Back on the bike

Today I went for a beautiful bike ride along the Rio Grande on my road bike, by myself. Normally I am too chicken to ride my bike by myself because I am terrified that I'll get hit by a car, and die. Which could totally happen. But we are discovering that Albuquerque has miles of gorgeous mixed use trails (running, biking, roller blading, strollers, you name it) where I can ride my bike in peace.

At least I rode my bike in peace this morning until a friendly fellow bike rider named Armando decided that he needed to be my tour guide to biking in the Southwest and tried to bike next to me and carry a conversation for a couple of miles. This meant that I had to go slow. Also at some point I find it awkward to ride and chat with 40-something-year-old men. So I had to turn around a little earlier than I wanted to so I could get back to my ride.

I pushed it pretty hard and got a little wobbly legged when turning back into the parking lot through this turnstile and...ran into a wooden post. Which of course resulted in a small "real fear scream", which resulted in people asking if I was ok, which was embarrassing. Also I got this cool oil pattern on my leg that I was not able to completely scrub off afterwards. Hopefully it will come off before church tomorrow.

Beanie eats some beans

Tim has a work schedule where he only has to work three days a week (holla!), but these three days require him to be away for about 12 1/2 hours each day. Since I'm a loser and don't have friends yet (other than Aunt Wendy and Steph, who are the best), these can sometimes be long days where I hang out with this cute 10 month-old. One of the ways I like to entertain myself is by giving Lily (who is also known as Beanie at our house) a bowl full of food, lets say, refried beans, and letting her go to town.

Perhaps you can see why I find it so amusing.

Lily Update

I wish I had gotten a better shot of this, but Lily had a great time seeing cousins, aunts, and uncles that she had never met before while we were in California. I love how Keilah has her arm around Lily in this picture while Grandpa Rauch reads the kids a story.

She is still crazy flexible. This is another shot I took of her sleeping the other night. She is crawling and starting to get into everything. This week she started pointing.

She is such a happy little person. When she's not laughing she's making me laugh.

I Apologize

I know, I know, it's been far too long since I've posted. We're in Albuquerque, NM now and we just got back from spending a fun-filled week in Santa Cruz with all of Tim's family. Here are some pictures of our house, which looks exactly like several other houses in our neighborhood.

This is the room you see when you first walk in. I've neglected posting for so long because I wanted to have our house perfect, with all of our pictures up but then I remembered...I don't actually care that much. So here is our house is all of it's messy glory.

This is the living room, with a fireplace!

And here is the kitchen and dining room. I am loving all of our counter space.

Our backyard is truly a gem here in Albuquerque, because we have grass and trees.

If you don't believe me you can check out our neighbor's yard. Different shades of gravel.

More postings to come!

26 Years of Age

Yesterday I turned 26. I'm still thinking that 25 sounds better, but here we are. Not much commentary as I should be packing right now, but here's some Lily to feast your eyes on. We went to her checkup today and she's still in the 40th percentile for weight...the doctor couldn't quite believe it either.

Lily and I hang out while Tim sleeps in the rocking chair.

Baby Dracula

"I will not show you my teeth. Pffffffffft!"

"Well maybe if you make me."

"You're kind of funny, Mom."

"Really funny, actually!"

This is how I found Lily sleeping the other night. My Baby Dracula is unnaturally flexible.

Don't fugitives run through your backyard, too?

For some reason police activity seems to increase every time I go to the gym.

Like the time I was on the treadmill and several police cars started circling the gym parking lot and an officer came in and started questioning the lady at the front desk and looking at her computer. Was a bad guy getting his workout in?

Like the time when I got to Jenny's house to pick Lily up after the gym and there were police cars out front and we later discovered that one of her neighbors had spotted someone that the police were looking for hiding in a nearby backyard.

Like the time when I was making a right hand turn to Jenny's house, and it was a red light so I was checking traffic, and the car behind me was honking frantically and totally ran the red light after I turned. Then sirens followed and a police chase ensued.

See what I mean?

But on Wednesday there was the most exciting police activity of all. As I was getting Lily in her car seat after picking her up from Jenny (sweet Jenny, how I will miss you!), my phone kept ringing. I assumed it was my mom, because that's what we do: call each other multiple times if we don't pick up the first time. But it was Tim, calling me from home, warning me not to come back because a fugitive was loose in our back alley and there were about 15 police cars surrounding our house.

Oh don't worry, they caught him. Tim watched the whole capture and was a little concerned about how chubby and slow the Milwaukee police force was.