11 months

 We're just a month shy of celebrating a first birthday for our sweet Dabney Hazel.

 At 11 months:

pulls to a stand and cruises

waves

babbles

"babababa" "dadadada" "mamama" "hi-ya"

talking?

into everything

puts everything in her mouth

chews everything

busy

giggly

clicks and grinds her teeth (!)

sleeps 11 hours at night

2 naps per day (when our schedule allows)

nurses exclusively 7x per day

happy and content

social

loves to be held

doesn't like to sit in a highchair (see above)
loves to tear apart magazines

interacts and plays

fingers and chews a gauzy blanket

wears 12-18 mo. clothing

Our little stinker Dabney is such a joy and blessing to our family.  

Dabney is never lacking attention.  She is surrounded by 8 adoring siblings and parents who can't get enough of her sweetness.  Maclaren affectionately calls her "my baby!" 

We're seeing so much growth from our girl: blond curls are growing and her huge, fun personality is really emerging. 

We love her! 

 We adore her.

*We are so thankful our beautiful babe is feeling better!  She's had a rough past two weeks: ear infection, conjunctivitis, and brochiolitis.  It's wonderful to have her bright eyes and giggles back.  Praise God for healing!

Blue

After several weeks of medicine and time for healing, Hiwot's scalp is healthy and we're seeing lots of regrowth.  We've been looking forward to installing new twisties . . . this time with a bit of color!

Hiwot selected the blue yarn and is rocking blue streaks in her hair! 
This girl could make anything look good :)

Splash Park

After sending our good friends off on their way to Minnesota from Memphis, (and a fabulous Ethiopian feast at Abyssinia) we ventured over to the Collierville Splash Park. 
We've been looking forward to a trip to the Splash Park all summer - it's fantastic! 

While the big boys loved being doused with buckets of water, Maclaren was a bit overwhelmed and more hesitant to get wet. 

I love having weekday adventures with my kiddos - we should do it more often :)

Mississippi

After our visit with our fantastic Northern friends, we tagged along with them to Memphis as they continued on their journey home - it gave us an excuse for a fun day out and extended our visit, a win-win!

We thought a Mississippi River adventure at Mud Island would give everyone a chance to get out some energy, and share our neighboring section of Ol' Man River with people who have walked across it's headwaters in Minnesota.  Our crew of 13 kiddos raced across the Skybridge and splashed down 1,000 miles of the Mississippi River.  We were hoping the Riverwalk at Mud Island would allow us to walk from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico, but its scale model only featured the Lower Mississippi. 

It was a beautifully hot day, perfect for a dip in the Mississippi :)

Summer of Swim

2014 has brought us the "Summer of Swim."
Pool swimming and lake swimming . . . it's been fantastic!   The kids have especially been loving jump competitions to determine jump winners in various styles: pencil jumps, front flips, belly flops, dives, cannon balls, backwards dives, and the famous "funny jump;" as well as swimming races and pool games.  The kids are getting to be fantastic swimmers thanks to all this practice! 

Dabney has been a wonderful audience, joining in to splash every once in a while :)

Projects (backyard)

The BIG yard project was in our backyard.

When we first moved into our home, the yard was full of slightly overgrown, but beautiful planing beds.  Our first year, we worked, and worked, and worked, and worked pruning, trimming, and mulching.  It was too much work, and as our family has grown we've had even less time to devote to yard work.  We've let our yard run wild.  The original planting beds are hardly recognizable.

So this year, we brought in help.  Over the course of three days, a crew with a bobcat worked to remove overgrown planting beds, out-of-control wisteria vines, gravel pathways and bedding pavers.  They also mulched and pruned the plantings surrounding our deck and patio.  It's amazing how much if a difference this work (in addition to the dead tree removal) has made to the look of our backyard.  Our play area has doubled in size! 

View from the deck:

The backyard was truly an overgrown mess.  It didn't at all detract from kids' play - they love our backyard, but I think they'll enjoy our more open yard so much more. 

View looking back at the house:

The deck is so much more open after the pruning of our HUGE bushes. 

We're thrilled with the new look of our yard, nine years in the making.
Hopefully this simplified backyard will be easier for us to maintain :)

Projects (frontyard)

Since moving into our home nine years ago, we haven't done hardly anything to the exterior.  We love our house and we love our yard! 

This year, we had three crews and loads of equipment in to help with 3 different projects in our yard.

Project 1:

We have a unique home, with no front door and no front windows.  Part of our home is set into the ground, and unfortunately we have had drainage issues since we've moved in.  With the slope of our property, rainwater runs into the side of our home.  Over the years we have tried a couple things to better our water problems, but we still have water seep into our sunroom with each heavy rain. 

This year, we made a big change that will hopefully solve our drainage problems.  Instead of dealing with water at the house, we re-graded the land to slope away from the house.  We had a swale created channel water past our house. 

We had a crew of six working for a day on this project.  The kids loved watching their bobcat and making many water and cookie deliveries. 

So far, the swale seems to be working, and the sod is growing well, thanks to our dedicated watering crew of kiddos.  Plus, the grass looks a lot better than drainage rocks! 

Project 2:

To one side of our home, we have a beautiful, sweeping cherry tree and overgrown bushes close to our foundation, damaging our foundation.  We had a tree crew (with bobcat, cherry picker, chain saws, tree chipper, and stump grinder) come to remove everything on the west side of our house as well as several dead trees in the backyard. 

These bushes were so overgrown, we're really pleased with the open and clean look their removal gives our home. 

These yard jobs have provided us with a summers' worth of work, watering a lot of seed and straw.  We're exited to see grass growing - more grass than we've ever had!  Mike's pleased to have a few months off from mowing the majoring of our lawn :)