that one small town.

FACT.

My mom has the BEST yard in all the land; she has a nice deck, beautiful mature trees, fruit trees filled with apricots, apples, pears, and plums, she has a basketball pad that I use to beat all my brothers and husband on, beautiful hammocks and swings, gorgeous landscaping around her house, beautiful arbors that house beautiful flowers, a pergola that we used as a backdrop at our reception, perfect obstacles for games of frolf, and she even has her own forrest-which makes for great campouts on the 4th!

SDR and I LOVE to go out to Lewisville and I think we have spent 98% of our days out there so far this summer (we live in Rexburg). Ty and Jen are here for the summer and we genuinely have a great time every day! We stay up late porch sitting, playing around the world, and we always go for at least one walk a day because the weather is perfect, the scenery is gorgeous, and we are the only people in sight!

One would have to seriously question her sanity if she ever decided to move! :)

eleven

By far your greatest achievement in your 10th month was learning to tight-rope walk on our roof...

and to jump safely into daddy's arms

But other than that, 11months looks like this:

2 teeth only

lots more hair

sweet & sassy

sleep from 8:30pm-7:30/8am and without a fuss

2 naps; 10-1ish, 3:30-5

nurse 3/day eat human food 3/day

still loving your cottage cheese and yogurt

finally eat cheerios without choking

taking steps-2 is your max

finally ditched the army crawl

only have binky for bed and on long car rides

love the park and swings

love when dadda comes home

love mother the most
ridiculously happy after waking up

dance to anything

lots of gibberish talk
great at farting sounds on the ottoman

amazing peek-a-boo skills that have me laughing til I cry

laughing at mother all day long

love sitting on the counter playing with my makeup

&

LOVE airplanes 

   -we took you to the air show in Rexburg and you loved it of course!

We celebrated Fathers day on your eleven month birthday, and took a pic by our door. 

Both of you are just soooo cute!

Time spent outside in Lewisville can't get much better than this

And a special thanks to this high chair. It allowed me to be on the computer while Stori was still awake! 

I can't believe you turn one in 4 WEEKS!!! 

Sure love ya kid.

Green ghost

Before I was married and had a baby, I worked at Gringos Mexican Restaurant for about 4 years. I am very aware of each type of salsas that they have and what makes them different:



Mild-not hot, not chunky, and for the beginners.


Medium- a little bit spicy, but mostly just chunky.


Green hot- green, hot, and runny. 


Red hot- RED & SPICY!

I’ll give you one guess as the where this is going…

Yep, my sweet Astoria Rose Radford.
 Since her birth, she has gone through these stages of salsa:



Mild-so sweet, never cried, not fat, and just a beginner


Medium-starting to talk and definitely a lot chunky!


Green hot- referring to her new stage of rice cereal and bowel movements.


Red hot- RED hair and more SPICE than in ANY Mexican dish.

This is one sassy little girl who knows exactly what she wants and won't let you tell her other wise! Some say it’s the red hair, some say it’s her parents. I have no answer.

Maybe it’s because we went to Gringos all through the pregnancy... went there the day I went into labor… and went there 9 days after she was born…and we keep going back... 

Maybe my milk is to blame! :) Either way, we definitely LOVE this little girl and like to go to Gringos! Especially with great friends! This was Stori’s first time being asked what she wanted to drink at a restaurant!!!!! Officially a big girl?? Oh look, there's little baby Maximus! love him!

My mother informed me that not all little kids act like this! Hahaha….
Oh goodness, what are we in for? 

planes, trains, and lawnmowers

Stori sure talks a lot. mainly this language in the video...

But she is also saying:

tossuh (for toss it in the oven in patty cake)

aday (when we open the blinds in the morning we always say "it's a beautiful day!" 'aday')

eooaaahh (for what a cat says)

dhjinkk (drink)

and our personal favorite...

arphhhllla (airplane)

We went to the nature park (by the airport in Rexburg) with Dan's family and she was reaching for those airplanes like she was doing olympic landing stances! Anytime she hears one, even if inside, she reaches for them and says 'arphhhlaa'. It is our favorite!! luckily we live so close to the airport that she gets to see them several times a day! 

Sometimes on walks she confuses lawn mowers and trains for airplanes, but don't we all?!

pics of some of her reaches....

 this is the plane that kept flying by us so that Stori could reach for it.

ORANGE binky

You know the binky to which I refer because it is in every picture of my little girl.
But did you know that it is the only binky we own? You see, we have only had the one binky for Stori because it is the one they gave us in the hospital. 

(almost 11 monts ago)!
Obviously we have had no back up for our binky-loving-red-head. Risky eh?

Soooooo.... we started to get a little proud. It started to become a game. Each day was a little victory that we survived with keeping track of the one orange binky. I was too scared to post about this because I knew I would wake up the next day and it would vanish. {However, I needed to post it so that we would always remember how cool we are}!

But, while out and about last week, I bought a 'just in case' replacement.

Dun dun dun….

I got home and I felt defeated! I lost the game of surviving with the one and only pacifier. 

So to remain undefeated, I came up with a purpose for this new pacifier...

I went to Porters where I had been eyeing this Memory Box since Astoria was born. But it was $20 and I kind of have a love/hate relationship with spending money. But it was 50% off so I did it. I gathered all of her baby treasures from the hospital and I filled this box. Including her orange binky! So technically she still has only one functioning binky! 

Me? Defeated? Ha!
And this is what it looks like now!

Contents include: fabric from her baby quilt, all of our matching wrist bands from her birthday, birth card from hospital crib, baby hat they gave her after being born, tiny blue and white bow the nurse made for her, pink and turquoise bows for her hair, her first outfit (that tiny Madison onesie), bracelet I made for her, and of course, the orange binky!