5 Years Ago...

Five years ago this week Daniel and I were on a vacation to the Grand Canyon. It was such an amazing trip! We spent our days hiking and camping in the National Park. On the last night of our advenure we went to watch the sunset on the South Rim of the canyon and Daniel asked me to marry him! So sweet. The Grand Canyon will always be a very special place to us.

Here are some pictures from that trip!

The Grand Canyon was full of warning signs/posters letting us know that we should never attempt to hike up and down the canyon in one day, that we should always take plenty of water, that Olympic athletes have died in the canyon due to extreme conditions.

The hiking was pretty strenuous and it was very hot during the day (every though it was late March/early April). Here are some of the winding trails that we hiked down.



Daniel and I on our hikes:



The Grand Canyon was beautiful! If you have a chance to go there, you should definitely take the opportunity.

Here I am on South Rim right before Dan proposed. :)

Love you Dan!

Happy 80th Birthday Grandpa Jenner!

Last weekend Lucy took her first airplane trip to Oklahoma! We traveled to Bartlesville for Grandpa Jenner's 80th Birthday party. Daniel and Lucy waited patiently for our plane to arrive.

Technically Lucy has been the airport many times. While our little peanut was in utero her mama traveled a lot! :) Lucy was a great little traveler. She hardly cried at all or even seemed to notice that she was on an airplane. The only issue between Madison and Tulsa was that, about 10 minutes before take off from Detroit to Tulsa, Lucy had a giant poop! Not the best timing! Good thing that we were in the back of the plane and close to the bathroom.

When we arrived in Bartlesville on Friday night, we went to Grandpa's house right away. It was Lucy's first time meeting her GreatGrandpa. So sweet!

Saturday was a busy day. We hung out with the Storm family at the hotel and made plans for our upcoming trip to Germany (less than 8 weeks to go until sabbatical!!), we ate lunch at Grandpa's and stopped by a garage sale. :) Lucy enjoyed her family time! Here she is with Auntie Amelia.



In the afternoon, Grandpa had a party at McDonalds. It was awesome. Grandpa drinks coffee at McDonalds with his buddies everyday so he is definitely a regular at the establishment. The manager reserved a section of the restaraunt for us so we had birthday cake and, of course, McDonalds coffee. There were relatives there from Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Wisconsin in addition to lots of family and friends from Oklahoma. It was so fun!

I celebrated my 6th birthday at McDonald's - I still remember that party!! One of the games that we played was a contest to see who could stack the tallest structure of syrofoam BigMac containers. I am pretty sure that my cousin Bryan won. :) I am glad to see that 25 years later, McDonalds is still hosting parties. Here is a picture of Grandpa with his cake:


On Saturday night we went out for a big family dinner at Montana Mike's. Here is a picture of Grandpa Jenner with all of his kids.



It was so good to see everyone! It was a wonderful weekend. Happy 80th Birthday Grandpa Jenner! We love you and we are so glad that we could celebrate with you.

Happy Spring!

It is officially spring in Madison! We have had unseasonably warm temperatures this year so we have the windows wide open at home and we have been going for lots of long walks recently.

We love our time outdoors! Here is Lucy smiling on one of our walks.

Last Saturday was the kickoff for our community garden. Yay! We are getting a full plot this year so we will have lots of room for squash and pumpkins. Last year we were attacked by a squash bug that destoyed all of our plants! :( Hopefully we will have a healthy crop this summer/fall.

Lucy and I went to claim our plot at the Goodman Community Center. We quickly made our payment and picked up some free seeds:

We had to be fast because I was not feeling well! Daniel and I both got food poisoning. It was horrible - we spent most of the weekend in bed recovering and it was the most beautiful weather so it was agonizing not being able to enjoy it! On a side note - food poisoning is a very effective but NOT fun means of dropping a few pounds of post-pregnancy weight! Gross!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Each Friday Lucy's daycare has a special theme - today it was St. Patrick's Day/wearing green! (Side note: A few weeks ago the Friday event was Wild Hair Day. Our bald little Lucy was sad that she could not participate. :) )

This Friday Lucy wore a My First St. Patrick's Day hat from her Grandma Nola and a sweet green shirt hand-me-down from cousin Abigail!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

4 Month Well-Child Visit

Miss Lucille had her 4 month well-child visit at the doctor's office this week. Here are her latest stats:
Height: 26.25" (97.27%)
Weight: 14 lb 11 oz (69.83%)
Head Circumference: 42.3 cm (81.3%)

She was examined by Dr. Rainwater who confirmed that Lucy is perfect. :) We talked about starting Lucy of solid foods, treating her eczema patches, preparing for international travel, and working on bed time routines. It was a good visit.

Lucy also got 3 vaccinations, if you look closely at this picture you can see little bandaids on her legs where she was poked for her shots.




Lucy was a trooper, she did a great job with her immunizations. She has been a bit fussier and sleepier than usual over the past couple of days. Also, she started to run a temperature at daycare the day after her shots. Dan brought her some infant tylenol and it seemed to do the trick.

We love you peanut! We are so blessed to have such a healthy and happy baby girl!

