Family Alive

Yes, you read the subject right. Last night as Kristine and I sat down to eat dinner, we thought we heard rain. Then we realized that it was actually Analise dropping a number of her peas one right after the other off the side of her high chair and onto our hardwood floor. It sounded just like rain. It was hilarious, and try as we might, we couldn’t keep from laughing. I hope she doesn’t start doing that now whenever we give her peas! I’ll tell you about the raining trees soon (with pictures, too!)…

Ok, now for the trees… It hasn’t rained (water rain) for probably close to a month now here — which is very unusual for this time of year. So I got out our sprinkler and set it up in our backyard to water, when I noticed that there was a new tree in our backyard! I’m not talking about a 12-inch tree, but a 3-4 foot tree has planted itself right next to our house. We can’t imagine where the seed came from to plant this tree because it doesn’t match any of the other trees that we can find anywhere near it. It may have been brought in by a bird or squirrel! In any case, it’s in a good location, and I’ve got a few pictures of it to share. If anyone can identify what type of tree it is, please let us know! I’ve also included pictures of our other trees in the yard, but the first two are of the newly planted tree…

 

And now, here are a couple good ones looking towards the front of our house from the street. In the top picture, you can see four of the five really large trees (70-75′) in our backyward. In the bottom picture, you see our beautiful river birch that has already lost a lot of its leaves without them changing color 🙁

Finally, from left to right … a picture looking at our banana tree that was damaged from Hurricane Katrina (see the dead yellow leaf hanging off the side). In the middle, you can see the largest tree we have in our backyard. Notice all the large splits in the tree towards the bottom. This tree is at the lowest point of our yard, yet it rises a few feet above the tall one located at the top of our yard. So it’s by far the biggest and tallest tree we have. Lastly, here’s the large tree next to our driveway and basketball goal.

I started coming down with a cold last night feeling miserable. I must have a touch of the flu, too, as my stomach has been in bad shape. Ag. It’s hard to be the mommy when you’re sick. I even tried to call my mother-in-law to see if she watned some Analise time, but she’s not feeling well either. Bummer. Analise has managed pretty well with graham crackers and Baby Einstien and sporadic intervals. We’re both looking forward to afternoon naptime here in the next hour.

On a different note, here’s a great site to practice carving your pumpkin for Halloween. Happy Halloween from Theo Worlds We’ve got a pumpkin carving party next weekend, so I’d better start designing:) After our nap, maybe…

This is called mindless blogging. But I had to share Analise’s favorite website with you, particularly useful for cleaning your screen:
www.TheSlurps.com. Happy Tuesday!

We had a great pumpkin hunt today.

Kristine, Analise, and I joined up with my parents on a

drive out into the Alabama countryside to find Baker

Farm. They provide quite the pumpkin patch experience!

The first fun stop was the Cotton Bounce, where Analise

got in a truckbed filled with cotton, fresh out of the

fields. She enjoyed it, but probably more due to all

the kids bouncing around her.

Then we visited the pony, though Analise

was too young for a ride. She was excited to sit for a

bit and pose for a picture! The pony looked just like

the rocking horse in her room, same color, same pattern.

We spent some time checking out the farm

animals – turkeys, ducks and ducklings, chicks and

chickens, bunnies, goats and calves. It was hard to

catch Analise smiles today, but we got a quick one while

she was pumpkin sliding!

The hay bale maze was very fun, and we

just barely made it through:) Good thing, since were

weren’t prepared to camp in the fields! Then Analise

found the kid-sized tractors, and she couldn’t get

enough of them. Another highlight of the farm was the

large cotton fields, which were ripe with blossomed

cotton bolls.

Then we met our friends Steven and

Medley for a hayride to the pumpkin patch. There were

plenty of “perfect” pumpkins, but we found the best:)

Now we’re ready for a carving adventure in 2 weeks.

We capped off the evening with a

campfire, freshly roasted hot dogs and s’mores. All in

all, it was a great way to celebrate fall!

I just found several cute pictures on our camera that I thought I’d post really quickly. This one is from this afternoon, as she was playing in a bin with her toys.

I’m still in an unmotivated mood. I’ve got several fun things I could be doing with my down time – like working on a fleece blanket or scrapbooking, but I’m awfully tired and not in the mood to get into anything big. Brian’s coming home a little late tonight, and Beverly’s itching for some Analise time, so maybe we’ll drop her off while we have a drive-in Sonic dinner and run a few errands. This weekend should be quiet… no travel! We’re going to the pumpkin patch tomorrow afternoon/evening, church on Sunday morning, and my dear friend Mark Thompson will be joining us for Sunday afternoon and evening as he’s driving through. We’ll keep you posted!

Here’s the Analise for the day! The top three are strolling up and down our front walk with Raggedy Ann, who is very floppy. Analise is never happy with how she’s settled in the stroller, so she’s always stopping to rearrange, and there’s the occassional dumping. The next pic is from this afternoon, as she was playing in a bin with her toys.

I’m going to admit something here. It’s taking quite a bit of courage, but I think there are people out there will appreciate and commisserate with me… hopefully. If not, I’m just going to scare off all future dinner guests, as you’ll see from my story.

I hate cockroaches. I think they’re so gross and ugly. When I lived in Nicaragua, they were a part of life, though, and I managed to deal with them. I can’t kill them – something about the crunching, ew. Anyway, I kept my room clean and pretended that they didn’t encroach on my personal territory, though I knew they frolicked right outside my door. It was part of life, because things just weren’t as clean and most of the homes are an indoor/outdoor mix of rooms and courtyards. I figured it was impossible to keep them out, so I’d just ignore them.

I’m apalled to find that there are cockroaches here in Alabama, or “palmetto bugs” as Brian’s grandma in South Carolina calls them. (I say a cockroach by any other name is still gross and ugly.) Anyway, we occassionally see them in our house. Hiring a pest control company is EXPENSIVE, but I think every day we see one, we get closer to justifying the price!

On to my stories… Saturday evening we had a friend over for dinner. As we were enjoying conversation and dinner, I spied a cockroach running across the wall to our guest’s left, staying just behind her vision. It was out of Brian’s eyesight, too. I sat there watching it slowly move across the wall, agonizing about what to do. Interrupt dinner to kill a cockroach? Unthinkable. Ignore it, and hope no one else notices? This appeared to be the least painful option, especially as the intruder dropped out of sight. And in fact, that’s what I did, and we made it through dinner without event or embarrassment. I told Brian later that evening, after the cockroach made his appearance again, and Brian took care of him.

Last night was our weekly home church, where we host 13 people for dinner, fellowship and discussion. As everyone was hanging in the kitchen doorway, saying goodnight, a cockroach ran across the wall above everyone, largely in my eyesight, though I’m not sure anyone else saw it. This was the largest cockroach I’d ever seen. I couldn’t ignore it, and was mortally embarrased to move everyone away from the wall into the foyer to finish our goodbyes. Everyone consoled me that it happens every now and then, and tried to reassure me that it probably had come in when someone opened the door. Still, I wonder if they’re going to come back next week… I’m so embarassed. Can anyone commisserate with me??

I find it very comical that the weekend we would be able to get a free condo to vacation at the beach, a hurricane would be blowing through the Gulf of Mexico. We had a good trip down there in Brian’s dad’s new car. It’s a Ford Freestyle, that I helped pick out:), complete with a DVD player and wireless headphones, upon which we watched a total of 3 Einstin movies and 2 non-Einstein movies on the trip there and back. Oh – Why did we go to the beach during a hurricane, you ask. Brian had been cycling with some people from Samford who were participating in the MS 150 ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis. We hadn’t planned on going to Orange Beach, Alabama until someone from Samford offered us a condo for the weekend. Who would pass up on a beach weekend?

