Anna at 7 months old

My baby is already 7 months old!!

Yes Macy, that's Anna

The flash is still too bright for her

Playing airplane with daddy and Macy

She likes to go up high

She is such a joy to have in our family. She is the happiest and easiest baby. She goes along with the flow and only protests when she is tired but will proceed to fall asleep. Except and church, she won't sleep there.

Anna is a good eater. She's eating all sorts of foods now. She eats: rice cereal, zuchinni, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, pears, plums, peas, pears, apples, yogurt, and bananas. All pureed of course.

She's finally starting to sleep all through the night! Thank goodness. Although, I didn't entirely mind her waking up in the middle of the night because it was the only time I got one-on-one time with her.

Anna puts up with Macy's constant pesterings which include being (gently) slapped on the belly, having her cheeks pinched together, toys being taken away, being held very uncomfortably, etc, etc. Instead of getting mad she laughs when Macy lies on top of her or bonks her on the head. Anna loves her big sister and loves the attention from Macy.

Macy and Anna going to the "beach"

At her 7 month appointment she weighed 13 lbs 3 oz. I forgot to write down her length :( I guess I could measure her here...

I don't know what else to say about Anna other than she is the happiest, sweetest, and good-natured baby. I get asked all the time if she is always this happy. Yep, she is. She hardly cries. Only when Macy really does hurt her which is usually by accident. I love seeing my two girls play together and love each other. Macy loves showing Anna things and talking to her about things. Anna adores her sister. Anna is a good sport with all the things Macy wants her to do.

I now know that Anna knows that I'm her mother. I was a little unsure about this since she is bottle-fed and I'm not the only one who feeds her. Last week she was tired and being a little fussy while someone else was holding her. I took her and she instantly stopped crying. Tonight I sat in the back seat of the car (which I never do) and Anna looked and me and started laughing. She was so happy I was back there with there and put her hand on my arm. It's so wonderful that she isn't clingy to me all the time but still knows that I'm her mommy. It's the best of both worlds.
 Anna can sit up for a few seconds all on her own. I'm still not confident to leave her on her own yet but she's getting there!

Anna with her friend Callie 

I love my little Anna so much and am so grateful for such a happy and beautiful daughter! I love her round little face. I love that the hair stands straight up on the top of her head. I love that her little fingers grasp anything and everything that comes near them. I love that she does sit-ups all the time. I love that she flaps her arms and hits them against her stomach when she's excited.

Kenny's Homecoming

Anna and I took a trip to California to see Kenny get home from his mission. Anna was a complete angel on the 5 1/2 hour plane ride over. She didn't cry and was happy. She even took a little nap which was amazing for her. She doesn't like to sleep in my arms. We got to Long Beach at 9:40 a.m. The time change is great- you hardly miss any of the day. We took naps then headed to Babies R Us so show Stacie all the must have baby items.

Luckily Jill answers her phone from random phone numbers because Kenny called saying he missed his connection flight and won't be getting in until 9:40 p.m.! Bummer! It was supposed to be 6:40. 

So we ate dinner and hung out at home longer than we anticipated. It gave us more time to make more airport signs and and huge welcome home sign for the garage door.

My dad loves taking the kids on walks so he walked Anna over to the park and played on the swings. She loved them and loved watching kids play soccer.

After the walk my dad strolled Anna into the family room where she sat there for 5 minutes with her feet held up like this. I was crying I was laughing so hard. She was just looking at us like, "Why are you laughing? This is perfectly normal." I'm laughing out loud remember this moment.

We put Anna down for a little nap before picking Kenny up. Aunt Stacie got her in her pj's. I love that Anna still closes her eyes from the flash.

 Finally it was time to go the the airport. We got there with plenty of time to wait for him and it was such an agonizing wait too.

Anna was a good sign holder

Unfortunately more people couldn't come because of the late arrival so here was the little group. Grandpa Francis was there too.

Please come!!

Finally he came down the stairs! I think he was the last one off the plane! Jill made him walk down the stairs since they are faster than the escalator. 

Mom got the first hug

Then Jill

I have more pictures of everyone hugging Kenny but those aren't that exciting. We never took a group photo at the airport! We were too excited to think.

This is the closest we got to a group. Anna really wants to eat that missionary tag.

The stake president was nice enough to meet Kenny that night even though it was almost 11 p.m. So we went home and talked with Kenny. Luckily he was also on east coast time and woke up really early like me so we went to bed soon.

I love this picture. Anna's saying, "Just hangin' with my uncle Kenny. We're buds."

The next day was Friday and my siblings and I headed down to San Diego. Jill and Kenny had never been so we took the two hour drive down to see the sights. We had a great talk in the car about our lives and situations. My parents watched Anna all day for us.

We first went to lunch in Old Town (aka little Mexico). We walked along the little streets and took one of those old western photos together. Then we took Kenny shopping for some "normal" clothes. 

We then headed over the the USS Midway but it was closing in half an hour so we didn't feel like paying to rush through. We took this picture instead.

We did tour six other boats nearby though. Two submarines which where fascinating. Jill would be the perfect height for them. Ja is not.

Of course Jill wanted a potty picture

the periscope actually worked

This boat was called the Star of India. 

Kenny steering the land locked boat

I can't remember the name of this boat but it was the one used in the movie Master and Commander.

Apparently my left hip doesn't go very high.

Jill wanted to do the Titanic scene

Then we had a yummy Inn-n-out dinner and drove home traffic free. Grandma and Grandpa Seymour were waiting for us at home. We had a great time visiting with them that night.

Saturday was a family day so we went on a little hike in Eaton Canyon Park to a waterfall. Jill and Kenny both wanted to "wear" Anna on the hike which meant I didn't have to. Score! Anna did great the whole time and even fell asleep in the ergo.

Kenny with our little hiker

The hike was really pretty

Aunt Jills turn

We made it to the waterfall!

Saturday night we saw the production "Savior of the World" that my parent's stake was putting on. It was great and a nice reminder of Christ and His resurrection the weekend before Easter. 

 Sunday was Kenny's homecoming talk. He gave a great talk about the Godhead and why it's important we know the individual members. He mixed in stories from his mission. It was a really good talk and I'm so glad I was able to hear it.

Then we took pictures outside.

Anna with both sets of grandparents and one set of great grandparents. G&G Francis left before we could take the picture.

We had a house full of family members over for lunch after church. It was a lot of fun to visit with everyone without any kids. Anna slept for the 3 hours people were over. I woke her up so people could say good-bye. 

Anna with big papa

For the rest of the night we talked as a family. My dad shared a scripture story, Kenny showed us some Mormon Message videos, and we all stayed up late together. 

Again Anna was an angel on the flight home. We had a layover in Chicago which helped break up the long flight. One guy sitting next to me said, "Is she going to cry or what?"Everyone was amazed at how well Anna did on the plane. I was very, very grateful.

In fact,  the entire weekend everyone was amazed at how good Anna is. She is so happy and goes with the flow. That made the whole trip easier knowing she was happy with whoever was holding her or watching her. I had plenty of help from my family with holding her, feeding her, playing with her, changing diapers, and putting her to bed. I felt like I didn't see her much at all that weekend!

I was very grateful for Ja that weekend. He was home watching Macy and juggling play dates and and work. I was very happy to go to California to see my family!

Anna plays with her hair

When I'm feeding Anna a bottle before bed she likes to play with her hair. She doesn't have much but it's enough for her to pull. Her cute little left hand will reach for her head when she's tired. Sometimes she just rubs her hair and other times she grabs some and pulls her fingers through it. She gets a little grease spot on the left side of her head. I love watching her tiny fingers play with get hair! Like mother like daughter.

Let's Go Fly A Kite!

The day after Ja's birthday Macy was über excited to go fly her new kite. We went to lunch in DC then were planning on driving to a park afterwards to fly the kites. Macy did not want to wait that long so Ja pulled out the kite in a little patch of grass right next to our parking spot. It was next to a government building so I'm sure they had a laugh watching a little girl fly a kite with only 10 feet of string out. She even sang "Let's go fly a kite." These are there words: "Yets go fly a kite, Up to the upsomere, UUUp to the upsomere!"

