Cannon Beach, OR

Here are the pics from our first trip to Seattle and Cannon Beach, Oregon. Unfortunately we only took pics at Cannon Beach.

This is E in the car at our first stop, to feed him at a rest area

Mark decided to take a pic of me feeding him

Mom and Dad at the rest stop

On the road! It's about a 3 1/2 hour trip from Seattle to CB. We drank lots of Henry's rootbeer on the trip since we can't get it in SC.

Mom in the backseat, keeping E happy when he was awake

We're here!

Mark's "we're here" pose

E was sleeping when we got there, and he had used his burpcloth as a blankie haha

View from our room

We laid E on our bed to continue sleeping once we got in the room

Outside the room ready to go on our first walk

On our first walk on the beach! It was cold that morning

Mom and Dad with sis Christy and bro-in-law Kevin outside our fav breakfast place The Lazy Susan in town

Eating breakfast, Grandma and Aunt LouAnn joined us

Mark took pics around the table

Dad decided to stick out his tongue

Mom and Nama

Grandma

The classsic Lazy Susan muscle shot, except I forgot I was supposed to make a serious face

E looking cute in his beach outfit

E's first time swimming! He neither hated it nor loved it, just had a straight face pretty much the whole time

In the water

Love the expression on his face, "I'm not so sure about this"

The family in the water

Me and my lil boo

More family pics

E and Aunt Kimmie

E and Uncle Kyle

The whole swimming crew

E on the beach in the pack n play with his toys

Happy boo on the beach

Mark and Kyle relaxing on the beach

The beautiful Oregon coast in the morning looking towards Haystack Rock

Looking towards Twins

The Twin Rocks

Starfish are all over the rocks

From Twins looking back towards Haystack

E and Aunt Kimmie. Kimmie was the only one who didn't get to see E right after he was born, so she was pretty much glued to him the whole trip.

Grandpa Gifford, Mark and E before we went on a walk

Heading towards the beach

The three of us on the beach

If you are wondering why we are often bundled up, it is cold in the morning and evening here on the Oregon coast, it isn't like the south.

The crew on the walk

The Rock in all her glory

E walking with Daddy

Kimmie and I

Dad and I

Sweet pic, E fell asleep towards the end of the walk

In town before we head back to Seattle

Sleeping E

A few pics of our fav places in town...this is Pizza Afetta

This is Osburne's, not Osbourne's (haha inside family joke, I would explain but it probably really wouldn't be that funny to you)...really good ice cream

Bruce's Candy Kitchen, best saltwater taffy ever, and many other yummy sweet treats

The town of Cannon Beach...it is the cutest town ever!

That completes all the pics from the first leg of our travels this summer, will start working on the pics from Pawley's Island next. Thanks Mom and Dad for a great week!

Northwest traveler's

Our ten days in the beautiful Pacific Northwest are almost coming to an end, and we have much of the travelling behind our belt. The first leg of our trip consisted of driving to the Charlotte airport, which besides a semi-truck's tire blowing out right next to us and scaring us to death, went very smoothly. We managed rather easily to get all our gear, stroller and car seat included, into the shuttle at the parking lot and unloaded again at the airport, had to wait probably ten or fifteen minutes to check our bags, and got into a rather lengthy line with a hungry, fussy 3 month old when we realized one of the greatest things about airport security lines, they have a seperate family line. There was absolutely no one in the family line so we got to zoom right past everybody and start the process of breaking everything down and getting it through the detectors, which was definitely tricky but manageable. We got to our gate with plenty of time to spare, I fed Emmory and Mark went off to hunt down dinner for us (Our flight didn't leave until 7pm). Thankfully our flight was scheduled to leave on time, and right before boarding started, Emmory fell asleep in my arms. He stayed asleep until the plane started to take off, and then I fed him again so his little ears weren't bothered by the pressure, which they weren't. He was awake after I fed him, and after a little while he started to get a little fussy. This is when I realized something about my son, that I always kind of knew in my head, but didn't fully realize until being stuck in a tiny plane with him-he is a really active little guy. If he isn't sleeping or drowsy, he is moving. Unfortunately there isn't much room to move and play sitting on my lap with another seat a foot in front of me, and this lead to an unhappy baby. He likes to be able to spread out and kick his legs and move his arms, and he just wasn't able to. There is one more thing about my son that doesn't go well with flying, and that is that he falls asleep best on his own in his crib, and if he is anywhere where there is anything going on, he will fight sleep and try to stay awake. The first flight was about 2 hrs 3o mins, and for the first hour and a half E was awake, and he began to get really fussy towards the end, because he was tired but was fighting the sleep. Finally I decided to use the one thing I knew would put him to sleep, I nursed him. He fell asleep, and woke up when we had about 30 or so minutes of the flight left. We had a pretty short layover in Dallas, about 40 mins, but luckily our gates were close together. That gave us just enough time to go to the bathroom and do a diaper and clothing change, and then board our next flight, which was going to be just under 4 hrs long. By the time we landed at Dallas, it was past Emmory's bedtime, and I knew this would either work greatly in our favor, or would be a disaster. Fortunately, it worked greatly in our favor, and after I fed him on takeoff again, he fell asleep and didn't wake up until we landed in Seattle, even with the extremely loud flight attendant who would come ask us if we wanted a drink in the loudest voice possible even when Emmory was sleeping right there in plain sight. So all in all, we had a pretty good first flight experience with a baby. Compared to travelling alone, it was ten times harder, but for travelling with a baby I think it went about as well as it could. The next day we headed to Cannon Beach, OR, which was about a 3 in a half hour drive, and compared to flying across the country that was a breeze. E did great in the car and we arrived without incident. We had a really good time with family at Cannon Beach, and E still slept through the night even with the time change, so we actually got some sleep which was very nice. Cannon Beach is my favorite place in the world, it is gorgeous, and I have so many wonderful memories there b/c we went there every year growing up. My parents have actually gone there every year since they got married. It was still beautiful, and while I didn't get to come and go as I pleased this year, my family took care of Emmory a lot so we could still go out and do things, which was sooo nice. I will definitely post pictures when we get back to Greenville. We will be in Seattle until Saturday, then we fly back to Greenville, have a day of laundry and rest, and then drive to Pawley's Island on Monday. We are so thankful to have the opportunity to do so much travelling and have so much vacation time this summer.

