Welo and Nana Week

What a week - we had Welo and Nana visiting Mia. They did a ton of things from making Mia's Halloween Costume (she's going to be a mouse and her stroller is a piece of cheese. Nana made the stroller cover and it is too cute---pic below), cleaning Matt's messy workshop (thanks Vic), visiting all the quilt shops in town, helping the economy by buying out the extra stock at Sam's Club, throwing some money into road improvements in AZ by playing slots and Keno at the local Casino, and last but not least, spending quality time with their grand-daughter Mia. It was a great week.

Saying good bye to the baby cradle

Twelve years ago, Welo (Vic) hand made an heirloom cradle that Audrey, Wyatt and Mia each used when they were born. It's a beautiful piece of work (I can say this considering my love for wood) and made from my favorite wood, American Cherry. It seems like just yesterday that Vic and I spent a Saturday sanding the cradle smooth and finishing the piece with an oil finish.

We are getting ready to put the piece away since Mia has outgrown the cradle. Actually, she outgrew it a while ago, but we have been in denial and have kept it up in our room as a reminder of those first few months when she was so tiny. Mia wanted to have one last test drive in the beautiful cherry cradle. Now that she can rock it back and forth, she thought it was pretty fun!

Hello!

Crazy Aunt Lisa and Cousin Audrey

Aunt Lisa and Cousin Audrey send a long distance greeting to Mia!

Mia's First Hair Cut

Mia had her first haircut today (okay, it was more like a teeny trim)! She went with me (Mama) to see Tony, our cute little Italian hairdresser : ) She actually did quite well (once we gave her a bottle). She doesn't look too happy once she's done, does she? At least we got rid of the Donald Trump comb-over and flapping-in-the wind toupee!

Check out the video as well.

Bubbles and baby gymastics

Over the past week we introduced Mia to baby gymnastics and other baby's her age. She spent time with 10-15 other kids her age crawling and walking around a gym designed for kids.

Jamie and Mia went to the baby gym on Friday and the next day, Debbie and I spent some quality time with Mia at the baby gym as well. Many of the baby's just started to walk and Mia was very interested in watching them walk and learning how they did it. Debbie walked Mia around by holding her hands and she was a natural at doing gymnastics summersaults.


As the final activity, they all ran around (in Mia's case -- crawled) the room chasing and playing with bubbles.

Mia enjoyed the bubbles so much that we celebrated with a big bubble bath at home. As you can see, she's to play with the bubbles.

Payson and Strawberry

Our day trip up to Payson, Pine and Strawberry was awesome. When we left Fountain Hills where the temperature was in the low-90s and within an hour we were in the mountains where the temperature was in the 70's.

During the trip we stopped by several interesting sights including an art gallery (Deb picked up a copper wall handing) and Tonto Natural Bridge (State Park). At the Tonto Natural Bridge we walked to some of the the view points that we could reach with a 10 month old. Mia enjoyed having the cool breeze on her face. We also drove North to the Mogollon Rim.

All of these places we visited on the day trip were beautiful and reminded me of the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan. The best part of the trip was that we were only 1 hour away from home.