A little bit of everything

Anna is such a happy baby...always full of smiles! This week she has really been a chatterbox. Baby babble can be heard all day...some of her favorite sounds to make this week are ba, ba, da, da...Anna also started crawling this week and while she loves to be on the move she is also trying to pull herself to reach things...baby is getting mobile!

About a month ago we noticed a bird working very hard at building a nest in the arbor on our deck. Last weekend we were able to get our first glimpse of the baby birds that the nest is providing a home for! At the top of the nest you can see a small little beak...

There are 2 baby birds in the nest. I believe the birds are an American Robin but I think the babies look a bit like a Velociraptor from Jurassic Park!

This a a picture of the greenway a few blocks from our house. It goes along a small creek...unfortunately the creek flooded with all the rain and the greenway has a lot of damage.

The greenway is also next to a golf course which also suffered a lot of damage. We found it amusing that despite the damage the serious golfers were still out playing a round of golf!

On Sunday we went to the Shelby Bottoms Greenway for a walk. This greenway runs along the Cumberland River which obviously flooded. What looks like dead brush in the picture is actually the line of mud from how high the river and flood waters rose last week.

Anna enjoying a ride on Daddy's shoulders during our walk!

Flood 2010

Many thanks to all for the calls of support during this difficult and crazy time! Our basement filled with almost 5 feet of water but it is now dry and the only damaged we suffered so far is the loss of our a/c unit, furnace and possibly the water heater. We're hoping the foundation hasn't been damaged but that is yet to be determined. Nashville has been declared a national disaster area which opens the doors to FEMA. While it's not fun having the damage we have occur, thousands of people in Nashville have lost everything and we are lucky that the water was limited to our basement. Please keep the city of Nashville in your thoughts...the damage to the city has been estimated to reach a billion dollars....
Thank you to everyone for checking in on us and I'm happy to say we are all safe!

Rain, Rain Go Away

This was taken on Thursday, April 29...it was a bright sunny day and the peonies looked amazing.....

On Friday night the rain came and came and came....the peonies did not like the rain.
It rained a pouring rain until 5:00 Sunday evening.....it's estimated we got close to 20 inches of rain! 20 inches of rain in less than 48 hours....it felt like the rain was never going to stop.

This is what 20 inches of rain in such a short amount of time looks like.....the earth cannot absorb that much rain and the water has to go somewhere. At our house the water decided to fill the crawl space underneath our house. These are the stairs that go down to the crawl space....

This is the water being pumped out of underneath our house. Our very kind neighbor came to my rescue when I asked for help....My plea went something like this,"My husband is out of the country and our basement is flooded...I don't know what to do!!"

The good news is that as of this posting the rain has stopped and the pump is working at removing the water....It started with only being able to see the top 2 steps...now we can see the fourth step down!!!

Baby's got skills

A new milestone was reached this week...Anna can sit all by herself! It's pretty fascinating to watch...when she learned how to roll over that was all she wanted to do. Now all she wants to do is sit up!

Anna is a constant bundle of smiles and giggles...she'll suddenly start laughing at any given moment. Our favorite was when she felt the wind on her face the first time...priceless!

Spring has sprung and the first of the peonies have bloomed! Aren't they just gorgeous!?

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter! We had perfect spring weather for Anna's first Easter. She experienced the grass for the first time....of course that meant grabbing the grass and putting it straight in her mouth! She also pulled out some weeds and picked up some leaves....it's never too early to learn about lawn care and we never say no to extra help in the garden!

On Saturday we did a 5 mile walk to support the Nashville greenways....the walk was the only time we had gray skies and it was pouring rain until 1o minutes before the race started. During the race it was sprinkling but we got to use the rain cover for Anna's stroller for the first time.

On Sunday we did a walk around Couchville Lake...

Where's Sophie!?

Sophie the giraffe is on of Anna's favorite toys and a great toy for a fussy baby. On Tuesday Anna and I took a trip to the mall, Anna got a little fussy so I gave her Sophie. After the mall we went to Trader Joe's and as we were leaving I noticed Sophie was gone! I went back into Trader Joe's and looked but no Sophie....no time to go back to the mall...Sophie was gone. On Saturday we were near the mall and decided to go to Macy's. We went to the baby dept. on the slim chance that Sophie was there...we went to the counter and who was on display with the manequin's - Sophie!