Digging a basement

It has started! They did the excavation today and are currently laying out the basement.

Here is a 360 view of how our lot looked last night:
360 view of lot

Here's some photos from this morning with stakes where the house will be:

The first cut!

Lauren playing (gotta get a shot of her in)

Watching the excavator



Here's what it looks like. We will have a daylight basement on the side closest. The deepest side is only like 3.5 feet into the ground. We are doing floor joists so all the ductwork will run through those so we are going to do 8 foot basement walls. This means that there will be 4.5 feet sticking up out of the ground. We will build up around the walls in the front of the house and slope it down.

Laurens First Birthday!

Lauren is finally one! She had a great party and enjoyed all her family being at her house to play with her. She also got some great gifts that she's having so much fun playing with and wearing.

She didn't get too messy while eating her cake...because she didn't eat it. She just played with the frosting and finally ended up smashing it a little.

One Year Photos

As Lauren's one year birthday approaches it is time for her one year photos.

Because my sister is good at taking pictures, because she has kids of her own so she knows how you have to take photos quickly and because I have a DSLR, and because I know how to work Photoshop, we decided to forgo "professional" pictures.

I really wanted to just let someone else take care of it.

I made an appointment with a photographer.

Then Adam enters the picture and once again reminds me that it's expensive.

Of course it is. Taking pictures of babies is exhausting and frustrating. After an off and on all day photo op, some run-away balloons that didn't even make it into any photos, and a kid who would NOT look at the camera all day, we ended up with over 500 photos and some turned out pretty cute. THANK GOODNESS.

Get ready. There's lots.




















Lauren and mommy.


Lauren and Daddy.


The Miller Family.







Whew, there's more of course :) but I think these are the best.

A few photos that didn't turn out so well look ok after "Photoshopping". What do you think? How'd we do?

Gigglefest

Daddy is just so scary that Lauren has to run away. Sometimes the running doesn't go so well and she face plants. Sometimes she reverts back to crawling to try and get away.

Lots of video here but to cute not to post. Lauren was watching them this morning on the computer today and laughing so hard at herself. :)

My first quilt

I have finally finished my first quilt project!



What did I learn? Lots of stuff. The main one being: Don't do a king sized quilt for your first project. Anyone with half a brain knows that right?

The reason I did a king sized quilt is because Adam needs a "summer" quilt. One that is thinner and doesn't make him sweat at night.

This quilt has pinwheel squares in the middle. This is one of the easiest if not the easiest squares to make. They aren't all perfect but I think it turned out better than I was expecting it to about 3/4 of the way through. I just got so tired of working on it!

I used old fashioned cotton batting in the middle. This is a little more expensive but I used a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby and it wasn't bad. It's thinner and breathes a little better I think.



Finished it off with some floral fabric on the back, tied it and there you have it! Quilt #1 is in the books.

Smiles

Look at this smile. It's hard to remember the early days when she was in pain because of her stomach and unhappy most of the time. These days, Lauren is a pretty darn happy baby. She almost always has a smile for anyone.



She was playing in her crib yesterday while I was trying to catch some video of her doing something cute (maybe you'll get to see it later if I can catch it!) and what I caught instead was her smiling face. Love it :)

But I also caught this shot which is even more accurate of her personality.



She is still always in motion. Especially now that she can walk. Back and forth. Around and around. She will pick up one item and walk until she finds another. Then she'll carry that around for a while and so on and so forth. Good thing I can hear her little feet walking around so I can easily keep track of her! This personality trait can make her a difficult baby sometimes but that is just something that mom and dad have to deal with. It doesn't bother her one bit - She's still oh so very happy.

A Walk In Daddy's Shoes

Not literally. Just daddy's favorite KIND of shoe.



Lauren bought her dad a pair of shoes for fathers day. They were for herself but they were superstars. Which is daddy's favorite kind of shoe. She figured he'd like to see her wearing some because a while back he bought mommy a pair also. So now we are a superstar wearing family.

They aren't soft soled shoes so they were a little harder for her to walk in but she got the hang of it. She even scuffed them up. Soon they'll be broken in and she won't want to wear any other kind. I figure even if they are a little difficult for her to walk in they probably have better support so hopefully they will be good for her.

Lauren Walks!

She suddenly started walking after a nap one day and hasn't stopped since! She also figured out how to stand herself up which she had never done before.

Some videos of the cutie pie

She's pretty much walking these days. She can walk in between people/things and will let go to walk somewhere if it isn't very far.




Cute noises and faces: