Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today is my mom's birthday and we were lucky enough to have her for one night. We wanted to make her a special breakfast, but all she wanted was oatmeal, so we put a candle in her bowl of oatmeal and had a great breakfast (except for Zadie's grumpiness). Our nephew Nick also came up and he's always a great guest.

In honor of my mom's birthday, here's a photo Kim snapped on one of their morning walks in Hawaii. Everyone knows how kind and loving my mom is, but some people don't know what a quick sense of humor she has. She is one of my favorite people to spend time with -- and not just because she takes me out to nice dinners!

I'm also including a group photo from Hawaii, although it is sadly missing Eric, who had to go home early to start his new set of classes. And, finally, I love this photo of my dad about to blow out the candles on his 60th birthday. This was in Hawaii and we all sang "Happy Birthday." As you can see, he was quite emotional about it all -- I think he may be the first person to ever start crying during "Happy Birthday." Not normally a tear-jerker, but my dad is a pretty sensitive guy!

Beach Zadie

We just returned from a wonderful week-long vacation in Kauai with our whole famdamily. There were 13 of us who traveled there to celebrate my parents' 35th wedding anniversary and my dad's 60th birthday. What kind of parents take their whole family to Hawaii to celebrate their anniversary? Those are some good-hearted people!

I could blog about bajillions of memories from the trip, but it's late and I still have a lot of things I need to do tonight, so I'm going to just break this up into chunks. The first thing I want to blog about is Zadie and how much she loved the beach. It's a good thing, too, because Tori might disown her if she didn't like that beach! My dad said she was like a little sand crab. I'll try to find a video to post of her splashing around and rolling around in the sand like a little maniac, but for now these photos will have to suffice.

Thank you to Kim for taking AMAZING photos throughout the whole vacation and then posting them all so quickly. I'm going to post a bunch more of her great photos (and not just of my child) later.

She Walks!

Well, it's taken 13 and a half months, but Zadie finally took her very first steps last Thursday. Hank dropped her off at our office and, in front of several co-workers, she took three steps in a row. Everyone cheered and she got freaked out and started bawling.
She hasn't done much walking since then, but last night we tried to lure her to walk by holding the pacifier out for here. Here's a little video clip of her showing off her new talent.

Catching Up

It's been a while since I've posted, but it's not because I haven't tried. I tried uploading a video the other day and it took forever and finally froze. So then I was too irritated to approach the blog again, even though it wasn't the blog's fault -- it's really the fault of our 4-year-old computer. Maybe we should stimulate the economy and buy a laptop.

My sister has been putting me to shame and blogging her heart out with great posts and great photos. She gets all deep on her blog, whereas I'm just thankful if I make an entry and post a photo or video.

My mom came to visit last week and it was great to have her here, of course. But there's starting to be a downside to her visits. Zadie has become slightly obsessed with her and only wants to go to her. And then she makes these little whiny cry sounds if she doesn't get to. I've seen this behavior before because Zadie's cousin is highly obsessed with my mom and after she leaves Izzy takes a few days to recover. So I told my mom to stop spoiling her with so much attention, but of course my mom acts so innocent. Ha!