Happy Baby Shower Fran!

Do not be alarmed, baby and Vanessa are not in the same sentence anywhere in this blog post. This is a post about my wonderful friend Fran's baby coming in February so please no one be confused. Two weekends ago many of my close friends from college took over Fran's house for a great time celebrating Fran and Jason becoming first time parents. Eryn, Carson and I drove down to PA from NH, Beth came from VA, Jessica came from Pittsburgh and lucky Jill had the shortest drive from Ephrata. Eryn and I actually won prizes at the shower for driving the farthest. I was pretty proud:) Even though I almost threw my gps out the window for nearly failing us within the last 1/2 hour of our trip at midnight, but it all ended alright. Here are some pictures from the shower compliments of Bethany Lyle, official photographer:

A shot of the hysterical competition of who could dress the baby the fastest. Jay seriously needs help learning how to dress babies blindfolded. Who does this on a regular basis & can teach him?

Fran's sister Nathalie put together one of the nicest showers I've been to and everyone had a great time. And Fran was very gracious to host 5 extra girls plus one seriously cute 6 month old boy for a few nights. It was hours of laughter, fun stories and great memories. I love all these girls!
By Sunday evening it was just Eryn and I left at Fran's house and I actually wanted to try my hand at scrapbooking for the first time. This is pretty intimidating stuff for me since I completely lack any sense of creativity AND my friends could be professional scrapbookers (scrappers?). I'm sure there is such a thing, right? They all have amazing talent and I usually just sit there with my mouth hanging open looking through their books. Anyway, I'm determined to put something together for Sierra so I took this opportunity for Eryn and Fran to walk me through the process. Eryn basically did all the work because I made her, Fran pretty much has her own store of supplies that she opened up to me, and I did a fabulous job of gluing things to the page. Wha-la! Here are my first two scrapbook pages!
Maybe by next spring I'll have another page completed. At this rate I'll have Sierra's book done by the time she gets married.

Ice Anyone?

For those of you who don't necessarily follow the news from the Northeast part of the US, parts of New England are still trying to cope with days of power outages. Here is the little story of the Fringer family dealings over the weekend...
Friday morning around 1am Rob and I awoke to a BOOM and then flashing blue lights outside our window. I didn't know what was going on and was very confused in my sleepy state until Rob told me it was just our power going out and a cop car outside (possibly moving a fallen branch). Ok, I realized it would be a cold night but just snuggled under the covers and went back to sleep. Sleep did take a little while since I kept hearing crashes of branches falling outside but luckily nothing came near to damaging our house. When I woke again at the normal rising time we realized that the power would probably be out for a while once we looked outside at the massive covering of ice everywhere. It amazes me how something that looks so pretty can be so destructive. Here is what our property looked like.

So much for my beautiful, tall lilac tree
And another tree down

We were able to spend the night with some friends who were lucky enough not to have lost power and we had a nice time with them on Friday. Saturday Rob and Steve (our youth pastor) were all over the place assessing the situation at church, checking out our place and just trying to be of help to anyone who needed it. I was so surprised and felt so blessed that our power came back around noon on Saturday. So we had it pretty easy compared to most of the people in the greater Nashua area. Our only lasting effect was that our cable tv and internet didn't come back on until Tuesday night which wasn't so bad since I could probably do with less of both of those. As for the rest of our community, we are still hearing of people from church who even today (Wednesday) do not have power and may not until after Christmas since there seems to be a shortage of replacement transformers for the power lines. But it was a blessing to see so many people at church on Sunday even though we had to keep all of our coats on, and there were so many people offerering spare heaters, spare beds and anything else they could think of to people who had a need. I believe that the number was around 400,000 people who were affected by this ice storm and lost their power for a few days. Wow!

HI

Hi everyone! I wanted to share Sierra's first word with you, so HI! So far this is all she is saying clearly but she does like to talk quite a bit in her own language.
I haven't made a post in a while but you haven't missed much either. It has been a pretty relaxing October and November. Sierra took her first steps back on September 13th and then took another month to really get going with it but she is a pro now. It is so cute to see her walking all over the place.
At the end of October we experienced Sierra's first flight out to California to visit Grandma and Grandpa Fringer, cousins, aunt and uncle. I knew ahead of time that considering how very active she is, a 6 hour flight would be pretty interesting. And that's just what it was. I can't say that the first flight was horrible, although it really felt like it at the time. I know that she could have behaved much worse but I don't even want to imagine what that would be like. There were fits of screaming, attempts to escape our little row of seats, and sadly, tears shed by me (Vanessa that is, Rob managed to get through the flight without crying. At least one of us did.) Finally we made it to CA without any angry looks from our neighboring passengers. Sierra was a wonderful house guest for her grandparents and we all enjoyed the visit very much. Below is a picture of Sierra in the opposite attire needed for the beautiful weather out there, but modeling her new winter coat that we definitely needed once we got back home to New Hampshire. It has seen a lot of use the past few days when the temps haven't reached any higher than the mid-30s.
We don't have any snow yet but I'll be sure to take a picture of the first snowfall. Hopefully we'll get some snowboots for Sierra before that happens so I can get some pictures of her in the first snowfall.

