new friends

Sophie has 2 new friends that have been born the past couple of weeks. We're so excited for our friends Kelly and JJ as they welcome their little boy, and Ryan and Lisa as they had their second daughter!

caleb jay johnson

lauren grace utecht

Sophie was very interested in Lauren...but don't get any ideas.
No siblings in the near future (:

signs

We have been trying to teach Sophie some basic signs. We haven't done the best at being really consistent, but all of a sudden she's catching on. These are the 4 that she has down pretty well now. She was a little camera shy as she usually does them right away, but we're so proud of her. It's amazing to see that she can make those connections in her mind already!

finally...

Well, we're trying not to get too excited, but Sophie FINALLY ate a meal with us the other night. She still wouldn't eat the meat but she chowed down a ton of green beans and potatoes. It was so nice to be able to have her eat the same food as us. Slowly but surely...

family camp

This weekend we went up to Covenant Pines for our church's family camp. It was fun to be up there again, but I was horrible at taking any pictures. Sophie had a lot of fun crawling and walking around EVERYWHERE. She pretty much was the center of attention the whole weekend so she's probably ready for some alone time (:

Sophie's first hay wagon ride

visitors from Holland

Last week some relatives came to visit over from Holland. Dini brought 3 of her granddaughters over. They stayed with Jan for a few days and since I'm off of work, Sophie and I were able to hang out with them quite a bit as well. We took them to see the U and Minnehaha Falls. They also wanted to go see the bridge that collapsed so I took them as close as I could get them. We also took them to the State Fair. Unfortunately it was raining most of the time but we think they had a good time. It was fun to see things through their eyes. We had met them when we stayed with them when we were in Amsterdam 4 years ago, so it was a fun reunion!

Dini pushed Sophie around the entire time of the fair. She seemed to love doing it!

The girls: Joyce, Karin, Lisa (notice Sophie sporting her Holland shirt...after all she is 1/4 Dutch!)

hanging out with Karin

gardening

Awhile ago I put pictures up of the garden that Mike and Matt built and planted. It's been going really well and we have enjoyed many, many veggies this summer. Tonight Sophie wanted to help daddy in the garden...

yes, our child LOVES to play in dirt, and apparently eat it as well

this was our "harvest" that we picked this evening (notice all the lettuce still there...we just picked enough for our salad with dinner)

art time

Now that I'm home with Sophie for a month, I've been trying to come up with some fun things for her to try and do. Today we tried finger painting. She loved getting messy and actually kind of got the hang of it. I learned a few things from this endeavor though: 1. have bathtub full of water before starting 2. hope that she doesn't have a dirty diaper (which happened) while getting super messy. We had a blast though and I needed to mop the kitchen floor today anyway!

bye bye uncle jake

uncle Jake left for college this morning. Yesterday Sophie and I went over and hung out while he was finishing packing up. And, Sophie surprised him with her Marietta College rowing shirt I had made for her. We'll all miss him as he lives out in Ohio for a few (hopefully just 4) years!

sitting on uncle jake's bag of clothes

I think she was a little scared... (either that or she's showing off her big eyes!)

these 2 are a couple of the pictures we took last weekend at the cabin to frame for uncle jake to have in his dorm room

veggies

We have been loving having our own vegetable garden. It's so fun to go out in the backyard and pick what we need to make a salad. When Mike went out there tonight to see if there was anything worth picking, he found a couple of these bad boys hidden in the back of our garden. Yep, this a 14 inch zucchini. A little bigger than the ones in the stores!

just some cute pics

These are from this past weekend up at the cabin. Gotta love the cheeks in the last one!

trip to the library

Now that I'm on break from school, I have all these things I want to do with Sophie. Today was too hot to do anything outside so we headed downtown to the library. I had no idea what to expect, but she loved it. She loved looking at the books, pulling them off the shelves, and talking to everyone and everything around her. She wore herself out in the process. She fell asleep on the drive home and didn't even stir when I took her out of the car and up to her crib. And, by the way, could someone please tell me where my little baby girl went??? I feel like she looks so old in these pictures!

time to eat!

Sophie has become quite good at feeding herself. We're still struggling to find things that she'll eat (if you have ANY ideas, please let me know), but when she does eat, she does it really well. She also is starting to learn how to use a spoon, which she picked up pretty quickly. And, not only does she like feeding herself, she LOVES to feed other people and dogs!

we're ok!

To our friends and family out of state who check this...We are all ok, and so far everyone we know is ok. Mike and I happened to have gone to the Twins game last night so we were way too close (8 blocks away) for comfort! Anyway, thanks for the calls and emails and please keep praying for those affected.