Jumping!

Satchel's latest endeavor is jumping. Here is a clip of her supposedly taking a nap, but deciding to practice her jumping instead. I'm not sure quite how we managed to raise such a nut.

At the Beach!

Boy, I guess that it's been a while since a put anything up on this!

At a month away from 2 years old, Satchel is talking up a storm. Some of her favorite words and phrases:

1. Mess!! (almost exclusively self made)

2. Oh Boy!! (usually when spotting a play ground)

3. Oh Wow! (with a Christopher Walken inflection)

4. Uh Oh! (of course only after she throws something down herself)

5. Want more. (What do you say??) Peeesss.

6. Bike!!! (declared every single time she sees a bike, which is often)

7. Airplane!!! (declared every single time she sees an airplane and she is darn good at spotting them).

8. Dog, cat, frog, fish, elephant (eh-pant), giraffe ('raf), horsey, etc, etc. Animals are big in her world.

9. And since we went to the beach last month, both beach and ocean are favorite words.

So, here are a couple of shots from our vacation in West Palm Beach. She went into the water with us a couple of times, but mostly liked playing in the sand.

On the slide at the airport. I'm pretty sure this was the highlight of the whole trip for her.

Easter!

This year, as with most years, Easter was cold and rainy. So, we hid plastic eggs inside (so as not to get egg dye all over my aunt's lovely white carpet) and Satchel loved the game of looking for the eggs. She loved it so much so that we have continued to play it all week at home. We also hide little plastic chicks and little cookies in the eggs to make it even more exciting! If you are like Satchel a tiny cookie or plastic puff ball chickie is pretty darn exciting.

Um, is this an Easter basket full of socks? It must be from Grandma.

Notice that Satchel is wearing tights for the very first time. When I put them on her Easter morning, she threw herself on the floor and cried face down for several minutes before deciding that they weren't too bad.

Also, the lovely yellow dress that Satchel is wearing was made by her Grammie!

Hunting for eggs (or egsh as Satchel calls them).

Spinning

Satchel has been into making herself dizzy by spinning lately. Here's a pretty hilarious video of her testing out the limits of her spinning.

We're Back!!!

Since my last post, my Mom has made a couple visits to Chicago. During one of her visits, we spent the day at the Art Institute. I wasn't sure how Satchel would do, so we went on a free day thinking that we would stay for just a little while before her patience ran thin. She surprised us though and we stayed for several hours (with breaks for lunch and snacks, of course). Here are the pics.

We spent a bit of time in the hands-on children's area.

Satchel takes a rest by Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

Satchel Reading

Satchel's very favorite thing to do is read books or have books read to her. Here is a video of her spending some quality time reading The Potty Book aloud.

Snow of Century!

Last night we weathered one of the biggest snow storms that I have ever experienced. We had thunder and lightening, 50 mile an hour winds, an 8 hour power outage, and all totaled about 2 feet of snow. Here are the photos to prove it!

This is the chicken coop barricaded against the storm. All four survived!

Yes, those are drifts up to Matt's waist.