In Rememberance

Last week was a week of birthdays, and this week was the ninth anniversary of a very low point for us. This week in 2001, we lost my great aunt, John's grandpa Gwin, and friends in the OSU plane crash all within five days. Those people were on our minds a lot as we went through the week.

Monday, January 25

We hadn't really settled on a theme for the baby's room aside from "jungle/safari." That is, until I found these cute wall hangings and ordered them today. Now, we actually have colors to help us pick out what colors we're going to use to paint the room.

Tuesday, January 26

Mara loves her cheese. She'll get a handful of it and put it all in her mouth at once and then go back for more.

Wednesday, January 27

With my due date around the corner, we've been trying to spend more one-on-one time with Mara. Tonight, we went out for a mother and daughter dinner at McDonald's.

Thursday, January 28

We broke out Mara's Princess dominoes for the first time tonight. She did a really good job playing with them – winning the first four games we played. She was doing so well that we pulled out our set of double six dominoes, and she had fun playing with us. Both John and I grew up playing dominoes with our families, and it looks like Mara's going to enjoy doing the same thing.

Friday, January 29

Tonight, we had dinner at Steak and Shake. Mara really enjoyed her cheeseburger, and we were even able to include Granddad in our "three things about your day" discussion that we've recently started doing during dinner.

Saturday, January 30

Mara got to go to Chuck E. Cheese for the second time this week. This time, it was to celebrate her friend Hayden's birthday. She had a lot of fun, and we stayed the entire time. We even had a sketch of the two of us made while we were there. She's slowly getting over the fear of the robotic mouse in the party area. She even went to the front of the party area and played in front of the camera that put her on the overhead TV. However, I still don't think we'll ever have one of her birthday parties there.