November 18-25

We spent most of the week visiting Bryan's family.  We left Tuesday night and Olivia and I hung out with them while Bryan worked Wednesday.  Wednesday night was Thanksgiving with family, Thursday was Thanksgiving with different family, and Friday we stopped to visit the Kleins and then came home.  Saturday we had a wedding to attend (I think we're done for this year, though), so that took up most of our day.

On Thursday, Olivia got into a fight with the sidewalk.  The sidewalk won.  Since it was so beautiful outside, we decided to go for a walk.  Bryan had never been for a walk with a one-year-old in which said one-year-old is allowed to be walking and not riding.  We meandered along, stopping to examine piles of dirt and pick up rocks.  We even had an occasional moment where we came to a complete stop and sat in the middle of the sidewalk (to examine our rocks, of course) before standing up and moving on.  After about ten minutes of this, though, it was decided by our walk coordinator that we should run.  Or at least walk as fast as the coordinator could go.  Unfortunately, the sidewalk sloped downward slightly and the coordinator is still a little lacking in coordination.  Olivia now has a lovely series of war wounds on her nose.  I think she looks a bit like a bruised fruit.

Olivia can push up her sleeves now.  She has trouble with stiff sleeves like the velvet ones on her Sunday dress, but she's pretty good at knit sleeves.

We have four molars now!  I spotted the bottom two when Olivia was yelling at me for not doing something she wanted.

Bryan declared Olivia's first official word on Saturday: "Amen."  She has several words and phrases that we can understand, but you really have to be listening just right to catch them.  "Amen" is the first word that she says clearly and distinctly as well as at appropriate times.

More Pictures:

I had all my purses laid out to take a picture and someone decided she needed them:

Olivia was trying to see how many of her stuffed animals I could hold before I dropped them:

A few more spider pictures, these from Josef's phone: