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?"

Summer Fun

Lovin' that camera! Two weekends ago, Grandma Amanda came to visit us! We took her to Grumpy's and ate BBQ.

And goldfish crackers!

On the road: when Delia is not pointing out horses and cows,

she wears her shades and just chills out.

Sunday we played in our neighbors pool. They don't move in for a few more weeks, but they have already given Delia her own floatie and a bathing suit! When she first got in the water, it was a little cold at first and she shook her head and said "No. Bye Bye."

In a floatie this summer...

...and last summer!

This weekend, our neighbors Tom and Barb invited us to the Scooba BBQ Club Friday evening. Scooba is where Tom's family is from and is about an hour away. Since Delia goes to bed at 7:00pm, and we didn't get there until after 7:00, we had to wake her up when we got there. She did great and squealed when she saw the bigger kids running around playing ball.

Grady went early to help cook. Three whole hogs were cooked, pulled, and passed around. Tom offered Delia her very own rib to gnaw on, but she wasn't interested.

There were 3 long rows of picnic tables with lights that came on when it got dark. It was pretty cool and definitely one of the most small-town country things I've ever done.

Jennifer and Wesley stayed with us Friday night and Saturday morning we went to our church's Preschool Water Fun Day - just for babies! Keep an eye on Silas - the little boy on the left jumping in the pool to be with Delia.

Delia went down her first slip and slide with help from Daddy.

She even went down on her belly!

"Wheeeee!"

She really liked the spray and play water mat. I don't know if that's what it's called, but that's what I'm calling it. I just bought one at WalMart for $15 and it is awesome! You just hook a hose up to it and it's like a little fountain in the ground.

This is the bathing suit that our neighbors gave Delia. One of the moms told Delia she looked "luscious" in it!

Silas: "Oh Delia, let me escort you over to the water fountains. Ignore my mom yelling about crack. I don't know what her problem is."

"This is great!"

Sneaky Silas runs over and lays one on Delia!!

Wesley finally tries some of the water fun.

"I love these water toys!!"

End of the day: Delia is pretty fried, while Wesley is refreshed from his nap.
"Hey Delia, why do you only have 1 pigtail?"

"I don't know, Wesley, why are you still dragging those pink beads around?"

2 babies this summer...

2 sweet babies last summer! Here Delia is 6 months, Wesley is 7 months.

Fun with Sprouts

I remember seeing little girls with their hair in tiny stumpy pigtails and saying out loud "I can't wait to have a little girl so I can put her hair in sprouts!" Well, the day has finally come!! I think the sprouts are much more becoming than her natural mullet.



These days, Delia is saying:
hey = hey
bah bah = bye bye
no = no
peess = please
jiss = juice
nye nye = night night
bow = hair bow
caca = oops I pooped the bed