarkvilleEats.com's video here!

That evening we drove down to Ethel where Bryan's family invited the whole town out to their family's property for watermelon and fireworks. Delia stayed up LATE and saw her first fireworks show. It was a good one! She was scared at first, but by the end she was clapping with everyone else. Thank you for the pictures Christine!

Delia liked walking up and down the pier, but I didn't have a baby leash, so we had to find something else to do!

"Anyone need a ride?"