We moved!

July was filled with lots of really fun family time. Here are some pictures of some of the highlights.

My mom's birthday is July 12th. She traditionally has a yellow layer cake with cherry pie filling in between the layers, and cool whip all around the cake. It's very yummy, but since we just made that for mother's day for her, we asked her to tell us any kind of cake she wanted. We looked through about 40 pictures of different kinds of cakes, and she decided to go with the Boston Cream Pie. All the recipes I found called for a yellow cake mix. Chris would not allow using a mix for mom's birthday (isn't he sweet?), so we searched for a recipe from scratch. Chris and I made the cake, custard, and chocolate topping from scratch. It was a pretty delicate operation, but it turned out great. Everyone seemed to really like it. Looks tasty, huh?

Twice, while at my parents' house, we had a bon fire. The first time, we had tin foil dinners. I hadn't had them since I went to girls camp over 12 years ago. I love them! Just in case you don't know what they are, you take ground beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, celery, salt, pepper, butter, and whatever else you want, and put it inside aluminum foil. Then you cook it on the coals of the bon fire. All the flavors meld together with the flavor of the fire. Mmmm, so good. :) Of course, we had smores for dessert.

One night, we decided to do mud masks. I had a tube of it, and it's just a fun thing to do, not to mention the smooth skin you get from it. So, we all piled in the bathroom, and put the mud on our face. If you're wondering why most of us aren't smiling, it's because we can't. It hardens on your face (tightens those lines on your face), so it's kind of hard to use any kind of face muscles. We look kind of scary huh? And yes, that is Andrew in the front. I told him I would not discriminate against him just because he was a boy. Heck, he had painted Carin's toe nails earlier in the week, so why not allow him to have smooth, soft skin too?

This is a picture of all of my parents' grandkids (excluding David and Lucy's 3.5 kids in Australia.) Robert headed out to basic training the next week, so we wanted to make sure to get a picture of everyone together since we don't know the next time that will happen. I hear Robert is going well at Ft. Jackson. He graduates October 16th, and we're planning on going. We're pretty proud of him. Anyway, this was a fun picture with everyone together. They all had such a great time playing together. I just love family!

(For those of you who wonder, from back, left - Andrew, Megan, Ashley, K., Brianna, Claire, Robert; front - S. with a kitty, Jocelyn, J. - that's 10. If you add Rachel, and David and Lucy's 3.5 kids, that's almost 15 grandchildren and counting! Fun times.)

So our last weekend in our apartment, Chris's parents came up to visit, and John and Carin and the 3 kids were still in NY. We decided to go to the George Eastman house since it was one of the things we wanted to do before we left Rochester. We almost didn't fit it in! Anyway, apparently, George Eastman was not only an amazing philanthropist, founder of Eastman School of Music and Eastman Kodak, but was an avid hunter. He liked to use different parts of his prey around his house - a vase like this one, ash trays, garbage pails, rugs, etc. all made out of animal parts. I think this was a rhinoceros hoof.

My mom, Chris, Claire and I went to the Orleans County fair. Our move went really smoothly, so we had a little time the day before we moved down to go to the fair. We had a great time as usual. We enjoyed some salt potatoes, beef on weck, sweet potato fries, and ice cream. Mmm. Here is Claire petting the horse. She liked the animals.

Claire in her really cute dress Chris picked out for her. Isn't she adorable?

Yes, that is a satin slip and baby crinoline! So cute!

Well, we are all moved and settled into our new home in State College. It's a nice quiet street, across from a park, yet close to everything! I think I described it some in the last post, but here are some pictures.

Eat-in kitchen

Claire has her own room that she doesn't have to share with a million other things! I decorated the walls with her special calendar, the cross stitch I made her, and the latch hook that K. made her. We also found a place for Chris's pals.

Living room

My parents are baby sitting my baby for the next year or so. No, I'm not talking about Claire; she stays with me. I'm talking about my first baby - my baby grand piano. We couldn't get movers to move it long distance in time for us to move out, so we had local movers move it to my parents' house in Albion. Then we had some people from church help load up my parents' upright piano. It fits much nicer in our living room, as our living room is rather small. The grand would have made it awkward. The only bad thing was I discovered that their upright, which was painted by previous owners (bozos really - they painted over beautiful cherry wood, and painted it white! Ug), has lead paint. As Claire used it one day to help herself stand up, and then proceeded to lick the side of the piano, it occurred to me that my parents got the piano around 1980 and lead paint was prevalent in the 70s. Since we didn't know exactly when it was painted, I got a lead test kit at Lowe's. The top layer of paint doesn't have lead, but the bottom layer does. It's not really a problem unless the paint chips and Claire eats it, so I used scotch tape to cover up all the chipping parts. Classy I know, but you really can't tell by looking at it. I got a little paranoid, and did what I could to protect Claire. I guess it takes a lot of lead paint to get lead poisoning, and it's only a problem when it chips, which it only was in a couple of places, and I took care of it. I was hoping to try to strip the paint and give the piano back with it's original cherry finish, but apparently, it is very hazardous to remove lead paint yourself as paint dust can get into the air. So much for that idea. It's all taken care of though, and we are grateful to have that piano here for me to play and practice on.

