Pittsburgh, Bipedal Motion, Teeth

Hello,

It's the end of July. Lets review.

Lea is now walking on her own. See video: (far warning you have to turn your head sideways when you watch this video because I'm not smart.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dupgETCfQw

The whole walking thing started about a week ago. She just decided that she was going to throw off the shackles of crawling and rise like the primates of old...or yore...or whenever our hairier forefathers stopped drooling on themselves and started walking like real Americans. (That's right, I said it) Granted there is still the occasional drooling on herself. I'm sure that will go away before her 18th birthday. If not, we'll find some stylish bibs.

We spend some time recently on the road. We drove to and from Pittsburgh. That's from Des Monies. In case your wondering that is transversing Illinois, Indiana and Ohio (with a quick roll through West Virginia on the way back) (And no I will not make a joke about hill people in West Virginia, that's low brow people, nothing but high class and too many commas in this blog)

In Pittsburgh Lea got the chance to hang out with her cousins Sam and Lauren. (Son and daughter of Pam [My...Steve's cousin] and Phil [Steve's friend from high school who is now married to his cousin Pam and happens to be a doctor]. Yeah, I know doctors, two of them. Who wants to touch me? I digress. It was good times, we really enjoyed it. Lea didn't freak out too much in the car as well. She decided that she needed to check out the shower in one the hotel rooms. This brings us to our second video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ohWNJt2J3I

And no we did not force her into the shower. She entered on her own accord.

Also, this past weekend we had the chance to brave nature with Kate's family. I'm not the most "outdoorsie" person in the world. I tend to enjoy nature from the inside, preferably from my couch and nature being whatever is on the discovery channel. Okay, when I say we braved nature, it was from an air conditioned cabin/house. Actually it was a remarkable structure, which happened to be rounded. Amazing acoustics. Would have been fun to to play playstation with surround sound hooked up. That would make nature come alive!

Back to where we were. The house was in Decorah, IA. Which is in the northeastern corner of Iowa. Very pretty. Luther College is there, which I think is a rival of BVU (school that graduated me into the world of adulthood), so I think I'm supposed to hate them. Really had a hard time getting wound up about it. If you don't count all the rocks I threw (with my mind).

Lea did well with this trip from the most part. She was picky about who she'd warm up to and who she'd avoid. She also is not a huge fan large groups of people, so that made her a bit pickier.

I'm sure I'm forgetting more than I'm remembering. Pictures below!



Lea and Lauren. Lauren is only 6 months old and she's already as tall as Lea. Her mom is 6'2". She may grow up tall. Just a guess.

Katy, Lea and Steve with Pittsburgh in the background.

Lauren and Lea playing. Did I mention how tall Lauren is? She's also super happy. So is her brother Sam. Sam is the only kid I've ever met who happily marched himself to bed for a nap. And slept for 2 hours. Unreal.


Downtown Pittsburgh. Cool place. Need to go back.