She was in heaven. I'm not sure how we talked her into getting into the car but we did. She asked if her friends would be at her "kite show" so we asked friends to come. Luckily some could so she was so excited again.

Macy was a natural at kite flying. It was a pretty windy day so all I had to do was toss the kite into the air and it would fly. If the kite started to fall she would pull on the string to make it go back up. We never explained this to her. I think she picked up on that from watching the last scene of Mary Poppins.

The kids took turns holding the kite string then ran off to the playground. This let the dads have a good time making the kites go really high in the sky. 

Macy had such a great time we'll definitely do this again.

Ja's Big 3-0!

Ja's birthday was celebrated over many days this year. What better way to have a birthday?

The Saturday night before his birthday we went shopping to buy Ja a new suit. Dorothy was still here from her stay in Virginia so she watched the girls for us. We found a great suit from Banana Republic that looks really nice on Ja. It's a different type of suit than he previously had- it's a "skinny" suit. He's very lucky he has such a long thin body because those kinds of suits look great on him. I'll have to see if he'll let me take a picture of him in his birthday suit :) (the BR suit obviously).

Then on his actual birthday he had to drive down to Richmond to film an interview for work. So we didn't see him until the late afternoon. This was nice for me because I had plenty of time to pick up balloons and cake and I didn't have to be sneaky about it. I asked him what he wanted me to make for his birthday dinner and he said he wanted to order pizza. That says birthday to him. Easy enough, so we had pizza and ice cream and had some friends come to eat with us.

I got this delicious red velvet cake from Fluffy Thoughts Bakery in McLean. It was delicious. This birthday was just as much Macy's birthday as Ja's. I had to buy her a "birthday" cupcake and one of the balloons we bought for Ja was "Macy's balloon."

I bought the 3 and 0 candles from the grocery store. Macy wanted to play with the 3 since she is three. I let her but told her to be very very careful not to drop it so it doesn't break. She was very careful and I'm the one who dropped the 0.

If you notice Macy's cupcake looks a little funny. She wanted to eat it in the car on our way home from the bakery. I told her if she ate it now we couldn't put a candle in it and sing to her later. So she proceeded to eat just the bottom part and savedt he frosting so we could sing to her.

I asked Macy what she wanted to buy daddy for his birthday. Of course she said it was her birthday too and she wanted a kite. She has been watching a lot of Mary Poppins and loves the kite flying part. So we went to the toy store and Macy picked out this black shark kite for Ja. She also picked out a little blue one for herself. She was so excited about it, if you can't tell from her big smile. She couldn't contain her excitement and told him to open his kite while carrying the present to him. I was impressed it stayed a secret for most of the day though.

Ja also got some new shoes and Macy wanted to take his picture with them. I also picked up some half dollar coins for Ja because he's been wanting them for doing magic tricks.

We had to end the celebrations early because Ja was in charge of the Cub Scout Roundtable meeting that night. He left to get that all set up and he said it went really well.

Ja's birthday was on Thursday and I wanted to take him to The Good Stuff in DC for his birthday but since he was in Richmond we went Friday instead. We got another great parking spot and enjoyed the very delicious burgers, seasoned fries, and toasted marshmallow shake. Then we went to the park to fly kites.

Saturday night we had a birthday party for Ja at Rebounderz in Sterling. It's an indoor trampoline place. It's in a big warehouse building with two sections of trampolines that are at least 50 yards long. You can bound from trampoline to trampoline and even bounce off the walls. It was a blast! We took some of our friends: Greg and Holly, Joe and Ellen, Katrina and Steve, and Katrina and JC. Some of our friends couldn't make it but we'll have to go again because it was so fun. Ja said when anyone asks him what his favorite birthday was he'll say his 30th. That made me feel good.

So after 3 days of celebrating Ja he is officially 30 years old! I can't believe it! He's so old :) The sad thing is, I'm next... at least I have a couple more years.