Fall trips

Our little cutie at 9 months old. She is all grins with her daddy.

Much has happened since the last time I wrote. Chris and I have been very busy and having a great time. Chris is very busy with his teaching job at Penn State. Some days I don't see much of him, but he is working hard and doing a great job. I'm very proud of him. Some people think being a professor is easy, but now that he's had first hand experience, it's not as easy as some might think. It's a lot of work and a lot of extra hours. Thankfully, I can stay home with Claire and take care of things around here so he doesn't have to worry about it.

Snoozing on the couch with my little girl.

We are also busy in our callings at church. Chris is a primary teacher to 8 and 9 year olds and I am the primary music chorister. I am blessed to have the best singing primary I have ever heard. I'm not bragging, because I had nothing to do with it. They were like that when I came in. I was very impressed. We had our primary program a few weeks ago, and they did an awesome job. I was nervous and intimidated by the call at first (I know I'm a music teacher, but I've never taught a bunch of little kids to sing. I do instruments.), but now I absolutely love it. It takes a lot of work to prepare, but the kids are so loveable and it's really fun to work with them.

In September, we got to attend a Penn State game. Chris's parents and Jamie came down as well. We had a great time, and it was a beautiful day. Claire did pretty well at the game too. She slept for a little bit, but not much. We also had to be careful - who ever was holding her couldn't cheer because it seemed to scare her. We had a great time at the game. Go Penn State!

We were right under the score board and had a great view!

The view from the top of the stadium. It was so beautiful!

Over the past month, we have been taking lots of trips and having a great time. The first weekend in October, we went up to Albion. Well, we really went up Sunday because I had a gig Sunday morning. We visited with mom and dad and our English cousins, Ruth and Ian, on Sunday. We had a great time with them. It was fun to hear stories of our common ancestors. If I have it right, my great grandma (on the Hales side) came to the US from England. Her sister was Ruth's grandma. I'm pretty sure that's right. There is a story where my grandpa paid for his mother to call his sister in England once the technology was available. They just held the phone to their ears and cried the whole time and hardly talked. My grandpa also offered to send my great grandma back to visit once air travel was more available. She didn't want to go back, because it was so hard to leave the first time that she couldn't imagine doing it again. Ruth said that when she left, she didn't even look behind her to say good-bye. I can't imagine saying good-bye to my family knowing it would be the last time to ever see them. Ruth and Ian also brought some pictures of their family. It's interesting to see the Hales white hair and facial features so strong on their side of the family as well. I hope we have the opportunity some day to visit them in England!


Anyway, when we went up that weekend, part of the purpose was for Chris to do some work at Eastman and U of R on Monday. We had a good time in Rochester on Monday, and headed back down so Chris could teach on Tuesday.

The following weekend was also a lot of fun. We went up to Montoursville to visit with Chris's family, especially his Aunt Shirley and Uncle Danny from Texas. They are so much fun, and Danny taught us all how to play Rook. I love to play cards, and it happens frequently with Chris's family. Now we have another fun game to play. On that Saturday, we went to the covered bridge festival at Knoebels Grove. We at lots of yummy food including potato cakes, pulled pork, kettle corn, apple dumplings, etc. Yum! We also went on a few rides including a train ride, the haunted house, and the ski lift that went up the mountain to the top and back down. The last ride was awesome with all the beautiful leaves. Claire refused to sleep, so she was exausted, but well behaved.

Last weekend, we went down for Robert's basic training graduation. I say last weekend, but we left on Wednesday for South Carolina. We got there that night and met up with John, Carin, and kids for dinner. On Thursday, we went to family day on post and attended graduation later that day. We were all very proud of Robert and so happy to see him. He's lost 20 lbs. and is looking great.

At the graduation ceremony

Robert is the 3rd one in. (The one with the BCGs which stands for battle combat glasses, or more lovingly as birth control glasses. They aren't the most attractive. He was ready to put on his regular glasses as soon as he graduated.)

The Beaumont's (Jesse, Lucia, and their 5 kids) came down for the graduation as well. We all had dinner that night.

Claire not only tried salsa at dinner, but decided to pull the lime off of Robert's glass. She put it in her mouth and chewed. We waited for a face, but none came. She's a crazy girl who will apparently eat anything. Let's hope it stays that way!

Since Robert wasn't supposed to check in to AIT at Fort Bragg (N.C) until Saturday, we had Friday to spend together. We decided to go to the South Carolina state fair. We at some delicious (and some not so delicious) food. The most interesting was the fried everything plate. It was huge, but since there were 9 of us to share it, none of us would drop dead eating it. We shared deep fried oreos, reese's peanut butter cups, chocolate covered cherries, pepsi bursts, and snickers. Yum! All were very delicious. What's not to like about deep fried, battered candy! Later, we saw a sign for chocolate covered BACON. I kid you not.
We're all pretty adventerous, so we had to try it. Why would the sell it if it was gross, right? Well, apparently they sell it to people like us who think it'll be fun to try. It was disgusting! Yuck! It left a really weird flavor in your mouth too. We all hated it except for Andrew. He chomped away at it saying, "what's wrong with it?" Ha ha. All in all, we had a great time at the fair, got to see lots of fun things, ate lots of food, and had a great time together.

