Family Reunion 2009

Every year Jeff's mother's family (the Taghon's) has a reunion the last weekend in June up at Potato Creek State Park up near South Bend. It's a lot of fun with great food, skits, and usually camping (although not this year). Here are some photos from the festivities.

Fiona with Uncle Shawn

Fiona and Owen

They are the two youngest of the second cousins. Owen is about two months younger than Fiona and it was fun to watch the two of them interact.

The identical outfits on Margaret and me was completely unplanned (we have khaki shorts on, too). Even our kids were dressed in similar colors. I've nicknamed us the Twins. Margaret and Owen live in Colorado so it was great that they were able to make it to the reunion.

I've been busy redoing our bathroom, which is NOT easy with a 1 year old around. Fiona doesn't like me working on it while she is awake. Afterall, I'm there to entertain her, not sequester myself in the bathroom and ignore her! So, it's been a slow process. Hopefully it will all be done by the end of July! Jeff started a new job at the beginning of June and so far it's been a great change for him. He now works for IVCi, LLC. They provide video conferencing for companies. Jeff is their on the spot person at WellPoint. They're starting him off slow, which has meant for some slow days, but it will pick up once he's fully trained. He enjoys being down on Monument Circle as he can walk around outside during his lunch hour. He hasn't enjoyed having to get up early and wear "real" clothes (slacks and dress shirts)!

Fiona is walking everywhere and doesn't like to sit in the cart at the grocery (big surprise), so we usually go as a whole family so one person can monitor Fiona while the other shops. She loves to watch the fish at Meijer and could probably spend hours watching them if I let her. Of course then I would get nothing done! Her newest word is woof, which she says whenever she hears or sees a dog. She also loves to point out the airplanes in the sky (one of the benefits of living in the flight path for the airport and living so close to it is that we see LOTS of planes). She points at them and says see, see. She also loves to play boof (peek-a-boo). She'll put her blanket over her head and pull and down and say boof. Too cute! She keeps us busy and keeps us laughing, which is a good thing. We have some busy weekends coming up so hopefully I'll have some fun things to post soon!

Party Time

Farm themed cupcakes

Cupcake tree with a variety of cupcakes.

Singing with unlit candle

Not too sure about this whole cake thing.

This candle is fun to play with.

Candle and cupcake overboard!

Chalk with Aunt Leslie.

Wow! Look at all these presents!

Fiona had a wonderful birthday party. The weather was beautiful and lots of friends and family came to help us celebrate. She was an angel baby, loving all the attention. As I thought, she didn't care much for the cake. She kept trying to pick the icing off the plate and drop it over the side of her high chair!


Time for me to go put a tired baby to bed.

Birthday Girl

What a difference a year makes. It's hard to believe Fiona's one already. It's gone incredibly fast. She's such a joy and blessing. She loves to look at books (surprising with two librarians as parents!), is walking, loves to be outdoors, loves music, dogs (she's starting to bark when she hears them), gives kisses, likes to do downward dog and look through her legs, and more. Now if only she'd start sleeping through the night. Luckily she's so darn cute I can't get too upset when she wakes me up to eat (even when it's only been an hour). I know I'll miss those special moments when they're gone.

P.S. Thanks to Kenton, Emily and Gabby for the beautiful dress. It fits perfectly and she looks so cute in it.

Photos

St. Patrick's Day jail bird.

Mom, these lids are tasty. Why don't you let me eat them more often?

Easter morning

Easter dress

Fiona with her Easter basket from her Godparents.

She loved the grass (as well as the book and toys!).

Her newest "trick". She likes to throw herself backwards onto the ottoman or sofa or us. She's a weirdo! My mom made the outfit. The pants are supposed to be capris, but as you can see, they fall down to her ankles. This is great as it means she should be able to wear it all summer without out growing them. I love the fishy fabric. Very summery!

She LOVES to help us read the newspaper or go through the coupons. She's become known as Hurricane Fiona because our house always looks like one has gone through it.

She loves to be outside. Luckily she'll stay on the blanket so I can actually get some yard work done while she's awake.

Megan's graduation from the University of Indianapolis.

In other news, today she took the most steps ever...7! She did it more than once, too. She walked from her gate to the ottoman and from the ottoman towards the front door before she fell. She also walked from the refrigerator to a chair in the dining room. Yeah! It won't be long and she'll be cruising around the house.

My baby is growing up way too fast. I don't know where this past year went!

Time Flies

A lot has happened since our last post. First she got bronchitis. Her cough scared me to death. I literally thought she would choke to death. Thank goodness for antibiotics which got it cleared up. She still coughed for a while but it wasn't the awful wet gasping cough which had us going to Urgent Care. This meant a few nights of very bad sleep for all of us. Once she was done with the bronchitis her top two teeth started coming in, which meant more bad sleep. Things are finally getting back to "normal" (just in time for more teeth to come through, I'm sure).

Fiona is growing by leaps and bounds. She's trying so very hard to walk and even took a few steps last night. She's been walking around the furniture for weeks and loves to hold onto our fingers and walk around outside. She also will pull herself up and walk down the hallway holding onto the wall with one hand for balance. Now she gets momentum going while walking along the furniture and then lets go and walks a few lurching, lunging steps before crashing to the floor. It won't be long before she's truly walking.

She loves to be outside. With the rain the last few days she has not been happy cooped up inside. She doesn't yet understand how wet it is out there!

She loves to read her books and will sit on the floor for a good 20 minutes looking at them. You couldn't tell she's the child of two librarians!

In other news, Jeff got a new job and will be starting it on June 1st. He will be working for IVCi, a NY-based video conferencing company. One of their clients, Wellpoint, is in Indianapolis and Jeff will be working there monitoring their video conferencing stuff. We're all thrilled with this new opportunity for him. It will be a change for all of us since it won't be as flexible in the hours (no more coming home early or going in late when I have something going on at work), but we'll manage. It's worth it!

Will post pictures once blogger decides to cooperate.

More Videos from Maine

My parents have two dogs, Babe a geriatric german shepherd and Mollie, a rambunctious 16 month old black lab. All Mollie wants to do is play. Fiona had a great time watching both dogs, but especially Mollie. Mollie wasn't too sure what to make of Fiona, but enjoyed licking her. A few more months and Fiona will be Mollie's best friend (once Fiona learns to throw a ball).

My dad placed Fiona on his shoulders and "ran" around. She LOVED it and just laughed and laughed. Actually I think they both loved it!

Fiona made a new friend at the Newark airport. 8 month old Malia was waiting for her flight to Charlotte while we were waiting for ours to Indianapolis. They were both fascinated by each other. Unfortunately Fiona seems to think other kids are like our cat JoJo and kept trying to "pet" Malia. Luckily Malia didn't mind.

Maine

I guess I should have mentioned in my last post that the reason we were on a plane in the first place was to visit my parents in Maine. The weather was cold but sunny, which made up for the cold. My dad hadn't seen Fiona since August and she'd changed just a little. They had a blast with horsey rides and general horsing around.

My mom, dad and Fiona in front of my dad's work.
The Humphrey's by Boothbay Harbor.

Grammie and Fiona

Fiona had so much fun playing with my mom and dad. This may be the one and only time she visits them in Maine as they are in the process of retiring and moving back to the midwest. It makes me both sad and happy. Sad to "lose" my childhood home (and a great place to vacation) and happy to have them closer to us. But, we had a great time. Fiona was spoiled, of course, and the visit was way too short, but totally worth it!