Heat for the winter

As some of you know, a year and a half ago Rob and I bought an OLD New England house. That means lots of charm and character right? Last winter we found out that it meant expensive oil heat that barely made us feel warm. So, in preparation for our next New Hampshire winter we got a wood pellet stove for our living room! Hopefully over the next few months we'll be feeling much more warmth for a smaller price. I'll be sure to let you know how it works out for us. I already love the wood stove smell! Check out the pictures of Rob's beautiful tiling job.

Just some random pictures

On Saturday Sierra got a magnetic letter board at a yard sale. Already 1/2 of the pieces are missing :)

August

August was a busy month for us and I should have been writing blog posts as we went along but as you know if you've been faithfully clicking on our link that has not happened. I apologize to our friends and family for not filling you in and for now giving you a very abbreviated post of the past month but I will at least attach a picture with my brief descriptions. Here we go...



It started out with my 7th and possibly last appearance as a bridesmaid. My good friend and former roommate Kristy married Andrew Walker on 8/3 and it was a great day. God cleared away the thunder storm just long enough for us to hold the outdoor ceremony and then as soon as the guests returned to the building for the reception the clouds let loose and it rained again. The timing was all His.






Next we took our first family vacation as the three of us to a place in upstate NY called Camp of the Woods. We went with a few families from our church and had a great time. We also got to celebrate Sierra's first birthday there. We have great video her enjoying her slice of birthday cake that I hope to upload to our dropshots.com website soon. The camp is a fantastic place for a family vacation and we hope to return someday when Sierra and any future children can participate in the many activities offered. Unfortunately that week was the last of what seemed like a month of rainy, dreary weather in the Northeast so we didn't get in as many beach activities (lounging in the sun for me) we hoped for but we still had a great time there with our friends.


Following our vacation we had a great visit with my family at our first Baillie Family Reunion in Mass. (That is my mom's side of the family for anyone who doesn't know, and where Sierra's middle name comes from.) My family drove up from PA and stayed a few days with us in NH. We entertained ourselves at our house by cooking meals together, eating more birthday cake for both Sierra and Austin (2), watching the end of the Olympics, holding some rather competitive contests at Mario Kart and bowling on Andy's Wii, and trying to teach Sierra how to share her toys with Austin. That last one is going to need some more work. It was so nice to have them here!

That wraps up August. Now it is the 5th of September and I have officially started my new 'at home' job. Trying to figure out how much work I can get done during Sierra's naps is challenging right now but we'll get the hang of it soon.
Thanks for the patience and I'll try to get some more posts soon.

The heat drove me into the lake

Some important information before you look at the pictures below is that for many years now I've been strictly a pool swimmer. At the risk of sounding very girly, lakes hold no appeal for me other than sitting in a boat on top of one or doing a bit of kneeboarding when I'm feeling adventurous. I don't like seeing fish swimming around me, the water is very dirty, and I hate it when the lake bottom feels mushy under my feet. After the backyard splash pool trial (see previous post) I knew that if I wanted Sierra to experience swimming (if you call it that at 11 months) I'd have to venture into the lake at Joe and Heidi's house. So we drove over today and without thinking about it too much I went right in and we had a great time. We floated around for quite a while and she had so much fun in the water and playing in the wet sand. I'm pretty proud of myself for overcoming my minor disgust for my daughters enjoyment. Oh and even though she didn't smile for the camera she really did have a good time.