So there was the vlasic stork for vlasic pickles. They had a pickle contest. Whoever crunched their pickle the loudest got a prize. Brianna played 5 times until the stork finally picked her and she won a t-shirt. We later all got t-shirts when they gave them away. Andrew was the first to win, and he chose a vlasic stork stuffed animal. He was very sweet and gave it to Claire. Notice that in later pictures, she always has the stork with her. I have never seen her take to a stuffed animal like this before. She LOVES him!

Claire did not lack for attention, which she loved. John of course loved holding her as did everyone else. The stroller we brought made a nice place to put coats and free stuff we got.

Claire was all tuckered out after a long day at the fair. I love how she has the stork tucked under her arm. Ahhh.

When we left the fair, we went to see the Columbia, SC temple, since it was close by.

We also checked out the church bookstore across the street, and then went out to eat at Maurice's which serves Carolina BBQ. It was recommended to us by a guy at the fair, and boy was he right! Carolina BBQ is more of a mustard based sauce. I've had a lot of other BBQ with the tomato sauce, but I might like the Carolina better. It was delicious! I highly recommend it to anyone who has a chance to try it.

On Saturday, we got up bright and early and left the hotel around 6AM. We drove to Bloomington, Indiana so Chris could discuss with one of the horn professors there. He is especially known for his horn building, and playing/ teaching natural and other historic horns. Chris discussed his lecture recital things with him and had a great time doing it. He has been wanting to meet with him for years, so it was nice that he finally had the chance. We were there from about 5-7, and then left to go to Dayton, OH to spend the night. Sunday, we drove home, stopping in Columbus to go to church. We happened to go to church right next to the Columbus temple. It was cool to see 2 different temples in the same weekend.

We made it home safely Sunday evening, happy to see the snow from the crazy early snow storm in State College was gone. We were kind of glad we missed those 6 inches of snow. Yuck!

It feels good to be back home after being gone for 5 days, but unfortunately it doesn't last long. We're headed to Ft. Dix this weekend so Chris can do army paper work. It's kind of annoying, but he gets paid, and money is good.

We have many more travels planned coming up in the next few weeks that I'll fill you in on next time. Chris's lecture recital is the Monday before Thanksgiving. Once that's done, it's only the comprehensive exams to prepare for. I say "only", but I'm not the one taking them. It's 12 hours of torterous written tests on music history and theory. Once you pass that, you have to schedule an oral exam. One step at at time.

Ok, on to what I like to talk about most - my baby girl. She is such a joy! She had her 9 month check up last month and is growing well. She was 18.5 lbs. (50 percentile), and 29.5 inches long (90 percentile). She is a busy girl, which explains why she's so skinny! I promise, I feed her a lot. She had to have the first of 2 flu shots and had a hemoglobin test. The blood test was so painful for her. I felt terrible. She recovered from it ok though. She's tough.

After her doctor's appointment, we went over to Way Fruit Farm. We had signed up to go on a hay ride where they gave us a tour of the apple orchards and taught us the process of growing, picking, washing, and sorting apples. We had a great time and Claire had a little thing of apple cider and a bag of apples to take home. She of course couldn't enjoy them, but Chris and I did!

Claire continues to become more and more entertaining to Chris and I. She now claps, waves, imitates us, says uh-oh, stands very well, takes a few steps, cruises, flirts, plays the piano, etc. She is just so much fun. She's so excited about clapping, that she'll stop nursing just to randomly clap. It's so funny. Then this morning, while I was watching tv, she heard a man on a commercial say uh-oh when he dropped his glasses. She then repeated, uh-oh. It's so darn cute! I feel like the luckiest mom in the whole world to have her as my daughter. People always ask if she's always this happy, and yes, she is! She's constantly looking for people to flirt with when we're in public. In fact, once I was in Walmart and she was getting tired and was fussing a bit. As soon as she caught someone's eye, she starts flirting and smiling at them. What a ham!

This was the day we got Claire's Halloween costume. We had to try it on! Check out the cute tail!

Last night, Chris and I carved a pumpkin. I think it's the first pumpkin I have carved in 5 years. The last time I carved a pumpkin was with my foreign friends my first year of grad school. Chris cleaned out the guts, and I designed and carved the face. Ok, I copied an idea from online - I'm not that creative. It turned out ok though, and I had fun doing it. :)

So yesterday, Claire turned 10 months old. I decided in honor of Halloween, I would get her dressed in her costume and have a little photo shoot. It doesn't look quite as good as last time, but there were plenty of cute pictures. I'm having trouble picking which one I like best, so I need some help. Below are a few of my favorite pictures I took of her. Which one do you like best?

Claire mid clap.

Steady...steady!