Here's the text to go with the pictures :)
Happy New Year! Delight turned 5 months old on the 1st. It’s hard to believe. She’s turning into such a cute little girl. It’s amazing to watch her grow and learn everyday. She loves to reach out and grab stuff now (of course it all goes straight to her mouth). Even if it’s well beyond her reach, she doesn’t know any better and she’ll have her little arms stretched way out. Something I notice the other day is that she looks for her toys now when she drops them instead of just thinking they’re gone. She’s almost rolling over too. She rolls up on her side all the time, but her arm gets in the way of her going all the way over. She’s good at balancing. She can sit up with very little support. Well, sometimes. Then other times she keeps lurching forward onto her face.
We rang in the new year by sleeping J We went to Sam’s cousin’s (Mark Pier) for a while. Delight went to sleep around 8 and by the time 10:30 rolled around, I was ready to join her! We ended up heading home and made it to bed by 11. Getting to his house was another adventure. He lives just around the corner from us, but the road is closed between our houses right now, so we decided (ok, Sam decided) to do a little off-roading in our little 4x4 Subaru. We drove through our yard, on the edge of our woods down a field (that was the worst part. The field was plowed and the ground was a little soft. I thought for sure we were going to get stuck, but we finally made it out. The car is covered in mud and we made 12” ruts in the field. Sorry Mr. farmer.), through Sam’s uncles alfalfa field, through his dad’s field, then into his dad’s woods (they have some trails cut) and out onto his cousin’s road. It’s kind of cool having so much family around. Don’t think we’ll try that again until the ground’s real hard. So about Christmas.
We opened Delight’s presents first thing in the morning. I wanted to catch her while she was in a happy mood. A little while later Sam’s dad and Mark came over for breakfast. I had noticed that it was pretty chilly when we woke up, so Sam stoked the fire and it help some. When we tried to turn on the stove to cook some sausage, the burner wouldn’t light. Our gas had froze up. Sam and Mark got it fixed though (something about a regulator) and we had a late, but yummy breakfast. We hung around the rest of the day relaxing and packing for our trip the next day. We went to my parent’s that evening and had a good time. The next morning we headed for the Wisconsin Dells with Sam’s family. What should have been a 6 or 7 hour drive turned into over 10 because of terribly icy roads. In a 90 mile stretch I counted 24 cars slid off the road. For quite a while we were going 20 mph and still sliding around! At one point we were going up an exit ramp and there was a pretty steep drop off one side with a charter bus sitting down at the bottom (the road was slanted there). The car we were traveling with was in front of us and started to slide towards the drop, but they made it up the hill ok. Then it was our turn. We started sliding and I thought for sure sliding into the bus, but right at the edge of the drop, we stopped sliding. We sat there a moment, then finally made it the rest of the way up the hill. Praise God we were ok and made it to our destination! Delight did good. She’s never been on a long trip. I think I had a harder time with it than she did. I couldn’t stand when she cried not being able to get her out and hold her. The hotel we stayed at in WI had 3 huge indoor water parks with wave pools, lots of water slides and hot tubs. We had a suite with a kitchen and 3 bedrooms, so we got our own room with Delight, which made it really nice. Delight got in the kiddy pool some. She didn’t have much reaction. She loves her baths, but I think she was just really distracted by all the kids running around. It was certainly out of my comfort zone with a baby and all and I probably stressed about stuff I shouldn’t have, but all in all, it was a good time.
