Is it naptime yet?

It has been an eventful fall thus far. With wonderful visits from friends from home, and trips to visit friends and family in England and France, the last two months have been filled with castles and ruins and Port tastings and history and scenery and good food and even better company. Top that all off with milestones like Amelia's first birthday and first steps and we have been pretty busy!

I've just posted lots of new photos here and here.

During that time Amelia has progressed from her first few tentative steps, to nearly forgetting that she used to have to crawl everywhere. There are still lots of stumbles and a few bumps and bruises, but she gets back up and keeps on truckin' (and going, and going, and going). While keeping us on our toes, she also keeps us pretty entertained these days, whether it is waving goodbye to the babysitter as soon as I walk in the door, headbutting the dogs and cat to mimic their play, the endless procession of moving the (clean) diapers from the dryer to the washer and back again, "talking" on our cell phones (or remotes, or sippy cups), and numerous other antics.

It was wonderful to see everyone, though I must admit that we are now looking forward to a little rest before we start it all again for the holidays!

Rolling...

Just a quick picture from our first family bike outing. Amelia had a great time, though she did start to doze off at the end of it, I guess next time we go after her nap.

Houston, we have lift-off

Amelia has looked nearly ready to venture off on her own for a while now. She is very stable standing on her own, and I've been encouraging her to reach out for me and take that first step, and this morning she actually did. It was just two quick steps to me, and then she grabbed my hands, but then several more times throughout the day she tried again and added a few more. She even showed Dan as soon as he arrived home. We tried to get her on video, but usually she is so entralled with the camera that she would crawl right to it.We did manage to get a video of a couple of tentative steps. You can see it by clicking here.

ONE

One is definitely not the lonliest number when it is refering to your first birthday. Amelia ushered in this milestone surrounded by friends in Portugal, and in the thoughts of friends and family around the world. We hosted a birthday party at our home, and Amelia loved all the attention from everyone, and was happily passed around and social the whole time, despite a couple of sleepless nights and cranky days prior due to those pesky molars coming in (one down, three to go). She was little overwhelmed being the center of attention during cake time, but happily munched down two pieces very daintily and avoided that whole cake all over my hair first birthday photo op.

Here is a little video of her birthday song.

Here are the rest of her party photos.

And some other photos from this summer.

Spain

Sorry for the delay posting this...I actually started writing it soon after we got back, but didn't manage to finish it up until now. Well, we are back from a wonderful 2 weeks in Spain. It was a great combination of relaxing, sight-seeing, and visiting with family. The first week was just the three of us, we visited the lovely northern city of San Sebastian. It is a coastal town with a lot of (Basque) culture, a great old-town, and it seems to be in one of the few regions of Spain, along with Galicia, with a really vibrant green landscape. It is pretty different to see lush green mountains rising up from the edge of each beach bay. We loved the atmosphere of the tapas bars, and thoroughly enjoyed our nightly ice cream and stroll after dinner. Amelia got her first taste of ice cream, as one night while we were trying to make our decisions I was surprised by the scooper handing me a tiny little baby cone of vanilla ice cream for Amelia. Everyone in the shop was entertained by her tentative first bite, followed quickly by her putting her entire mouth on the cone and getting it all over her face. I guess she is hooked.

We then spent a couple of days in Barcelona. With our hotel right on the lively Rambla, we were right in the middle of the action. And of course our little social butterfly Amelia wanted to take it all in, so she didn't want to go to sleep and miss any of the action, but we did get her to settle down eventually. While in Barcelona we toured the Picasso museum and a few of Gaudi's buildings, and spent a lot of our time wandering Las Ramblas and the Bari Gotic quarter.

To top it all off we had a week north of Barcelona on the Costa Brava in an 800 year old villa with Dan's family (16 of us including the babies). It was great to finally introduce Amelia to everyone and to get her together with her cousins Coco, Calvin, and Isabel. It was particularly fun to to see her with Coco, who is only 3.5 months older, and the two of them seemed to have their own language that none of us understood. The week was filled with amazing food, a trip to the Dali museum, watching the riders on the Tour de France zoom by, and relaxing on the terraces or pool of the villa or the nearby beaches.

Amelia was a pretty good traveller, with long drives on several days, it wasn't until the last day that she finally started complaining a little. So, a fifth country visited for our little girl, some great time with family, and now back to the daily routine in Portugal.

To see all of the photos from our trip to Spain, click here.

And make sure to check out the video of Amelia with her cousin Coco here.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

It's been 5 whole years since that lovely summer day in Vermont. I guess you can say we have made many big changes in the last five years, added masters degrees and MBAs, added two dogs, three cats, and a baby to our family, moved to a foreign country, welcomed many wonderful new people in our lives (and tried to keep all you wonderful people who were already part of our life), and said good-bye to some special people as well. Through it all I can not imagine doing it with anyone else by my side, and without the love and support of all our wonderful friends and family. Even though Bosch has made it so that we won't actually get to see each other today, I am really looking forward to getting Dan back home again tomorrow, so I can tell him that in person.

First Father's Day Weekend

We celebrated Dan's first father's day this past weekend, so here are a couple of photos. On Saturday we checked out a riverside beach, and it was nice to have some warmer, fresh water to play in. Amelia really loved splashing around in the river, and it was also great to have the shade of some trees to protect her (and us) from the hot, hot sun. Sunday we treated her Daddy to a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, which Amelia also was a big fan of (as was I), and then took him on a picnic to the Buçaco Forest. Hope he enjoyed himself despite the temperature rising to near 100 degrees!

In other Amelia culinary news...this week she was a big fan of my mushroom risotto and stuffed eggplant. I hear they get pickier as they get older, but at least she has good taste for now!