We love our new home. Ideally, Chris and I would love a ranch house with a finished basement someday. This would be a little small for the long term, but it's perfect for us now. The other day, while Chris was playing for a wedding, I made him a yummy dinner! I've been looking through some of our old cooking magazines for some yummy recipes. I made him a citrus salad, french onion salisbury steak, and for dessert, a vanilla basil rice pudding with raspberries and crushed pistachios. It was all very yummy. The french onion salisbury steak will definitely be added to our Naugle family cookbook.

Claire is getting busier and busier. She is incredibly cute and I feel so fortunate to be able to stay home with her. She is my little bud. Unfortunately, she was sick for some time. While we were packing, getting ready to move, she came down with a cold. After about a week, she got a fever, and a goopy eye. I took her to the doctor's because I was concerned that we were moving away and wouldn't be able to take her to the doctor yet here. To make a long story short, she had the start of ear infections, and a goopy eye so the doctor gave her an antibiotic. It didn't get rid of the goopy eye, so she gave her a different antibiotic. The goopy eye still didn't go away, so she prescribed eye drops. That worked within a day (though we had to give 2 drops, 3x a day for 5 days). As you can imagine, it was quite a trick getting them into Claire's eyes. I did it by myself a couple of times, but usually Chris and I teamed up to attempt the nearly impossible. Thankfully, after over 3 weeks of a cold/ goopy eye/ awful cough, she got better. She's now perfectly healthy, and I have her set up for her 9 month appointment next month.

No, your eyes aren't fooling you. Claire is already 8 months old! She is getting so big! She crawls around and is sometimes incredibly fast!

She doesn't seem to like her knees on the floor when she's not on carpet. She kind of does a bear walk on the hard wood. It's pretty cute.

Her other favorite pastime is using the furniture to stand up.

She also loves to walk with assistance. In fact, we just did that. She likes to hold my hands and lead me around the house. She'll take me in and out of every room (on the main level). She's so cute how she lifts her feet up so far off the ground. Once we get through with every room, she then plays with her toys. She just likes to walk. I wouldn't be surprised if she's walking in a month or so. On the day she turned 8 months, she decided to stand without holding anything (for a couple of seconds) and climb stairs. She's a busy one!

Claire at 8 months - 8/19/09

Claire concentrating as she stands without holding anything for the first time.

Claire, as many of you know, is a big flirt! She is so social. Our first week at church, she was standing on my lap during Relief Society. She was staring at a woman behind us, trying to get her attention. When staring didn't work (as it often does), she said "eh". The woman still didn't look. So Claire put her head between my mom and I, getting closer to the woman, and said "eh" even louder. The woman finally looked, and she just smiled away at her. What a flirt! Then, last week, she was standing on the pew between Chris and I during sacrament meeting. Not only did she flirt with the many rows of people behind us, but then she started playing peek-a-boo with them! Chris and I just looked at each other, amazed. She would crouch down, hiding her head behind the back of the pew, then spring up with a big grin on her face. She did this over and over! It was hilarious!

My child is a strange one. She has a nice little basket of toys in the child-proofed living room for her to play with. There aren't electrical cords, stereo equipment, papers, etc. for her to get into like the last place. So what does Claire go for? The only thing left, the sockets on the wall. On the one open wall, there is an electrical outlet (with the plastic child-proof plugs inserted) and next to it, a cable connection. So, on many occasions, I have found her kneeling, hands and face against the wall, chewing on the plastic socket covers, or the little metal nub that pokes out from the cable connector. I just don't know what to do with that crazy one. She cracks me up. She also likes to play with the door stops. They are the kind that poke out and flex. She's just fascinated by them. She likes to play with the doors as well, passing the door between her hands, watching it swing. Now, she does play with her toys some, but they do not keep her interest for too long.

Claire continues to eat and sleep very well. She plays hard, she sleeps hard, and she eats to get more energy to play hard. She is just such a happy, funny little baby with a ton of personality. Ah, I love that girl. She also loves her daddy. This morning, I was nursing her when Chris came in the room. She tried to move her head to keep eating and watch him, but couldn't so just let go, looked up at Chris, and smiled. She started crawling up my body to get to him so he could hold her. It was so sweet. When she gets excited, she flaps her little arms up and down. She is her daddy's little girl.

Here's a video of Claire playing with her daddy. She loves the pals, and gets very excited.


The other day, Chris went to the store with his brother. When he came back, he brought a little blow up kiddy pool for Claire. She was given a bathing suit and swimmers diapers, and she seems to like the water. She's gone in a couple of times, and seems to really like it. She splashes the water, plays with the rubber duckies, and crawls around. A couple of times, she slipped while crawling around and got her face in the water. I thought she would cry, but it doesn't seem to faze her. She just blinks a little to get the water out of her eyes, and goes merrily on her way to what she was doing.

Claire in the kiddy pool. We decided to go fancy with the picture effects, yeah, that's it. Ok, really, it was a really humid day, and when we brought the camera outside of the air conditioning it fogged up. Oops! She's still cute though.