Little Artist

Alayna is a little artist. She loves to draw, color, and paint. It seems like she always has a pen or crayon in her hand.

Check out this drawing she did today. These aren't just random scribbles, every little line was meticulously drawn. I asked her what the pictures were as she was drawing them, and apparently there's a mouse, a bear, an airplane, an umbrella, a hat, a cricket, a snake, grass, a cat and a bird. Can you find them? (And if you can detect a bit of a theme, we were outside in the back yard while she was drawing this.)

Trip to Idaho and Washington

This last month we went on a huge trip to Idaho and Washington to see our Shoemaker and Mellin families. My mom came to Casper for about a week and drove out to Idaho with Alayna and I while Mike was off exploring for uranium in Nevada. We spent a week with Alayna's Great Grandma Shoemaker (or as Alayna calls her, G.G.) and saw a bunch of my family there. My Uncle Mike came by every day to see Alayna but she was going through some serious stranger anxiety and just would pretty much hide and call for mommy every time she saw him. Poor Uncle Mike! :)


When Mike came back from Nevada, we went to Boise and saw Grandpa Mellin and Grandma Lavona, who let Alayna ride on her horse Chiquita.



We also got to see our friends Brandi & Shylo, Darren, & little Eddie.



Then, it was off to Washington where we saw Aunt Christa, Uncle Eric, Andrew & Alyssa in Ridgecrest. It was really nice to see them and we got the wonderful news that we're going to have another little niece or nephew! They recently moved to a beautiful farm house and even have chickens, which of course Alayna loved. Alayna just loves being with her cousins. We really wish we lived closer to them.



Next we visited our friends the Morgans in Port Orchard, Washington. We remember when little Michelle was born when we were all in college, and now she's 9 years old! Oh my gosh, where does the time go? They also have two sons, Matthew, 7, and Ryan who is just one month older than Alayna. They took us to the beach and on a mini-train ride and the kids had so much fun playing together.




Then, we drove to Spokane to see Alayna's Uncle Jason. At his house, she had a temper tantrum and threw herself down when I was holding her hand, and she ended up throwing her elbow slightly out of socket. We could tell it was very painful because she couldn't move it without screaming. Thankfully, I remembered Christa saying the same thing had happened to Alayna's cousin Alyssa and it was called nursemaid's elbow. So, we looked it up and decided to take her into urgent care to get it "popped" back in. The doctor gave her a sling, which made her feel much better, and it was fine by the next morning.



Finally, we ended up having to go back down to Boise because we found out Mike's grandpa had passed away. By this time we were exhausted and ready to go home, but we are really glad we went because we got to see nearly all of Mike's cousins, Aunts and Uncles, plus all of our Mellin family again.

Locked in Peter's Car

While we were in Tennessee this Spring, my cousin Peter came to visit. He travels all around the country in his car and has stayed at our house before, so I asked him if he had room to take Mike's old bike (which we had accidentally left there when we moved to Wyoming) and bring it out the next time he comes to visit us. He said that would be fine, so he, Alayna, and I went out to load the bike into his trunk.

The bike didn't fit perfectly in his trunk, so he asked me to pull down the back seat to make a little extra room. Strangely, however, his car has a lock in the back window which you have to use the car keys to unlock in order to pull down the back seat. So, I did that and we fit the bike in no problem.

When we got that done, we were just standing by the car talking and Alayna crawled into the front seat of the car. Peter closed the door behind her and was letting her play around in the front. Well, you know kids, she reached up and started playing with the manual lock on the driver's door. I wasn't too concerned because I figure that would just lock the driver's door. Meanwhile, Peter starts saying (very slowly and nonchalantly) "That's probably not a good idea because..." LOCK. She pushed down the lock and ALL of the doors locked at once. And Peter finishes "...the keys are in there." He said it so casually that I really didn't believe him at first, I thought it was a joke or something. But then I saw them, in the back window where that stupid back seat lock was. And my baby was locked inside the car!



Well, we all stayed calm (Peter was REALLY calm, seriously I don't think he was worried at all) and thankfully Alayna was just playing and having fun playing in the front seat. We tried to get her to pull up on the manual lock, and she actually did, but she couldn't pull it hard enough. Then we tried to get her to push the automatic lock button because if she just touched that the doors would open right up. But she was having too much fun playing.



She found a pen and started marking on the steering wheel. I guess this finally made Peter somewhat concerned, because he exclaimed "Oh no, this is Christine's car! We've gotta get that kid outta there!" So he went and got a wire hanger and tried sticking it through the window to unlock the door.


Meanwhile, I kept talking to Alayna to keep her calm and to try and get her to push that lock button. After several minutes it became clear that Peter wasn't getting anywhere with the hanger so I asked my mom to call a locksmith. Then, just as my mom was about to call, Alayna thankfully reached toward the front of the car and touched the lock button.



All the doors unlocked! She had saved herself, and boy was I relieved! I think Peter was just thankful she didn't mark up the car too much and we didn't end up having to break any windows. :)

**All pictures above are reenactments taken immediately after the actual event.

I'm Back!

I can't believe it has almost been 5 months since I last updated my blog. I apologize to those few of you who actually read this and have been waiting. We have been very busy with traveling to Tennessee, Colorado, Idaho, and Washington. We have also been doing a lot of re-landscaping in the yard and I've been working on several quilts and am working on starting up a small at-home business doing hand quilting for people.

Alayna is growing so fast. She is almost 22 months old now. Her list of words now would be so long I don't think I could fit it all on this blog. She's learning so much so fast, it's staggering. Now she is putting several words together and even saying some sentences. For example, the other evening we were out in the yard and the sprinklers turned on, which is our cue to go inside because it's time to get ready for bed. When Alayna and I got inside, Mike ran back out to grab something and Alayna yelled "Daddy the sprinklers are on!" I couldn't believe it. Now, her pronunciation needs some work, but I was so impressed with her sentence. She also know several letters, including A,B,C,F,I,O,P,S,X,Y...and maybe a few more, and is learning colors.

Alayna is also getting REALLY tall. We went to visit her cousins in Washington and I was surprised to see that she was almost exactly the same height as her cousin Alyssa, who is over 13 months older than her! People we talk to around town assume she is 2 and a half to 3 years old already. I think I'm going to have to put her into basketball when she gets older... So far, her most favorite toys are balls, so I think she may be into sports. By the way, the last time I posted I told you about Alayna's fear of water. After several months of screaming every time she had to take a bath, she suddenly just got over it and she LOVES taking baths and swimming now. I guess it was just one of those crazy phases. :)



We went to Tennessee for Easter and for my cousin Jessica's wedding. Alayna was the flower girl at the wedding. She did a great job walking down the aisle with the junior flower girls and looked so adorable in her flower girl dress! And wasn't Jessica just beautiful?


As always, we had a really nice time visiting with Grandma (MaMa) and Grandpa (Papa) and Great Grandma Simpson as well as other friends and family.