Today is my sweet little girl’s 1st birthday! One year ago right now
(4pm), I was dozing in a drug-enduced stupor, while Brian wondered if we were ever going
to have this baby. I’d been in labor for 24 hours already, and Analise would finally
burst into the world at 10pm. I can’t believe how much she’s changed! Above is a
picture of Analise when she was born, and below is one of her now, one year later.

We just arrived home after 2 weeks of traveling and visiting.
I’ll chronicle it in another blog soon. Many blessings, y’all!

Unless you consider Iowa and Wisconsin the end of the earth:) (which we don’t!) We left Thursday for a family vacation, spent the weekend in Iowa with my sister and brother-in-law and arrived in my hometown of Shell Lake yesterday. We’ve got lots of funny anecdotes, pictures and some video, so I hope to pull together a blog in the next day or so. Check back soon!

I’ve spent the weekend trying to get a few projects finished. First off, I wanted to have the invitations for Analise’s birthday party printed at one of the photo kiosks around at any number of places. Attempt #1: At Walgreen’s, I realized that I’d created the invitation as 4.5″x6″ (instead of 4″x6″ for a normal photo size), thus the writing was being cut off. Attempt #2: Brian couldn’t find the image on the smartmedia card when using the kiosk at Sam’s Club. Attempt #3: After Brian places the order on the machine, the clerk tells him that the printer isn’t working, and MAYBE it’ll be fixed tomorrow. GRR. We had hoped to have these done to put in the mail early this wee. We’ll see if we can get them done tomorrow. *SIGH* Here’s a peek for y’all… not sure if you’re close enough to come, but you’re definitely invited!

I’ve also been working on a handmade dress for Analise’s 1st birthday. Down here in the South, smocked dresses are quite a fashion statement. They’re very beautiful and very expensive. A friend of mine taught a few of us how to make a smocked dress, so now that all the hand embroidery is done, I’m in the process of sewing mine together. (Let me just say: I don’t mind hand sewing at all. In fact, I enjoy cross-stitch, embroidery, crocheting, etc. But using a sewing machine stresses me out.) Anyway, I sewed one seam (2x to reinforce it), found the tension on my silly machine was off, and spent an hour ripping it out (without a seam ripper). I’m going to be so glad to finish this dress. It is a labor of love, and you’d better believe you’re going to see a picture of it on my beautiful girl when it’s done!

Hope your weekend was more productive than ours! By the way, Tropical Storm Arlene blew through last night with some rain and gusting. Check out the bit of damage it left in our neighborhood here at Weather Underground (picture by Brian).

Here’s a video Kristine took of Analise toddlin’ the other day. She’s seems to prefer walking to crawling now! I can’t believe how quickly she went from crawling to walking. She sure is growing up fast… Comment and tell me what you think of the little toddler!

Watch the Toddlin’ Analise video you may also download an mpg copy of the video (2 MB)

Now that Analise is walking, we figured it was time to find some good shoes for her (and she’s outgrown all the hand-me-downs I’d been given). Earlier this week we visited a kid’s shoe store found a cute pair of sandals we were debating about. But yesterday we thought we’d check out Stride Rite in the mall.

It all started when I got detoured by Bath & Body Works’ Clearance sale (going on through Sunday!). I sent Brian and Analise on to look at shoes briefly while I shopped a bit. When I joined them, Analise was toddling around the store in these shoes:

Cute… but not what I was imagining as the all-purpose shoe. I know it’s a woman thing, and men don’t quite understand it, but this hot pink shoe wasn’t going to match all her outfits. I had envisioned a nice, simple white sandal, maybe with a tiny bit of pink, like this:

Brian was pretty convinced that Analise was walking better in the pink shoes than she was in the sandals. After a lot of waffling, I gave in. I’ll just chalk it up to the first Daddy/Analise shopping trip. It is kind of sweet:) If anyone mentions her pink shoes when she’s wearing a red outfit, I’ll smile and tell them her daddy picked them out… I think they’ll understand!