Sharli's First Year in Review

With Sharli's first birthday coming up tomorrow I thought a fun way to catch up on some of the events of the last year would be to do a review of her whole first year. 

(No, this post is most certainly NOT an attempt to use my baby as an excuse to update my blog in a single HUGE post. How dare you think such a thing.)

(Just kidding, if you want to skip this one, you will only kinda break my heart. It is crazy long.)

***These pictures come from an assortment of cameras/devices so the quality is not always great, but they show what we were up to and that's what matters to me. 

FEBRUARY 2014

The first half of this month was spent in last minute preparation for our new arrival, and the last half was spent enjoying her and learning how to be a family of four. 

Enjoying some one on one time with mom. There's not much of that any more, but we're not complaining.  

 We had a some snow early that month which made driving to doctor's appointments a little more exciting than I preferred, but Erik sure enjoyed playing in it.

  Sharli was born on Valentine's Day. You can read more about that in this post I wrote about it all .

Erik was pretty excited to come to the hospital to pick us up and bring us home. He was pretty fascinated by this tiny little person. 

 Holding Sharli for the first time.

 My mom was there to help us out during all this. As much as she wanted to go home when the time came, I think she had a hard time saying goodbye.

 MARCH

Sharli grew like a weed this month. 

 Once she got the whole eating thing figured out, she chunked out really quickly.

 Erik was just his normal sweet self. Like most older siblings he had an adjustment period to go through, but he really handled this whole transition pretty well.

 As we all got used to each other and life got back into a routine, things got a little easier. There was even some sleeping taking place, which was NICE.

 Erik has always loved to help out. He's such a good little guy!

 It was discovered that Sharli doesn't enjoy facebook as much as mommy does..

 When Erik needed to get out of the house and get a break from all the baby business, he'd go outside and play in his "backhoe". This was the entirety of our front yard, and he squeezed every possible drop of enjoyment out of it he could.

 Erik thought all these new toys were pretty entertaining.

 Sharli and Erik got to experience White Sands for the first time. We went with Kett, Cameron, Darrow, and Heber. It was a lot of fun, except for the parts that weren't.

APRIL

April held some new adventures for us. We caught some of Sharli's first smiles on camera.

 We took advantage of a radio promotion and treated Erik to the Museum of Natural History. More pictures of our fun here.

 We tried out a new (to us) park in Albuquerque. It's the perfect place to have a picnic lunch and some play time after visiting the museum or Explora.

 The highway near our apartment go resurfaced, so for a few days Ethan and Erik spent a lot of time hanging out watching all the big machines at work.

 Sharli started getting strong enough to sit up while supported. Also, her hair started getting long enough to have some fun with.

MAY

Sometime around the second week of this month Ethan accepted an offer for a new job. We excitedly started packing things up. And we had to hurry, because we only had 2 weeks to get ourselves packed up and relocated in time for him to start work at the Glenwood Fish Hatchery. 

 While I was busy packing and cleaning, Sharli was busy figuring out how to roll over. While swaddled. In her sleep.

 We tried to keep things as normal as possible during the packing up process for the kids. And packages from Grammy definitely helped distract from all the change going on around us.

 Sharli was just as smiley and happy as always, blissfully unaware of all the chaos going on around her.

 And cause moving isn't enough adventure in itself, we got to work on other fun things like potty training.

 Finally moving day came (Ha, I said finally. I think "in the blink of an eye" might be more realistic). We loaded everything up and headed for our new home.  The kids settled in quickly and we are all quite happy with our new life.

 The view of our front yard. So much better than the one I shared a few minutes ago, right?!

JUNE

We got serious about getting unpacked. Well sorta.

 Within just a few weeks of our move we were already reveling in the joy of being close to family. Cousins are the best!

 We also wasted no time teaching Erik how to play outside. Yep, you read that right. This poor apartment raised kid had no idea what to do when turned loose outdoors. It didn't take him too long to catch on though.

 Sharli has always been the queen of weird faces. Look how strong she's getting. And how curly her hair is!

 We finished off the month with an extended family trip to San Diego. We all had a ton of fun and got sunburned way worse than we thought we could.

July

Sharli (and the rest of us) spent her first Independence Day in Lordsburg enjoying good food, great company, and an awesome fireworks show.

We got to spend lots of time outside enjoying our gorgeous new surroundings and even just our own front yard on nice summer evenings. 

