Happy Birthday to Cora

 

To our beautiful Cora Beth,
The past year has been such a joy watching you grow, learn and develop into a sweet little  girl. We knew it would fly by as we experienced the crazy time lapse with Della. It does seem like just a few weeks ago that we brought you home. My favorite memories from the past year, are watching your excitement whenever Daddy enters the room or when Della comes into the room. Clapping your hands with a huge smile on your face comes so naturally to you that you don't even need prompted!

 

 

 Your wild hair that just will not be tamed with clippys or hair bows constantly brings smiles to everyone we come across. Not many people could pull off a 'do like that! Rarely is there a moment that you are not content - you have been a happy, easy baby since you were born. When you first started crawling, rather than crawling off the carpet onto the tile floor, you would crawl to the edge and sit and spin in circles. Once you had seen everything from one perspective, you would stop and spin the other way for a new view.

We are now just discovering that you do not like bananas plain. You do, however, love to take banana pieces and squish them up in your hands, reach out of your high chair and drop them onto the floor - "uh oh"!. You love to play with hair - your hair, my hair, Della's hair - it seem to be soothing to you - right when I lay you down for a nap, your pacifier goes in and both hands go up to your hair.
I never thought I would be sad to see the baby stage go, but watching you turn one is bittersweet! I will miss my tiny baby girl but absolutely cannot wait to watch you grow into a toddler, little girl, teenager and eventually an adult. Your Aunt Jo once told me, every stage gets better than the last and so far that is true. We love you so much and are so thankful you are a part of our lives! Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Summer!

Summer is starting to wind down but it continues to be hot here. Schools in our area started today!! I am holding off on decorating for fall until September though as it still feels like summer.

The girls are doing so great! They have started swimming lessons and are both doing so well. The lessons focus primarily on life-saving skills. Della has passed three of her 4 check points she needs to complete before she does her completion check-off. She can swim under water with her eyes open, she can roll from her back to her belly to swim underwater, and she can float unassisted on her back. The last skill she needs to master is rolling from her tummy to her back.

Cora is mainly working on floating in the correct float position and turning from face down in the water to face up. She is so close to doing this and she has done really well at holding her breath underwater which is great.

Cora is crawling everywhere now so we have to keep a closer eye as she is always interested in eating everything too :) One of her favorite things that she does is crawl a few feet and then she'll sit up and use her legs to turn in a circle. Once she goes one way, she'll go around the other way to get a different perspective. It is so funny to watch but I have yet to capture it on video. We call it her "sit and spin" move. She continues to be such a happy baby and now can wave to us, point at what she wants, clap her hands, say Dada, Della and bah. No Mama's yet but I am waiting patiently :)

Della is learning so much at school! Her official preschool (rather than summer sessions) starts tomorrow. She can recognize most letters and even can tell us what letters some words start with. Especially the letter D. Well see something that starts with a "D" (like on a book or magazine) and she'll say - Mama, look! It says Della :) She loves her teachers (Miss Nicki and Miss Bre) and she loves to learn. Lately, she has been playing teacher with all of her "kids" (stuffed animals and dollies). Her class is called the Cheerful Clams but the other 3 year old classes are called the Precious Peacocks and the Jumping Jellyfish (she calls them Junkin' Jellyfish though). Our living room is divided up into those three classrooms and she is quite particular about which of her kids go where. Cora is always in the "Junkin' Jellyfish" class :) Luckily, that classroom is where the toys are.

It always amazes me to see the mannerisms that they copy from us. The other day, I stubbed my toe and had my head in my hands to somehow ease the pain and Della said "Mom, I don't want to hear your whining" which Derek thought was just hilarious. It made me feel a little bit uncompassionate at the time but Della is currently in the stage where the whining is a little constant and she likes to mimic Cora's crying or other babies that she is around.

On Friday, my work sent me to Universal Studios for the day which was rough... (not) I absolutely love me job so far and am continuing to learn and grow my accounting skills. Derek is doing well at his job and is wrapping up some compliance meetings that he was having a travel frequently for. I am looking forward to having him home consistently and he is looking forward to more time at his office doing regular work.

Our next upcoming is adventure is a camping trip with Louis and Shannon's family. We are so excited!!

Licking the beaters after making Mom's birthday cake

These girls are the best of friends

I am amazed at how blue Della's eyes are here!

Bed head!

Cleaning a pumpkin from Mom's garden - we had 5 big ones!

 

Other than the cruise...

