My Little Mermaid

Anika took her first trip to the swimming pool! We were invited to hang out by the water's edge by friend Stephanie who was awesome and helped me take pictures of this monumental occasion.
The water was really cold because the weather hasn't been super warm yet, and the rain has been persistant, which leads to colder swimming pools. But Anika was a trooper and didn't mind the chilly water at all; in fact she kept trying to get more in the water.

Nine Months!

Anika has officially been out in the world as long as she was growing inside her mommy!
We had Anika's checkup on Tuesday to get her stats from the pediatrician. She is 16 lbs, 4 oz (ninth percentile li27 little skinny girl), 27.5 inches long (44th percentile), and her head size is in the 47th percentile! Good news is that her head has grown, but she is staying low in the weight. I think mostly because she is constantly moving unless she's sleeping. Our doctor wasn't worried about it at this point, but hopefully she can gain some weight in the next three months before her ONE YEAR checkup.
Here are Anika's wonderful accomplishments!
* sleeping through the night! (most nights)
* babbling repeated syllables--she's a pro at da-da and ma-ma and knows who we are
* knows her name, knows who Jake and Mimi are, and knows what a lion says
* crawls on all fours now
* can wave to say "hi" and "Bye"
* pulls herself up to stand on EVERYTHING
* lowers herself down from standing with few wobbles
* has two beautiful teeth
* puts pieces of solid food in her mouth and sometimes swallows them all :)
* loves to dance, bang to make music, and read books
* enjoys watching Blues Clues



My baby is amazing! I fall in love with her more and more every day!

70.3

My husband is amazing, just so everyone knows. I have known this for quite some time, but he proved himself amazing in a whole new way this weekend. He did a triathlon, which is impressive since it requires training to master THREE ways of exercising in one race. However, however. This was not just a little triathlon of say, oh, 5 miles or 10 miles total. Nope. This was 70.3 miles.
We embarked for our journey to the High Cliff Triathlon in Wisconsin on Wendesday evening to get in a few hours of driving and to break up our 9 hour trip. This was the longest road trip Anika has been on, so I was a bit nervous. Thankfully we were able to stay with my cousin Carissa and her husband Peter and their ENORMOUS dogs Beau and Echo. Anika was a bit nervous about the size of these dogs at first, but got over her fears eventually.


We arrived in Wisconsin later on Thursday and joined the other two families of amazing athletes, Olson's and Dexters. We set up our homey campsite quickly and settled into the relaxed pace of the great outdoors.





The men began to prepare for the race, which included a test run of the wetsuits and swimming in Lake Winnebago on Friday afternoon. Anika and I went to watch Garry practice and took pictures of the beach on an ordinary day. Anika decided it was a good time to take a nap.







Saturday morning came early with getting the men ready at 5:30 AM to head down to get ready for the race and set up their transitions. So that we wouldn't have to worry about finding a parking spot, we all walked down the hill a mile to the start of the racecourse at 6:30 AM because the first wave started at 7:00. Eric was in the third wave, and Garry and Brad were in the 11th wave, which happened to be the last one of the half ironman. There were two triathlons going on that day: the sprint triathlon, which includes a 1/4 mile swim, 22 mile bike ride, and a 5k run, and the half ironman, which our men did which is 1 mile swim, 50 mile bike ride, and a 13 mile run. The green caps meant a sprint and the silver caps meant a half. Here is the excitement of the start of the event.





I managed to get a few pictures of Garry competing in the swim, but failed to take other pictures of the bike or the run. I was too busy walking up and down the mile long hill from the transition site back up to our camp. (even though Garry went 70.3 miles, I walked over 5 miles with a baby in a carrier on my back, uphill. just saying) Just imagine Garry very tired and sweaty wearing a red baseball hat and red shirt.
*






When Garry signed up for the triathlon, he had hoped to have a lot of time to train. However, work was extremely busy for him this tax season, which meant he was putting in 80 hour weeks, so basically working nonstop, which left little to no time to train as he had wanted. He only started seriously training at the very end of April, and even then had to take a couple trips out of town which meant no riding bike. So going into this our goal was for him to finish the race in under 8 hours. He did it in 7 hours and 51 minutes. Hooray!

Anika did amazigly well on the camping trip. Having many hands to help hold her was a huge blessing, and God has simply blessed us with an amazing daughter. She would get frustrated that she didn't have free reign to crawl wherever she wanted since the campsite was all dirt/mud, and anytime I put her on the grass she tried to eat everything she could touch. So on Sunday morning we had a Father's Day picture at the campsite and then packed everything up and headed to the hotel in Iowa city.
Garry was working there the next week, so we dropped him off and waiting til Monday to continue our journey. Needless to say, Anika was thrilled to be able to crawl all over our room.





Happy First Father's Day to a wonderful, amazing Husband!