As we arrived on Friday night at 9pm (see Brian’s post here), we were driving along the beach road to get to our condominium, and it was raining so hard and sand was blowing across the road making it nearly impossible to see. We carefully perservered, though, and hoped the morning would bring better weather.

Saturday dawned grey, windy and rainy. They shortened the ride from 75 to 45 miles, and while it downpoured at our condo, Brian said they missed most of the rain. We had a nice lunch at a seafood restaurant and retired to the condo for naps while Brian’s parents shopped:) How else would you spend a rainy beach weekend?

By late afternoon, the weather had dried out a bit, so we decided to go check out the beach. In spite of getting a face full of blown sand on our way across the street, we had a good time. The waves were rough and the sand was hard-packed from all the rain. Analise enjoyed raking with her rake, going from one place to another all the way down the beach. She was determined to catch a sea gull:) I like the beach with my little one… some day we’re going to have a sunshiney beach weekend!

Sunday was definitely drier, but the wind was between 20-30 mph. The ride was the full 75 miles, and Brian rode out in front of most of the riders and returned before we expected him. He told us, though, he’d been in his 2nd lowest gear because half the ride was into the wind. It had been HARD WORK. Below is some of the flooding from the heavy rains of Friday and Saturday.

We stopped at an Alabama tradition, Priester’s Pecans, for some samples on our way home. We returned to Birmingham to find the remanants of Hurricane Rita tossing tornados and severe weather our way. We got Rita coming and going, how ’bout that? Still – it was a fun weekend! These last pictures are ones that Brian took of some beach homes and the damage left over from Hurricane Ivan more than a year ago.

Analise and I were just enjoying some “floor time”. She’s so good at playing on her own. Just recently she’s started stacking blocks, and I was quite impressed with her creation (with my hand to steady as she was making it higher).

For those of you checking in regularly and wondering what’s happening at the Toone household, it’s been pretty quiet. Analise and I have been laying low lately. This weekend was really cool, lovely weather. Not like y’all up North, but for Alabama, it was wonderful. We went to a Fall Festival in the small neighborhood of Rocky Ridge, for free food and some fun browsing on Saturday. Then we had some family pictures with Brian’s family. We were finally back at church for the first Sunday in 4 weeks, followed by the usual family lunch of baked beans and hot dogs with Brian’s mom and brother. That was about it for our weekend, and today’s been just as quiet. I’m feeling highly unmotivated lately, and trying to get things done one at a time. A “to do” list is seeming too overwhelming.

Oh – Analise has started trying to say a few more words. Last night, she was saying “flur” while we were outside by the flowers. Today we asked her what a kitty cat says, and she responded with “mew-mew” (not to be confused with “moo-moo” which will come soon!). She also said “ball” tonight. All this is a bit reassuring because her 15 month appointment was today, and I was feeling a bit worried that she doesn’t have more words in her vocabulary. They’ll come… and she definitely understands and follows commands very well.

Ok, I hope the 3rd time’s the charm. I’ve tried to post this blog 2 times already, and lost it somewhere in Toone Times Twilight land.

In early September, Analise was sick with a urinary tract infection (UTI) that quickly cleared up with a course of antibiotics. Though I was under the impression that most UTI’s are caused by hygiene issues (ie, wiping wrong), while in fact, research has shown that the majority of UTI’s in young children are caused by something called urinary reflux, where urine backs up toward the kidneys, causing infection. Just to be on the safe side, Dr. Stone wanted us to follow-up with a few tests (a renal ultrasound and a VCUG) at Children’s Hospital today. Hopefully, they won’t be more than just a little uncomfortable, and my easy-going girl will manage just fine. The worst of it may be that she can’t eat or drink from 7am until after the tests at about 1pm. How can I manage to keep her happy and quiet without her favorite graham crackers? We’ll keep you posted…