Wonderful Weekend

Cabin in the water

Mmmm...watermelon!

Ruby holding Brie with Haoli and Maddy surveying the view.

Sunset before the rain

We spent the weekend on a small private lake just outside the Adirondacks with a co-worker of Mat's and her family.  It was very peaceful and beautiful.  There was a cabin on/in the water with a rowboat stored below.  The place isn't used much at all and because of the dust factor we put up the tent to sleep in.  (We were lucky that all we saw from the hurricane was rain on Sunday.)  We made the most out of the beautiful weather Saturday brought us.  The girls rowed around the lake and the boys took the boat out to do some fishing.  Mat caught his largest brook trout ever on Sunday morning right from where the rowboat is parked underneath the house.  I will post a picture once we get it from Stevie.  It was a fun and relaxing weekend.

Mat with his 17" Brook Trout

Food!

Brie is starting to have opinions about the food I'm feeding her.

Brie's Likes:

Sweet Potatoes
Carrots
Vegetable Beef Pilaf (earthsbest)
Tender Chicken & Stars (earthsbest)
Applesauce
pasta noodles
cheerios
Happy Baby Puffs

Brie's Dislikes:
Bananas
Oatmeal (even when I grind the flakes)
Plain Yogurt

Brie's blocks

She LOVES them!

We went down to the Finger Lakes region to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday and his daughter let Brie play with her wooden blocks and Brie loved them.  So that was on my "To Do" list while in the big town: get blocks, along with do laundry.  Brie likes her clean diapers, but she really loves her blocks.  They say for age 2+, but Brie likes 'em.  Brie might not get that there are letters and numbers on the blocks, but she likes taking them out of the container and setting them places and putting them in her mouth.  

What's Gram thinking?

Every time I see this photo that Sara took I crack up.  I have no idea what I was talking about, but I think Gram is wishing I would stop talking. Seriously. 

I think I was bossing Mat around about where to take a picture.  (That's why I'm holding a fake potted plant.  I normally don't just hold fake plants while visiting Gram's place.)

Working on #7 and #8

Brie's been a sport!  We've been traveling a bit this past week and she is still working on her 7th tooth and has started getting her #8 tooth in and she's been pretty cheerful, not too cranky. Last week she slept a lot.  This week she has decided long naps are not for her.  She'll settle down for 20 minutes and that is if we are out walking or we are driving somewhere.  She's really not wanting to nap in the crib the last couple of days.  I hope that changes soon!

Last Thursday, we went to work with Mat.  Well, Mat went to a meeting and we explored Fort Stanwix in Rome, NY.  Then we went to a picnic for a non-profit that Mat partners with on a Preserve for management of it.  Here's a link to a video of Brie eating/talking during lunch.  If you look closely in the video you can see some of her teeth.  Didn't really take any pictures of us, but there are some on flickr of Fort Stanwix that I posted.

Our Brie is 10 months old!

Brie makes lots of little noises and grunts and she's definitely loves taking things out of boxes, cupboards, and shelves.  Pretty much anything she can reach, she likes to move.  She also is a pro at walking along the couches and coffee table and is able to grab things on the floor by bending down and come back up. Brie is working on her 7th tooth.  It's coming in on her bottom gums.  She's going to have a mouthful of teeth soon.  Or maybe it slows down at some point.  We'll see.

She's been doing awesome this week and has been sleeping mostly through the night from 7 or so at night to 4:30 or later in the morning.  It's amazing!  We'll probably be messing that up since we are going somewhere to stay overnight tomorrow and then again on Saturday, but it's been fantastic while it's been happening.

new sights

In Asheville, one of the nice things about the view off our front porch was watching lots of road bikers ride by.  This past Saturday in Henderson Harbor, we witnessed the beginning and end of a sailboat race while sitting on our back porch.  Have to say the beginning was much more exciting with all the sails up on the boats and them leaving the harbor swiftly.  Much later in the day the boats began to trickle back and I got the above shot.

Next door to our house is a motel and Maddy makes friends with all the guests.  Luckily, their back deck has railing so Maddy just gets petted and loved through the railing.  Because of this we end up chatting and meeting the people who stay there.  Maddy is heaven.  So far, she hasn't jumped in.  Somehow she realizes that she can't get out because our backyard and dock is 3-4 feet above the water.  We need to figure out a way to make a doggie ramp or steps so she can jump in and swim around.

Mat, Brie and I walked around the town just north of us by 10 minutes.  Sackets Harbor is lovely old town with lots of old homes and yards and a cute downtown area with a battlefield from the War of 1812 that you can walk around.

This is after Brie's first ride around the neighborhood.  We think she liked it since she didn't cry.

Brie's unofficial stats

It's taken us awhile to settle in up here and find a doctor for all of us, so Brie hasn't been measured and weighed since her 6 month appointment in Asheville.  We felt like she'd grown a bunch, so we did an unofficial bit of measuring for her 10 month birthdate.

Weight:  18.2 pounds   25.4 percentile

Height:  27.5 inches   30.5 percentile

settling in

We are still unpacking, but beginning to feel the most settled we've ever felt up here.  It feels good.  We purchased a life jacket for Brie and have taken her swimming once.  She didn't love it, but maybe it was just too cold.  We'll try again on a warmer day.  Mat and I have been enjoying at least one swim a day in the lake.  Today it's pouring down rain so we might not swim today.  Soon, I hope, to get the bike up and running so that I can bike to the library.  It's a mile or 2 away and seems like something Brie and I could do for fun.

Mat and I still talk about how lucky we are to have found a spot on the water...it makes us so happy! 

How did we get so lucky?

A month ago, we were at high stress and didn't know what we were going to do.  Somehow, things worked out and we are now renting a vacation rental for a year and maybe longer.  The people we are renting from are completely fine with our dog, so we are at ease with everything.  Because we are so close to the water, we got a life jacket for Brie and a gate to keep her up on the porch.  I just don't even know how to express how happy we feel about our spot that we've found.  AND we really have to take advantage of it while the weather is nice before winter sets in.  Although Mat does say he will be ice fishing this winter. 

Any folks with a yearning to travel to a lake house should come visit us!

an evening at Black Pond

Mat mentioned the other night how in our next move it will make Brie's 4th place to live.  And it's all before the age of 1.  Hopefully, we'll be staying put for quite awhile at this next place.   The lovely thing about this spot is that it's furnished, so tomorrow we are just moving the stuff that is in our temporary place.  So not a lot of stuff, that will be moved on Saturday into a storage unit.

These are pictures from a lovely evening at Black Pond where we enjoyed a subtle, yet peaceful sunset.