So this is what has been going on around here other than the cruise...

Della started gymnastics class - she has almost completed 2 months now. She loves it!

Preparing for a somersault

Bath time fun - Della makes coffee for her and Cora

Our Irish drinks in Ireland - apple cider ale for me and Guiness for Derek

Duckie got to come and stay with the girls while we were gone. They had a great time!

Cora discovered Dutch.

Saturday morning cuddle time with Daddy

My garden has gotten HUGE!! I already have a pumpkin that is completely orange and ready for carving?? I guess we'll have to carve a flower in it. Or just eat it...

Fun at the splash pad near our house.

Della testing out her new roller skates and gear that she got for her birthday.

In other news, I am loving my new job! I am learning a lot and work with a really great group of people. The remainder of our summer is looking to be pretty low key. We just booked a camping trip with Louis and Shannon over Labor Day. I am so excited!! A Disney trip in the fall is also in the works. We'll see though (I have high hopes.)

Valencia, Spain

Valencia, Spain was our favorite port by far. I think it is because we had an awesome tour guide on our tour of the city.

Derek's co-worker, Cindy Wheeler booked this private tour for 25 people and invited us along. Our tour guide, Suzie, was half Dutch, half Spanish - that is probably why she was so good :)

We took a bus to the City of Arts and Sciences which is an architectural phenomenon. The majority of the building constructed were made of concrete and then covered in white ceramic. One of the structures was made to look like the human eye - maybe you can tell from the pictures. In almost all of the buildings, there is no man-made light because there are so many windows in the buildings. We didn't take a tour of the whole facility, mostly just the outside. At the top of one of the buildings, there was a display of sundials and different time keepers for seasons, months, years, days, hours, etc. It was so interesting to think back to when this method of time keeping was developed.

Derek winking - this is the building that looks like an eye. The supports in the window are supposed to resemble eyelashes.

 From the City of Arts and Sciences, we headed to the old part of downtown. Our first stop was a Horchateria where we enjoyed Horchata (Spanish horchata is different than Mexican horchata) and a sweet bun. I added a cappuccino to my order too :)

Valencia is the only city in Spain that still allows bull fighting. It happens in this arena only 4 times per year. We missed in by just a few days - the next one was scheduled for July 27.

These were some amazing ornate marble sculptures.

Derek turning a really big door knob.

When royalty living here, this sculpture would face inward when they were home, in a sense, guarding them, and when they were out, she would face out. When we walked in, she did not turn.

This was an old pharmacy turned into a boutique selling only Valencia made items. Here we tasted some Valencia made wine made from Valencia oranges.

 After eating, we walked around the downtown area for a bit and ended up in one of the biggest markets in Spain. There was a section for meats and cheeses, for fruits and vegetables and a section for seafood. We found some interesting offerings in each section. In the meats and cheeses area there were whole, skinned, rabbits that included eyes along with scalded pigs and ham hocks (prosciutto types I think); in the seafood area there was a dried shark and little pools of eels that the sellers would swipe their hands in to make them squirm when tourists were lingering near them. A little unnverving... Our tour guide had set up a special area there for us to have some champagne with some cheese, sausage, and prosciutto from one of the vendors.

 We stopped at another café to have little open faced sandwiches again with meats and cheeses on top along with sangria. There were all types. I had one with cream cheese, kiwi and another fruit and one with cheese and ham. Our friends had ordered Spanish paella to share which was also very good.

 After seeing the market, we headed to walk to some cathedrals and some old plazas in the area. At one of the cathedrals, there was a bronze replica of the cathedral right in front that was built for blind people to feel the building and how it was built. There was a braille explanation of the building so it would be described as they felt the structure.

One castle that we walked by was right along a square that dated back to 138 BC. There is a picture of a doorway and if you look to the right of the doorway, there is a stone with scars on it - these scars were made from the sharpening of axes that were used for beheadings in the square. 

 Our last stop of the day was at Café de las Horas where we had more tapas and more sangria. We enjoyed "sausages from hell" (the name in Spanish was much cooler sounding but I forget it), braised potatoes with a spicy sauce, fried cheeses with a raspberry sauce, shrimp in garlic butter, and baguettes. The sangria at all these places was just fantastic! We learned how to give a traditional Spanish toast - Up, Down, Center, In the throat (I forget the Spanish words again) -with a popular dessert liquor. We loaded back on to the bus and headed back to the boat. No wonder it was my favorite tour with all the food and sangria :)