Memorial Day

The holiday couldn't have started better for Bethy. We discovered a luna moth parked on the wall right outside our apartment door.

Here's uncle John sharing some highly-coveted quality time with Haellers.

Mom dominated the cornhole competetion. She's even taking it easy on 'em.

Caleb had to put everything into it. This was his signature toss, every one identical.

Haelley can never get enough of swing time.

Haelley's never eaten rabbit before, but she loved them.

Misc. Haelley

Miss Diane found a stacking ring toy thingy at a garage sale and got it for Haelley. It has become her new favorite toy. She has a special fascination with the orange ring. I couldn't decide which of these pictures to choose, so I just put them all in.

She loves to crawl around carrying her luggage in her mouth and in the tub is no different. She kept it there forever long (the ring not the tub), I'm sure her mouth must've been numb.

Say cheese!

She plays so hard that the last feeding of the day usually ends like this.

Washington Trip

The beginning. The poor girl was sick most of the trip and wasn't in the best of spirits. I don't know what we would have done if we hadn't brought her blanket and picked up a substitute Eeyore on the way.

I think that this was the only smile that Michael received from Jason the entire trip. It was pretty sweet though. He had just finished his bottle and was pretty happy.

Michael took this picture in Utah, I think. I really liked it, the mountains were so pretty!

This picture is sooooo special. Great-Grandpa had to endure the thumb-sucking in this picture, but otherwise, she did good. It was great to get to see them, they are still very much like I remember them and it was a lot of fun to spend time with them.

We played in Great-Grandma's backyard several times to give Haelley some space. She loved being outside!

She was a little unsure of the rough texture, but it was fun to be up so high.

Smile!

Grandpa was very disturb by the sorry state of the new generation of youngster. Here he was ridiculing the behaviors of gangsters and anybody on "MTV". He even "busted a move" that I may upload later.

The Grand Coulee Dam

One day of our trip we set aside to go to the GCD (it's too long to keep spelling out). It was a lot of fun, I had been once before, but hadn't really appreciated the size and especially the history. It was built at the order of Teddy Roosevelt as we were coming out of the Great Depression. The idea was to create jobs for the many unemployed and fix the severe drought/flooding problems going on in Washington.

I've really come to appreciate "family pictures" at different places, I love to look at them and think of the fun times that were had.

I think that I scared Haelley's poor Grandpa with this! She was perfectly secured but was enjoying looking at the water below.

The end of the trip. She was such a trooper, but being sick, traveling and meeting so many new people really took a toll on her.

Update

So many people have called to check on Haelley (I'm not sure who all looks at the blog, though), that I decided to just tell it all here.
Haelley caught the stomach flu from her Daddy-man (that's what she knows him by) yesterday. She threw up ten times between 3:30 and 9:00. She couldn't keep down anything, but we gave her pedialyte after every time because Michael couldn't bear the thought of her dry-heaving. (He was GREAT by the way. Even though he was sick as well, he was the first one at her side. The first time she threw up, he gave her a bath and held her. Everytime she so much as hiccuped, he was diving across the room with a cold washcloth for her forehead. I wish every child had a Daddy-man like him.)
We put her in the playpen to sleep in our room last night. She slept really well, from 10:30 to 8:00. I nursed her at 8:00 and she threw that right back up. Since then, she has kept down some pedialyte, crackers and some pudding. She is so funny, she doesn't know that she should be complaining! If we could all be like little children. She is napping now, she's been pretty sleepy. She is a little dehydrated I think, she just doesn't look right and isn't having many wet diapers. I want to get fluid in her, but I'm concerned that I will cause her to keep throwing up. May God's will be done, but I believe that she'll be alright. Prayers are always welcome!

The Destroyer

Michael had never seen a child do this to a cassette tape before, so he was rather shocked. The tape was not valuable to us in anyway, so we let her have some fun with it. I didn't know a cassette held so much tape! She had it strung out all over the apartment.

At The Creek

You can't really tell how big this fellow was in the picture. But he was probably 4 inches or more. We saw three of them all together, but this one was the biggest. This is especially for Joseph, I know he will appreciate it!

She slipped off the ledge and into the water, but she would have kept going if Daddy hadn't rescued her. For all of the worried people, Michael is just outside the picture waiting to snatch her if she falls

She was so proud of her self!

This was really sweet to me, I just had to take a picture.

Little Miss Haelley is really a ballerina at heart, she was so excited that she was bouncing everywhere.

Smile for the camera!

It was really windy, so her ponytail was blowing sideways.

We took Haelley down to the creek for the first time last week. She wasn't scared at all, even though the water was toe numbingly cold, she tried several times to dive in and wasn't bothered with walking through it.