Stupid Sears

Jonathan was right. It pains me to admit this. Today Lincoln and I went to Sears and I am incredibly disappointed. My baby is so smiley! He was in such a good mood and he was smiling a ton! Are there pictures of him smiling? No. Are there pictures of him on a raggedy old blanket? But of course. It wasn't worth it. I'm not going back. And I may call and complain. As my dad would say, hurumph.

I'm No Jeremiah

As we know, Lincoln is now 6 months old. Reaching the 6 month mark is traditionally a milestone that deserves professional pictures, at least in my mind. Jonathan, however, has different ideas (when does Jonathan not have different ideas?) So for the last... 6 months, or so we've been debating whether or not we should get Lincoln's pictures professionally taken this month (and by professionally I mean Walmart, or Sears or something, nothing too fancy.) Jonathan thinks the pictures we take with our point and shoot camera are just as good, nay better, than the pictures taken at a store. I think there is something to be said for a white sheet background and a few little props.

We came to a compromise. I would try to take some pictures of Lincoln with our friends' fancier camera and if they didn't turn out we would go to a store. Taking these pictures was much harder than it looks. The main problem being, if I smile at Lincoln, he generally smiles back, but he can't see me if I'm behind the camera. Also, he wasn't in the best of moods during our photo shoot, so smiles were hard to come by. Here are some of my pictures.

I loved the look of him laying in the grass... I just couldn't get a smile :(. I think we're headed to Walmart tomorrow.

Lincoln's Half Birthday

My baby is growing up so fast! He's already half a year old! And look how handsome....


We didn't get a chance to get good pictures taken today, but in the next few days we'll get his official 6 month pictures done.

Lincoln ate peas for the first time today and he did a great job. This was the first solid food he's eaten besides rice cereal, but he seemed to like it, so we're happy.

Pennsylvania owes us a tire...

The three of us just spent three fun filled days in Washington DC. We got to stay with some friends from our time there and it made our trip so much better, so thanks again Matt and Deidre! It was Lincoln's first trip to our nation's capital, so, of course, we had to see all the classic sights.

Like the Capital Building...


And the Washington Monument...Here's me trying to get a picture of Lincoln by himself. This will be much easier when he can sit up on his own... There are a lot of these pictures, but this is definitely the funniest expression.

We visited the Museum of American History for the first time since it was closed for renovations when we spent the summer there two years ago. My favorite part was seeing Julia Child's kitchen, although we heard a few people say, "Oh this is the lady in that new movie, right?" Sigh....

There was also a little Abraham Lincoln exhibit, so of course we had to take a bunch of pictures of our Lincoln there.

And we had to head down to the Lincoln Memorial for some pictures!

Our baby was such a trooper during the whole trip, which was so great. And even though we had to spend the better part of an hour inching past twelve miles of cones blocking the right lane in Pennsylvania and subsequently getting a nail in a tire to get there (not to mention moving at a snail's pace to get out of the city in bumper to bumper traffic yesterday), I'm sure we'll be making the trek again in the not too distant future. It was so fun being back there... we love DC!

After Church Pictures

We were lucky enough to have some friends take a few pictures of us this afternoon. Here are a few of our favorites. Thanks Lindsey and Brian!

Saturday's Project (Thanks Again, Glidden!)

I bought this bookcase off of Craigslist a few months ago for $5. It was defiantly nothing special to look at, but who can resist a bookcase for $5?


And I just happened to have a quart of paint from Glidden just waiting to be used, so Saturday I set to work and I ended up with this....


The blue is a little brighter than I thought it would be, but overall, I am pleased with the result. It was so fun totally changing the look of this bookcase (the back was in pretty bad, so that's why I took it off.) I can't wait for my next painting project (the kitchen chairs)!

Lincoln's New Fan

It's been pretty hot here recently, so we got Lincoln a fan for his room last week. I went in to check on him during a nap one day and he was sticking his little feet out the bars of his crib, I think he likes to feel the cool air on his feet. :) He's also been enjoying cruising around in nothing but a diaper because of the heat (as I'm sure you can tell from the last few posts.)

Gum

This was an actual conversation between Hillary and I. Maybe you won't think anything of it, but I thought it was odd.

Jonathan: "Do you have any mints or gum?"
Hillary: "Yeah, I bought some on clearance the other day."
Jonathan: "You bought gum . . . on clearance?

Two things:
1. They put gum on clearance? Seriously? Does slashing thirty-five cents of a seventy-five cent pack of gum really start moving merchandise?
2. We may be poor, but I'm pretty sure we're not so hard up for cash that we have to wait until gum goes on clearance before throwing down for a pack of trident.

. . . and no, this was not some sort of economy size/family pack, just your average, run-of-the-mill pack of trident being clearanced out at P&C.

P.S. What's weird is that Hillary doesn't even like gum.

Fun in Elmira

This weekend the three of us decided to make the trip to some nearby batting cages. Jonathan and I love to go to batting cages because, let's just all be honest, batting is the best part of baseball! The only problem is these cages aren't as "nearby" as we'd like them to be, but such is life in Ithaca. Here I am:


I'm much better at taking batting cage pictures than Jonathan is....

And here's Jonathan. He also tried batting left handed a few times and I was surprised by how well he did. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of that though.

The driving range was right next to the batting cages, so we decided to hit a bucket of balls too. We are both really, really bad at golf (I mean really,) but this was also a lot of fun. We sort of got the hang of it after a while and stopped having to swing 3-4 times before making any sort of contact with the ball (okay that was mostly me) which made it even more fun.

(Yes that is the golf ball still on the tee at the end of Jonathan's swing...)

And I would like to point something important out. I hit that plane. With a golf ball. I was so proud of myself!