The "Joys" of Homeownership

I love owning a house. I really do. But...not this week.
Side note: Garry was out of town all week.
The week started with windy days, and so the pilot light on our water heater went out Tuesday. I realized afterward that this was more of a minor setback and one that I can easily take care of by myself. However, when I first discovered we didn't have hot water I was a bit...overwhelmed. Thankfully my mom was visiting so I had her moral support as I tried to figure out how to get this water heater working again. The directions were right on the water heater, so at least I didn't have to go digging for a manual of any kind. Or course, printed next to the directions is a warning label depicting an explosion and a person catching on fire because they failed in their attempts to light the pilot light safely. Nice. Apparently one is supposed to wait 10 minutes between switching the gas off so that all the gas leaves. However, I was reading the knobs wrong, so 10 minutes turned into...a couple hours between attempts at following this directions and NOT exploding. But after it was done and that little blue flame came back to life, I was proud I did it.
For my next "joy" I need to back up to right before I discovered the water heater not working. My mom was staying the night, and I was going to have her sleep in the guest room downstairs in our basement. Now, the basement isn't too bad, but I admit I don't clean it very regularly. So I was cleaning up the small bathroom when I discovered...bugs. Tiny little bugs ALL OVER the floor. And not just in the bathroom, all around the basement. Most of them were dead, but still. Yuck.
So now, even as I type, the pest control guy is here spraying all over my house. Because SILVERFISH were also FALLING FROM THE CEILING this week. Yuck. And there are a whole bunch of spider egg-sacks in our basement windows. Yuck Yuck.
Turns out that the bugs all over the floor are called...springtails? I think that's what he said. He said they are attracted to humidity. On my next Target run I shall be buying a dehumidifier. I almost posted a picture of what they look like...but I'll leave that to you adventurous sorts who don't get creeped out by bugs to bing search that.
And now, the final "joy": mold. Our master bathroom has wallpaper and no vent fan. Usally we just shower with the door open to let the moisture escape, but apparently that isn't good enough. I discovered yesterday when I was cleaning in the bathroom that the wallpaper is coming away from the wall. I lift it up to find oodles of black mold. Yuck. So I peeled back a section of the wallpaper. Yuck Yuck. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't think of that right away. To the Internet I went to find some solutions to cleaning it up. White vinegar to the rescue! so I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed the mold and it actually came off really well. But now I have a chunk of wallpaper missing, and now we will have to figure out what our next step is with that. I like having projects to do around the house, but tackling a bathroom re-do may be above my skill set.
Well, I feel better about my bug situation at least now that the house has been sprayed and treated. And they'll be back in August as well. Die bugs, DIE!

We're Going to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

Happy June!

What better way to start the summer than a trip to the Omaha Zoo? Garry and I have a famly pass to this wonderful place, and so I decided to take Anika to her first trip to the zoo! Unfortunately I did not document our time very well with photos. Mommy fail. But I did get a couple shots of a bear, and Anika looking intently at either some wonderful animals or some of the many children who were running around the zoo that day as well.




And I finally managed to snap a couple pictures of her teeth!



Also I finished my first sewing project: a hooded bath towel for my friend Kelsey's baby boy who will be making his appearance into the big world soon! Now I am going to try and find some patterns for dresses to make for Anika...hopefully for her 1st birthday.

Memorializing Memorial Weekend

Whew. Traveling is tiring, but fun when we get to see a lot of family we usually don't get to see. And trips to the Netherlands away from the Netherlands, Pella, IA.
My cousin Amy and beautiful baby Evelyn caravaned with us to Pella for the weekend to spend time with our mothers' side of the family. We made the trip out Saturday night and arrived at my Grandpa and Grandma Van Gorp's house to stay with them for the weekend.



What better way to celebrate Memorial Day than to have a party for the return of my cousin-in-law from Afghanistan for a two-week leave! We partied hard on Sunday afternoon in the hopping town of Leighton, IA (population...100?) With dismay I report that I forgot to take pictures of our party. Fail. AJ serves as a chaplain in the army, so thankfully we don't have to worry about him being in active combat, but he does have to face more of the spiritual warfare happening in the army, which is really the only warfare that really matters. We are proud to have him serving our country and our Lord and Saviour!
On Monday we went over to the Meinders cabin and pond for some burgers and other yummy picnic food. Anika did amazingly well considering she didn't take a nap, but by the end she was exhausted. We had a great time visiting relatives this day too!





On Tuesday we went and walked around Pella with my Aunt and cousins from Tuscon, Arizona, who made the 20+ HOUR DRIVE to visit everyone. We enjoyed spending time with them again and catching up on their busy lives. Hopefully we get to see them again next summer at the Van Gorp Family Reunion!





In other news, Anika now has TWO TEETH! I have been trying to snap a picture of them...but that is very difficult. Now I have to go buy some baby toothpaste and a little toothbrush to begin teachign the importance of good dental hygiene!