Visitors, visitors

Hi everyone,

Sorry for being gone for awhile but family came to visit. And since I think Andrew and Mom make up half of my readership (hi Zuke and Jill! the other half) they knew what was going on. But Zuke and Jill need to hear about my vacation so here's a short (hopefully) synopsis of it.

My parents and Juice's parents arrived on Friday, July 1st to fairly nice weather and lots of work to be done at my house. They were nice enough to clean and put up a cupboard in my bathroom while everyone kind of passed Butterfly around. We were trying to get the house and food ready for her blessing on the 3rd.

The blessing went really well. Our neighbors came to the meeting, along with Naomi and her son Jaron. It was a good blessing, and Butterfly cried all the way through it. But she looked so cute!

All white and frilly. Juice says watching my mom and is like watching 2 girls with their doll. True...but this doll actually gets bigger. :)

We spent a nice quiet 4th of July at home while everyone kind of did their own thing. (See Andrew's blog for more details if he ever gets around to talking about it...hint hint.) We went to a bbq at our parent's hotel and watched the fireworks.
Butterfly handled the fireworks really well and didn't seem to mind the noise too much. The show was very good, and I got to play with the firework feature on my camera. What do you think?

On Tuesday, we caravaned up to Baltimore and saw the National Aquarium. (www.aqua.org) It was very cool. They had a huge tank full of rays and sharks and one turtle right when you came in. And from there, you went up to different levels. Each level was showcasing something different. They had things like fish and wetland habitats around the area, alligators, the Amazon river, and more. It was really fascinating to see all the fish. The best part about the whole aquarium was strangely not fish related. They had a rainforest mock up that you could walk through at the top. (Juice says complete with humidity...not like we needed any more of that.) It was beautiful and had animals just hanging out in the enclosure.

They did make us check our stroller so we had to carry Butterfly around in her sling but she doesn't mind that too much. My dad was carrying her at one point and a lady came up to him and couldn't believe that we had a human baby in it. She made my parents show her Butterfly.

After the aquarium, we went out for food at a seafood restaurant overlooking the harbor. Now I'm not a big seafood eater (can't stand the stuff) but I did have a hamburger and watched my dad and Andrew enjoy their Maryland crab cakes.

Andrew and Angela left on Wednesday morning and Mom and I dressed Butterfly up in her blessing dress once more and took her to get her first professional pictures taken. We went to Sears and the gal that did the pictures was very good. She even got a small smile out of Butterfly .

Juice's parents left us on Friday morning and my parents stayed till Monday. It was a great vacation for everyone!

Since the company left, Butterfly has been cooing and talking up a storm. She is finally recognizing Juice and will calm down for him. She is discovering her hands and will look wide eyed at them. She is also starting to roll from her back to her side or vice versa. The best thing that she does is smile though. And I caught a doozy on camera.

Isn't she just so cute?!

Until next time,

Safire, Juice, Butterfly and Soot