Happy Valentine's Day!

Halle spent her first Valentine's day with Grandma Brown while Daddy and Mommy went to work. Here's a peek at the special outfit Daddy picked out and dressed her in for Valentine's day!

Look who's 7... er 8 months today!

Seriously, where did the time go? It feels like I was just writing about Halle hitting the 6-month mark and now she's already two-thirds the way through her first year. We've changed so much over the past two months - here's what we are up to these days!

We LOVE bathtime in the kitchen sink, especially splashing in the water and playing with our toys.

We are moving all over the place! We can pull ourselves up to standing, crawl backwards, roll, and go from hands-and-knees to sitting. We also recently figured out that we can do this in our crib (and yes, the mattress has moved down to a safer position since the below incident).

And here's the usual end result of all that backwards crawling:

And another example of pulling ourselves to standing on just about anything:

Halle still continues to possess her sunny disposition and loves to talk up a storm. Over the past month she's found some volume to all those cute squeaky noises. I'm sure we'll be teaching her about using her "indoor voice" sooner than later!

My new hobby these days...

...is purging my house.

Here's a peek of my "to get rid of" closet.

OK, it may have crossed the "hobby" line over into the "obsession line" but can I tell you how easy it is to keep a house clean that has nothing less in it?

I am thrilled. Jim is concerned.

(and can't find anything thanks to my obsessive purging/re-organizing).

It's the beginning of efforts to make our house feel more like us. We're paring down in preparation for maybe some remodeling? Or maybe not. Regardless, less stuff = less stress = the minimalist inside me is happy.

I know it's been a long time since my last update. There are some potentially big changes coming this direction, least of which is the possibility of a new computer for me. Yes, Jim's '03 Toshiba is finally kicking the bucket (you mean it's NOT normal for a computer to require 10 minutes to boot?). I'm biting the bullet and going Mac - my dilemma is Macbook or iMac? I appreciate the flexibility of a laptop but drool over the capabilities of the iMac. Hmm...

Here's a picture of the almost-8-month-old bug to keep you coming back for more.

Stay tuned!