Resisting the temptation to put her fingers in her mouth

'jumping' off the dock like the other kids

Fun in the Sun

Sierra finally had the chance to splash around in her baby pool a few days ago. To my surprise she wasn't as much of a fan of it as I expected. She loves splashing in the tub but outside the grass has much more appeal than the water. Since my soccer days I haven't been a 'play in the grass and dirt' person so I wasn't crazy about Sierra's preferred activities on this day. I will try hard to get used to the fact that kids like to get dirty though and let her have some fun. I could only stand it long enough to take some pictures on this occasion but next time I'll try to indulge her a little more. She also hardly sits still long enough for me to snap the picture which is why I haven't posted to this blog in a while (for those of you requesting an update). It's tough to get a good shot of this little one who is constantly on the move.

Happy 4th!

We hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th of July!

Climbing, the new favorite activity

In our office we have a love seat under the window. Rob and I were sitting there with Sierra last night and she must have been feeling adventurous. She set her eyes on the window and proceeded to climb right up me, over my shoulder and right onto the window sill. She was pretty proud of herself. When I see all these new things she can do I'm so amazed at how quickly these little ones grow and learn. It's so fun to watch....the first time. I'm sure she won't be satisfied cuddling on the couch with me anymore though.

Weekend in Maine

This weekend we vacated to Maine where we enjoyed some fun in the sun. We joined the Farris family at their new vacation house, which is located on Horn Pond, right over the NH boarder. We ate, slept, fished, boated, read, played Catan, relaxed and just had an overall good time breaking in the house.








This weekend was especially productive for Sierra, she learned how to walk. Well, not by herself, but with the assistance of a wheeled highchair. You can witness this spectacular event in the short video below.


I know what you're thinking: "she's only 10 months old!" Well, it is becoming apparent to us that she is not the type of kid that likes to sit around and just play with toys. This girl is on the move! She is going places--and fast! I guess it is about time we baby-proof the house and buy one of those baby dog leashes so we can keep track of our little cutie.

The Downside of a Milestone

Enough said.

Major Milestone

Sierra crawled today! She was enticed by some mango peach applesauce and kept crawling after it as daddy kept moving the spoon back farther. She's been on the verge for at least 2 weeks now so we're pretty excited that she managed it. Excited for now anyway, check back with me in a few weeks to see how excited I am then. Yeah Sierra!!

Spring has come!

Today's Firsts:

First flowers blooming in our yard
Sierra's first trip to a park
My first sunburn of 2008 (why can't I remember sunscreen??)
Our first meeting with the online mom's group I joined!

I did get a picture of our flowers but sadly I didn't have my camera at the park. This was a big day for me because it is really stepping out of my comfort zone to meet new people on my own like this. Several weeks ago I came across a local mom's group online that was joining for the purpose of getting out for walks and meeting other moms. It sounded like a great opportunity for me in several aspects; I want to get out for walks now that the weather is cooperating and I feel like it's good for me to meet people outside of my little world of home and church. The meetup went very well. There were 5 ladies there, all first time moms and all the children were between the ages of 6 and 10 months. We were all later-in-life first time moms also, not that 30 is late but it was nice to have that in common also. We walked around the park, talked and apparently got sunburn since my arms are glowing as much as the computer screen right now. All in all though it was a good day.

Spring Come Quickly

I've been ready for Spring for many weeks now but just to remind me again that we live in New England, it snowed about 4 inches yesterday. That was just a little disappointing. But it was a good week up until that point. We had a very nice Easter with our church family and spent the afternoon with friends playing our new favorite game The Settlers of Catan.
My new job on Thursdays is going well. I enjoy getting out and using that part of my brain again and I love that Rob gets to spend a day alone with Sierra. It's cute to see how she watches her daddy when he's sitting near her or walking through the room. For the last several weeks she's been content sitting on the floor playing with her toys but now I'm noticing her preference for me to hold her or play with her. If I set her down on the floor now she'll protest and reach for me. She used to sit in her seat in the kitchen and play while we cook or clean up but now she just cries. We're constantly learning how to handle the new stages and hopefully this will pass quickly. Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

Sushi anyone?

Rob and I have finally tried our hand in making sushi at home the other day and I wanted to show all of you. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to try some new ingredients next time. Due to the slim pickings at the fish counter in the grocery store we went with shrimp for our first attempt, so these pictures are the official 'Fringer Shrimp Tempura Rolls' including cucumber, carrot and avocado. And just so I'm not taking credit when it isn't due, Rob actually did all the work for the sushi and I was in charge of making the egg drop soup. It was so good!


In Sierra news we just got back from her well baby dr visit and I forget his exact words desrcibing her but fantastic would do :) She is now 18 1/2 pounds and 27 inches. God has truly blessed us with a strong and healthy baby who is so easy going and happy.