Mom and Dad's Anniversary: Part 2 (The Party)

Pictures from the party!

Mom and Dad's 40th Anniversary: Part 1

This past weekend, we celebrated my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Friends and family traveled from all over to come and it was great to see everyone, especially some who we haven't seen in a while. My mom's high school friends came in from Baltimore, her cousins came from Pennsylvania, New York, and Indiana, her aunt and uncle traveled from Fort Wayne, my sister, her friends, and one of my mom's friends came from Chicago, my aunt drove in from Illinois, and my Pop Pop and Florence flew up from North Carolina.

People trickled in starting Thursday night and Friday night, everyone who was in town got together for some pizza at my parents' house. Saturday morning, we had a lot of people over to our house for breakfast. Here are some pics from Friday night and Saturday morning.

I'm zoned out in this one, but I love how everyone is looking at Natalie :)

Love this candid one too!

My parents looking at the photobook Sarah and I made for them

Natalie's Baptism

On Sunday, February 16th, we celebrated Natalie's Baptism (almost exactly three years after we celebrated Olivia's). Our friend, Paul, came in all the way from California to be her godfather and my cousin Leslee was her godmother. Yusaku's parents, my parents, Sarah, Jon, Quinn, and Erin all joined us for the celebration. The Gosch family had hoped to join us but illness and snow kept them at home. Natalie screamed through most of what seemed to be a very long ceremony, but other than that, everything went well. :)

My mom is Leslee's godmother. Three generations of godmothers/daughters.

Natalie is 6...I mean 7 months old!

Well, I had the best of intentions of trying to stay on top of blogging, but life gets in the way. I started this post when Natalie had just turned 6 months old and now she is already 7.5 months old. Time seems to fly even faster with the second baby. Here are some photos of the past month and half.

She started really hands-and-knees crawling the day of her Baptism, February 16. So now she is a speedy little crawling machine.

friends

 And, she's been pulling up to standing since a week after she started crawling (February 23). I'm afraid it won't be too long until she's cruising along. She stands alone with very little support.

 And...she has her bottom two teeth (though I haven't captured it in a picture yet)!

She is finally excited about eating solid foods and really loves puffs. She loves to blow raspberries and is starting to "talk", by which I mean she makes consonant sounds like "baa baa." Sometimes I hear something that sounds like "mama," but I don't think she's really saying it and meaning it. Soon enough. :)

Japan Trip: Part 5 (Our Day Trip to Nara)

During our time in Osaka, we took a day trip to Nara and had a great time. We enjoyed seeing all the deer and as you'll see below, Yusaku even fed them. Olivia liked them from a distance, but got nervous if they got too close.

We visited Todai-ji Temple and saw the largest bronze statue of Buddha in the world. Yusaku and I had visited Nara on our trip in 2003, but it was great to see it again.

After some tea and snacks, we made our way back. Our train on the way back was filled with school children on their way home from school. I really enjoyed chatting with these two sweet girls below (with Kazumi's help, of course). Those kinds of experiences are what make a trip like this special for me. Sightseeing and eating the food are great too, but making a human connection is even more meaningful. Knowing I will likely never see them again, I asked them if it was okay if I could take their picture to remember them by. They were happy to oblige.

Forgotten Post - Olivia: 21 months

Was just looking through drafts of blog posts that I never got around to finish/post and found this...hard to believe this was almost two years ago.

This picture says it all: sweet, sassy, funny, precocious. Olivia is all those things and more. She had insisted on wearing her rain boots the other day when were heading out even though it wasn't raining. So, why not? I let her.