Skype

So the new exciting thing in our house is that we got a camera for our computer so we can communicate with my family via skype, so they can see us (well, lets face it, they really just want to see Emmory, haha :) and we can see them. I am so thankful for modern technology, so that even though we live so far away my family will still be able to see him as he grows. We were talking to my entire family last Friday night while they were all over at my parents house for a BBQ, and Mark snapped a pic of the computer screen which I thought turned out quite good. It ended up being a close up of my moms face, haha, and in the bottom left corner you can even see Mark taking the pic in the box that shows our video.

Here's a pic of Mark and Emmory playing after church one Sunday. I love this outfit that my Mom bought for him, and I love his big happy smile even more!

This is a pic I took this week, all three of my boys together, being very serious. Actually I think they are just watching tv; which we have recently discovered that Emmory loves. One day he was on the couch watching tv with Mark, and then Mark laid him back so he couldn't see the tv anymore and he started to fuss, then when Mark brought him back up so he could see it he stopped.

I took this pic today, E was playing with his play gym and he started batting at the toys above him, then I noticed that he had grabbed hold of one of the toys. He's learning and growing so fast!

We are starting to get very excited for our big trip to the Pacific Northwest. We'll be leaving a week from tomorrow, Wednesday the 29th and flying to Seattle, then the next day we are driving to Cannon Beach, Oregon for vacation with my family. We will probably stay there til Tuesday or Wednesday, then come back to Seattle for a few days and head back to SC on Saturday, August 8th. We can't wait to see my family and spend time with them, and for them to see how much he has grown; and also introduce him to all the extended family who haven't met him yet. But that's not all, when we get back from Seattle we will have one day to recover and then we are heading to Pawley's Island, SC to spend the week at the beach with friends from church. We are excited about this trip too, I've never been to Pawleys Island, and we are going to be staying at a house right at the beach. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks, and would appriciate your prayers as we travel. I know it will be a little trickier travelling with a baby, but it's important to us to be able to do that so we might as well start him early.

Happy Clemson boys

2 months

Here are the two month pics I promised, plus some other recent ones. Some were taken on the 4th of July, as you'll see by E's festive outfit. I was so excited about his outfit because I had bought it at Mark's store (.25 baby!) before he was born and had to guess that would be the size he would be wearing, and I was right! We had a fun 4th, different than ever before of course with a baby, we didn't go watch a big fireworks show like normal, but we went to Mark's parents house to eat some yummy food and hang out, then when they all left to go watch the fireworks show we went home to put Emmory to bed, then right afterwards the neighbors started shooting off fireworks so Mark and I went outside to watch and hang out with them. We sat on the tailgate of his truck, beverages in hand and watched the show, and Emmory didn't even wake up with all the noise. After watching the fireworks we went inside and watched a movie, then went to bed. It ended up being a great day.

Emmory has started doing some new things; yesterday for the first time he grabbed a rattle and started shaking it around, he had a lot of fun with it. He also was able to bat the toys up above him on his bouncy seat. He is getting a little bit better with being able to move those hands where he wants them to go, but still has a lot of progress to make in that area. He still hasn't gotten the thumb thing down perfectly, and he still loves to try and shove his whole hand in his mouth and suck on it, and makes very loud smacking noises. I have a video of him with the rattle, but I can't get it to upload...we may try to get a faster router to see if that will help make uploading things a lot easier.

Emmory's two month appointment went really well, he weighed 13 lbs 11 ozs, and was 24 1/4 inches long...in the 86th percentile for both length and weight. The doctor said he looked really good, and she told us we can put mineral oil on his cradle cap, and that has helped a lot with it. He had to get some shots :( but he did really well with them and wasn't fussy at all afterwards this time, like he was after his first shots at his one month appt. He is currently wearing 3-6 month and 6 month clothing, which I can't believe, and he is still in size 2 diapers but I can tell we are soon going to be moving to size 3. It still blows my mind how fast they grow! It is so fun to watch him grow and change and do new things and interact with us more; he is such a happy boy, he smiles all the time and loves to play; but I do miss that teeny-tiny newborn we brought home from the hospital, I truly can't believe how fast he grew out of that newborn stage. I really need to slow down and just take in every moment with him, because he is changing every moment and I will never have it back...plus the next time I have a baby like this I'll also have toddler running around, so I won't be able to savor and enjoy every moment like I can now.

Okay enough blabbing...here are the pics!

Two month pics

Mark snuck a few pics of E and Tillman while I was sleeping

This is how Mark did his hair after a bath

Snuck in his room and took a pic of him sleeping; this is his typical sleeping pose, arms sprawled back like that

Our two boys

Fourth of July

This is when he grabbed the rattle