A fun holiday!

We had a busy but fun holiday weekend over here. We did some furniture shopping and have ordered a sofa, dining table, coffee tables and dresser for the new house. The sofa is being delivered the day after we complete - as is all our stuff from the boat which is pretty exciting! Oliver was really good as we spent around 4 hours in one furniture shop on Saturday.

On Sunday Oliver got a new toy which a friend of Grandma Sandy's gave him. It is a play gym thing which he can stand up in and has lots of different toys which he can spin around to see. It's great because it doesn't move so if I have some jobs to do I can put him in it and not worry about him getting into trouble!! You'll see a few pics and a video of it below.

Sunday afternoon wasn't so great as it was really stormy here and a couple of tornados hit the ground in the Minneapolis area. A whole new experience for me - not a very good one but something that does happen here. The hail stones in places were the size of golf balls but around here they probably got to the size of a 5p piece. Somehow Jon and Ray managed to get 4 cars into the 3 car garage to try and avoid causing any damage to Jon's new car!!

On a brighter note, we went to the horse racing on Monday which was good fun. We placed a few bets and I think came out even or maybe a dollar or two up - we won't spend it all at once!!

By the way, I am loving the picture at the top of this entry! As soon as I got the camera out Oliver posed like this for me! He is turning into cousin Morgan who always likes to say cheese when the camera comes out :-)) And I almost forgot to say that Oliver has pulled himself up to standing on a few occasions now. I haven't been able to get it on video as yet but I'll keep trying for next time!!! I have managed to catch his new high-speed crawling though!

That's tasty beer :-)

Jennifer and Mikayla - apparently Mikayla has learned the art of high pitched squealing from her older cousin!


Enjoying my new toy - after being slightly bemused to start with!!

Ray & Sandy's new 4 car garage - Jon's Civic is at the far end and this photo is taken from the side door into the garage

Oliver and Grandma Sandy at the horse racing

A lovely Oliver and Daddy pic

9 months old

Today Oliver is 9 months old and he is getting himself into all sorts of mischief!! I seem to spend most of my day picking him up and moving him away from places he shouldn't be, LOL!! It's still the same old things he's into - plug sockets and power cords!! And he's discovered the stairs going down to the basement and he can crawl over to them in lightning speed so I definitely need an extra pair of eyes!! Talking of crawling, he is now doing really well at proper crawling rather than dragging himself across the ground. And he is trying to pull himself up to stand. As you will see from the video, the windowsills here are the perfect height for an Oliver to put his hands on and try and pull himself up. I don't think it'll be too long before he's successful. You will see he is wearing a cute pair of moccasins that Grandma Sandy bought him. These are helping him to grip on the wooden floor when he's trying to heave himself up!!

The eating is still going really well most of the time. Oliver's favourite food by a long way is toast! He munches his way through a slice of brown toast every morning and gets so excited when I put it on his tray! He is also pretty good with veggies and fruit. Yesterday he munched on a slice of red pepper when we out at lunch and last night I tried yoghurt again and he loved it (plain yog with pear puree mixed in).

Not much else to report. The house stuff is moving along - just over 4 weeks until we complete now. We are actively looking for cars as well but don't have one yet. Maybe this weekend we'll get it sorted out :-) It's a big weekend for sales so we need to go furniture shopping as well!!

Anyway, have a fab long weekend everybody - the weather here is supposed to be nice so I hope it's the same in the UK!

Oliver loves to pose for the camera and here he is with his new cup

Just cute!

Cheeky little poser!!

Oliver eating his dinner last night and loving to feed himself yoghurt!!

Grandpa was trying to make me laugh.....

....but Grandma Sandy was more successful!

Investigating my basket of toys

Trying to stand up with the help of the table

Posing for the camera - AGAIN!!

Coming to America!!

Hello everyone! Well, we made it to America just fine and have now been here for about 10 days. Oliver was a star on the flight over and actually slept for 5 of the 8 and a bit hours we were in the air. However, he has been pretty jetlagged since he got here and has really only just settled into the new timezone. He has also been VERY hungry for the past few days and waking in the night for milk. Hopefully just a growth spurt as he slept through last night. But he is now on 3 meals a day and absolutely loving the finger foods. The messier he can get the better!!!

On other news, we have found a house and had our offer accepted last week. We had the inspection (survey) done today and all is well. We should be completing on the 19th June so not too long until we have our own place. Until then our poor relatives are having to put up with us - we are really grateful to all of them for letting us stay. I'm sure once we get settled in the house everything will be just fine and my little bit of home sickness will go.

Anyway, I have a load of photos and videos of Oliver that have been taken over the past few weeks :-)

Packing day at the old house

Cleaning my teeth

I love reading my books!

Listening intently to the wise teachings of Uncle Matt

Cousins Oliver and Mikayla have had some time to bond. Poor Mikayla can't quite get to grips with this noisy brut of a boy who came to stay!!

Mummy - I really don't want to wear my hat!

Lunch today - a fine combination of avocado, cauliflower, cucumber and sweet potato -yum!!

A rear view of our new house