We went to see Cooney's Tomb and hike up Mineral Creek. What a spectacular place!

 This kid will eat anything she can get in her mouth, so naturally she just kept getting more and more adorable rolls.

 Sharli got to enjoy her first ever Richins' Roost this year. She loved it. Mostly because there was an unending supply of people willing to hold her and tell her how pretty she was.

 I think Erik enjoyed himself as well...

 While this wasn't his first Roost experience, it was his first Pay Day hike, complete with a kiss from Aunt Lenore. These kids will do anything for a candy bar and a toy!

 Darrow and Sharli both thought the Roost was fun, if somewhat exhausting.

August

This month was full of adventure, but I didn't really get any pictures of it. A dear family friend passed away after a long and corageous battle with cancer, so Kett, Darrow, my kids, and I all piled into one car and drove up to Idaho for the funeral. We got to visit two sets of Great Grandparents, whom Sharli was meeting for the first time. We saw some extended family and dear old friends. While the reason for our going was a sad one, we still found lots of joy in the trip. 

We also took a long weekend to go visit my family and go poke around Bisbee, AZ. This is always an interesting place to go, though we seemed to run out of things to do quicker than usual. Hmm...

 That hair just keeps getting curlier!

September

By this point in our year, the Monsoon season was upon us in full force. There was water everywhere!

 As summer slowly started to give up it's grip on things and temperatures became a bit closer to comfortable we started getting outside more. We took a walk along the Power House Trail to enjoy the beginnings of coolish fall weather.

 Sharli decided it was time to get some teeth. Good thing we had lots of frozen peaches off our neighbor's tree!

 New teeth weren't exciting enough she also wanted to figure out this whole crawling thing...

 ...as well as sitting up independently.

October 

 So I think the name of this hairstyle is something like "Mom didn't care how I looked as long as my hair wasn't in my eyes".

 Somehow I didn't get a picture of Sharli's Halloween costume (she was a bear with a sign around her neck that said "Please Don't Feed The Bears", but we did get lots of pictures of Erik's.

 See how long her hair got in just a few short weeks?!

 Or maybe that was just the day we went to the Antique Mall with Kett and Darrow...

 We spent a Saturday wandering along the San Fransico river looking for hot springs. We never did find any hot springs, but the views were unbeatable!

 At the end of the month we went to go visit Aunt Abby, and we figured as long as we were there we'd give Sharli her first taste of Explora.

November

Sharli mastered crawling and learned the joys of mobility. And cupboard doors. 

 Sharli and I manned the hatchery while Ethan and Erik headed to the ER for an asthma scare.

 Selfie!

 Sharli's first Thanksgiving was spent at the ranch house in Galeyville, AZ with many of my extended Payne family. It was a really fun couple of days filled with games, good food, spelunking, lots of snacks, horseback riding, PIE!, nap taking, eating, karaoke, and so much more...FOOD!

December

We utilized the Christmas tree cutting program the Forest Service has and we cut our own tree. It was fun to watch Erik's eyes light up as the decorations went up.

This was Sharli's favorite expression around this time. She did this all the time! Especially when she was walking around, which she started doing just days before Christmas.

Erik got to be a wiseman in our church pageant, and a shepherd in the Glenwood community church pageant. He wasn't so sure about it all, but it was sure cute!

Kett and Cameron came to our house for Christmas and we had a marvelous time.

January 2015

The new year brought with it some fun variety in weather. Sharli got to experience snow for the first time.  

 Erik got to sled for the first time. I'm pretty sure he LOVED it!

And then also in January, we had some lovely sunny days, which we enjoyed to the fullest by working in the yard together. 

 Look at the cute little baby doll in Sharli's toy box!

February

I don't have any pictures uploaded for this month yet, but we've pretty much been up to the same old things. Sharli decided to take on the challenge of making this year bigger and better, so to improve on last March's para-influenza she decided her birthday would be an awesome day to try out the full blown version of the flu. She is also walking like a pro, takes GREAT delight in tormenting her big brother, and is trying to say a few words/animal noises. She loves to read books (gooks as she says) and will follow you around with them all day just begging to climb in your lap and listen to a story. She LOVES the outdoors, especially if she can get away with eating some dirt or rocks. She is happy and full of life and so much fun to have around. I'm so grateful for the year we've had and can't wait for the next one!