Dinner with friends

We had dinner with our friends, Andy, Erinn & Charlotte this week. We love getting together with these guys! We always have such a good time together. Their baby Charlotte is ~3 months older than Lucy so we always get to see upcoming baby milestones for Lucy when we hang out. Charlotte is such a sweetheart! She has lots of teeth, is eating solid foods like a champ and is taking swim lessons!


Here is a picture of mamas Andrea & Erinn with our baby girls, Lucy & Charlotte.
Thanks again for dinner Andy & Erinn, we'll have to get together again soon!

Weekend Up North

The Storm family headed North for a lazy weekend of snowshoeing, lounging, and spending time with our friends, the MacFarlands! The MacFarland family has a new little baby, Jacob, who was born in January. We we able to meet this little guy last weekend and he was wonderful! He was so tiny and sweet. The kids had fun playing together!

Sharing Jake's Activity mat

All smiles!

We bundled up the babes for some snowshoeing!

Laura found matching snowsuits for the kiddos.

Lucy and her papa

The Storm family out snowshoeing

The MacFarland family

We were able to snowshoe on Saturday but the weather was so beautiful that on Sunday we just went for a normal walk. The snow was melting all around us!

Laura and Daniel with the bambinos

What a relaxing weekend!! It was great to see you MacFarland family! We loved spending time with you and meeting baby Jake.

A fantastic Friday

I had last Friday off of work as a Recovery Day to recooperate from those long hours helping with Hurley support. I was so excited to spend all day with my baby girl. Guess what - we had an awesome day!! :)

The first adventure of the morning was getting pictures taken! Lucy had her 4 month old photo shoot in her Easter dress. So sweet. We just love love love our baby photographer - Kendra Stoltz. If you have little ones and live in the Madison area, we totally recommend her.

Here is Lucy's Easter dress, lots of pink and tulle, just like little girl Easter dresses are meant to be. :)


To take a look a Miss Lucille's latest pictures click on this link:
http://kendrastoltz.zenfolio.com/

Choose the Andrea Storm file under proofs, the password is astorm.

After pictures, we went to Mama-Baby hour at Happy Bambino! For a split second, we almost did not go because I thought that we might not know any of the mamas/babies who attend any more since we hadn't been there in a month. Happily, I was wrong! It was so nice to see lots of familiar faces and to touch base with everyone again. We miss our Friday's at Happy Bambino a lot so it was so wonderful to be there. Just like old times!! :)

Lucy was able to connect with her old friends! Here she is with baby Mackenzie. So cute.



Lucy and I were able to join Mary and Mackenize for lunch at Crema afterward. So good! It was great to catch up. Thanks ladies! We need to do it again soon.

After lunch, Lucy and I headed home to pack for our weekend up north. More about those advenures in a future post.

Lucy is 4 months old!

Can you believe that our little Lucy Bear is already 4 months old? Crazy how time flies. Our baby girl weighs more than 14 pounds and the little pink pjs that she is sporting are a size 6 to 9 months. Wow!
Here is a recent picture of our baby girl:


And another photo of her doing some kicks. :)


Lucy's favorite new thing at 4 months is grabbing her feet! She recently discovered that they are connected to her. :) She loves holding on to her toes, especially when we are changing her diapers. She can't quite get them in her mouth yet but she is sure close!

We love you Lucy Goose!

On the Road Again...

As you know, I travel a lot for my job. Since I first found out that I was pregnant with Lucy, I have been trying to cut back on my time spent on the road. I have had 4 glorious months with no travel. It has been so pleasant to go to Dane County Regional Airport over the past few months only to pick up family and friends rather than to head out on my own business trips!! Well, I knew that this travel hiatus would eventually come to an end. And it has. Insert frowny face here.

It is very difficult to leave my little peanut behind as I leave for work trips, even if it is just for a short time! It makes it easier to know that Lucy's Dad is such a wonderful caregiver but I still miss her so much it hurts! When I am traveling, everyone always comments to me, "You must love getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep." Ummm, in theory I do love getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep but when I am away from Madison that never happens. I always sleep terribly when I am gone!! I hear phantom baby noises or wake up thinking that Lucy is in bed with me or I need to get up to pump in the night. Crazy!

The good news to report is that my newest customer is just outside of Chicago which is wonderful! It makes road trips much easier. A 2.5 hour car ride is nothing compared to the travel woes I have had going through airports to far away cities. So, Dan, Lucy, and I are just going forward one trip at a time and seeing if my job will fit in with our family's needs! We will just have to re-evaluate as we go.

The other challenge that comes with traveling is maintaining my milk supply. I have had to pump in some crazy places lately. I will admit that there are some times that I want to drop kick my breastpump and just be done with it (mostly when I am in airport bathrooms :)) but I know that it is the best food for Lucy right now and I do love breastfeeding her when I am actually at home so I am keeping at it!! Here are some of the awesome places that I have pumped:

A CIO's office. :)


A storeroom/conference room

Special Needs Bathroom at the airport

Also - I wanted to add a shout out in this post to Lucy's Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Glen. These guys came all the way to Madison recently to watch Lucy and give Dan an extra set of hands when I was on a longer work trip to scenic Flint, Michigan. We really appreciate your help Mom and Dad!! Lucy is lucky to have grandparents like you! Love you.

Lucy snuggling with Grandma Sharon