Lame excuse #2,045

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful dinner with Dad, who drove up from Chesapeake, and Mom, who hosted us in her home.

So, my lame excuse for not blogging this week. My $#$# camera uses a proprietary battery that has a hard-to-find charger. When the "low battery" icon appeared, I rifled around for my charger, only to find it missing. (Wait- isn't that a contradiction in terms?) I think it must have fallen out of my camera case some time in Charleston, as that was the last time I've seen it.

So- no Thanksgiving pictures! Phooey!

I found another charger on Ebay and am awaiting its arrival. Hopefully, it will be in my mailbox when I get home today, so that I can take some pictures this weekend...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not much going on last week... We've just been preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. I think I've done all my shopping, but the house is still a wreck. Dad is coming down to join us for dinner.

I don't have much to offer for media. We did have Missy and Lila over for dinner last night, and I have a few pictures, and a cute video of Sadie marching around in one of Daddy's shirts... Lila is the first of our friends' children that she calls by name. I think she might have said "Griffin" and "Twyla", but I'm not completely sure. Sadie hugged and kissed Lila, and brought her lots of toys to play with, but darned if I could get any pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it. She used to be very protective of her belongings, but she's beginning to loosen up and learn how to share. Just don't ride on her Fisher Price Schoolbus!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Here's the short film of Sadie in Daddy's shirt. At one point, she looks at the camera and says, "It's YOU." Unfortunately, I always used to point at pictures of Sadie and say "It's YOU!". So, she took me literally, and now when she sees pictures of herself, or even sees me holding a camera and pointing at her, she says, "It's YOU!", as if her name is You. She did amend her statement with, "It's SHADY" (Sadie), so at least she's beginning to learn her name, which appears to be YOU Shady.



And a still picture of Sadie in Daddy's shirt....


A few pictures of Lila. She's thirteen and a half months old now, and such a cutie.

Sadie seems to take to Missy. She hugged her a few times and even kissed her. She recognizes a fellow blonde, methinks...

What a cutie!

Pictures from Charleston

First of all, I'm going to mock myself publicly. I am going with a friend to see Bucky Covington from American Idol, season 4, at the Longbranch Saloon in Raleigh this evening.

Go ahead- point and mock me! I'm kind of giggling about it myself... ;-)

Second- very few pictures from Charleston turned out. My camera needs a good spanking.

We spent some time on Isle of Palms, a lovely barrier island near Charleston. It was so warm on that day that kids were splashing and swimming in the sandbar area you'll see below. We didn't come prepared with an actual swimsuit, as it IS November, so we just took off Sadie's jeans and let her run around in the water...



I had just fetched her from the ocean here. Forget the sandbar, she wanted to dive in the big ocean....
Redmond took these pictures at the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry, so honestly, I don't know what's going on here, as I was off in conference land here.


Sadie seems to be tired or cranky here. Or just has a love of big red birds.

And big blue birds.

I thought the lighting was pretty cool here...


Here's Sadie, in the middle of getting very dirty at Sticky Fingers, a yummy BBQ/ribs joint in Charleston.

These pictures were taken at the Charleston Aquarium. This child kept making perfect poses and then moving before the picture snapped. Grrr...


A great blue heron poses majestically in front of the bridge span.

Sadie hauls a stuffed sea turtle all over the museum.


Redmond and Sadie appear to be giving the poor sea turtle CPR.

Yay! A slide!

This owl has been rehabilitated but cannot be released in the wild. The hawk below is in the same boat, so I guess they keep each other company...


Sadie checks out the fish. She kept calling the little sharks "dolphins" or "whales". I guess telling the difference between the three can be rather confusing to a two year old.
Awesomely cool jellyfish!
Sadie just loves fish...


We walk along the boardwalk near the Aquarium.
Great view of the bridge from the deck at the Aquarium.

Back from Charleston...

Whew! We're tired! We returned last evening from our trip to Charleston, and long car rides with toddlers can be, well, LONG. What should have been a five hour drive yesterday turned into an eight hour drive, but that includes a picnic lunch at a SC state park by a lake and a late afternoon hike in the Sandhills. We found that Sadie travels much better with frequent breaks to run around and blow off some steam.

My conference was chock full of great programming, as usual, but it's always a challenge to balance one's time at a professional conference with family in tow. I love taking Redmond and Sadie to conferences, but I find I end up feeling pulled in two directions. I want to do things with my family, but I also feel that my organization is not paying me to take a family vacation, so sometimes it's a bit stressful.

Anyway, I haven't had a chance to process our photos from the trip, but here are a few video clips I put up this morning... Check later in the week for more photos and info about the trip...

Sadie was absolutely enamoured of our hotel's exercise room. Particularly, she found the treadmill to be a most amusing "toy". I just want to make sure that Social Services is aware that she WAS monitored closely during this segment. ;-)



Redmond took Sadie to the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry while I attended programming. These next two films document her travails and hard labor as a fisherperson. Note in the first film that another child had her eye on Sadie's fish and Sadie wasn't having any of that....





The next two clips were filmed at the South Carolina Aquarium. The first clip is a very cool looking wee sea turtle swimming around and the second clip features a jellyfish.

Sadie's First Professional Photo Shoot!

Didn't happen. In fact, it was a colossal disaster. We had an appointment at the Picture People on Saturday morning. Before checking in, we took Sadie to Peek-a-Do to have her hair trimmed and styled. Mom, Dad, Sadie and I all pulled into the parking lot at Southpoint and proceeded to drag Sadie's entire wardrobe inside, as I was completely indecisive about what to have her wear. Redmond was away for the weekend, and Sadie had not slept well the night before. We waited for some time to be ushered into a small room for the photo session. Our photographer was a young women who appeared to be inexperienced with children; when Sadie refused to sit still, she seemed like a deer in the headlights. Sadie would not sit still by herself; nor would she sit on any of our laps. A meltdown ensued, and we ended up escorting Sadie out of the studio, whereby she threw herself to the floor in the mall and pitched a fit. Sigh. She doesn't do the meltdown thing very often, but when she does.. watch out...

After Sadie's nap, we tried to take some pictures at Mom's house. The lighting was odd and I don't have very steady hands, so here's what we were able to salvage. Some pictures are rather blurry.

We're excited about our upcoming trip to Charleston, SC. This is my second time attending the Charleston Conference for Collection Development, and like last year, I'm taking the family...














This series of pictures... well, I'm not really sure what to say about them. I can't decide if they are very, very cute, or somewhat creepy. Sadie likes to lie on the floor and pretend to be asleep. I'm picking up a horror flick doll vibe here..






After we returned home, Sadie couldn't wait to rip her dress off and check out The Wonder Pets.


And here's a very short clip of Sadie riding the rocking horse while wearing her fluffy dress....