Some covert photos at my parents house on my birthday. Ginny is the cat in the foreground (sister of Fred and George). Playing with grandpa:

Oooh the cat’s water bowl:

Doh! Cleaning up the spilled water:

Josie gets her own water!

Oh no we’ve been spotted!

The weekend before last I started to feel older as I am now 30 years old. We had a fun weekend. On the day of I got some fun presents, Josie helped me open them, but she needs to work on not eating the paper. She’s got to train for the holidays you know. Then I spent the afternoon at a party for our little friend Ryan which was a nice distraction to hang around the really young people, Josie had a blast! The next day we went to the aquarium because I like it and we thought Josie would too!

Josie has a real obcession with kissing babies. We brought out my baby photos and she kissed them (see photo below). She kisses the babies in her books (and the cats). She kisses the boys at the mom’s group too! Mostly on the forehead. Most of them look sincerely shocked when she does it. Our friend Luke (of Catherine and Jamie) though at this past mom’s group was ready and waiting though with his tongue waaay out for his kiss. He got a few on the forehead.

Our friend Wing posted about how to make an ‘easy’ loaf of homemade bread on his blog so I thought I’d give it a try this weekend. I bought the yeast and all. I didn’t have a bunch of the equipment (stone or a peel) and I (once again) didn’t read the whole way through the recipe before I started. So come dinner time the bread had risen the first time, but not the second. So we had some flat bread with our dinner of curried split peas; it was fairly appropriate actually. Then I made the rest of the bread into a big loaf and baked it off on a pizza pan. It was crazy delicious and the whole huge thing was gone very quickly even with just me and Jordi eating it. So I must say it is a very forgiving recipe and very good. I just may have to do it again, but next time I’ll bake smaller loaves so we don’t eat so much bread at once.

my funny looking loaf

If she’s on hardwood floor, without shoes, Josie likes to do a little moonwalk like move.

We’re thinking of getting a GPS system for our upcoming driving trip so that when Josie decides that we need to stop, we can find some place rather than just pull off the side of the road. Either that or map out where the Panera’s, starbucks, etc. are all along the entire route. Do you have one you like? Seen any crazy deals lately? Want to lend us yours for a few days if you’re not using it?

We had a great Thanksgiving although not without its challenges. Josie was sick on the day itself, even had a very low grade fever and wasn’t feeling sociable. She healed up quickly though and got back to her normal cheery self. She had a great time meeting and playing with everyone! Unfortunately she also decided that getting up at 5am was awesome, so we made some early morning trips to Starbucks to help the rest of the family get some sleep. Sunday morning we had a lovely brunch at our aunt Ana and uncle Carlos’ house for more socializing and some great family photos.

She’s letting go now. When we walk Josie around with one hand, if we try to stop her and she wants to keep going, she just let’s go and keeps walking. Depending on how far her object of desire is, and her balance, she often makes it to her target. Determination is her middle name.

This year I made pies and sweet potatos for the thanksgiving feast. This year’s apple pie was a new and odd recipe where I made a caramel sauce ahead, put apples in the crust and then poured the caramel on top of the top crust through the holes! This is another example of me not reading through the recipe because this was a real surprise to me when I sat down to make it. I started very early in the morning at least so no problems!

Tonight we did a weight check on Josie to see where she is now. She’s getting huge! 16 lbs now. I think she’s been spurting up a bit in the last few days. Must be all that broccoli. Although apparently carrots are the new broccoli don’t you know?