The reader.

Our daughter loves to read. Well look at books. I didn't quite capture it, but she sat at the table by herself looking closely over her "Baby Words" book for at least 10-15 minutes. I kid you not. What an attention span! She gets that from Sid; not me. And like her father, Emma prefers not to be interrupted while reading. :-)
Like me, she is quick to forgive. An usually cracks a big smile....

George and Vanessa's Wedding

Was there anyone else at the wedding besides Emma? You wouldn't have thought so when looking at the majority of the pictures I took.




















But, who could blame me? I am her mother and she looked so cute in her dress!

Actually there were lots of other people at the wedding:
the bride and groom,
the groom and best man,
Harrison,
Ella and Gail,
Page, and of course wonderful hubby Sid (and sister Mary too!) :-)
Oh yes and there was Oscar.....
Emma was quite smitten. So cute and only 7 months old.
Now back to Emma:

George and Vanessa's Wedding- but first we went on a walk

Here are pictures from our walk at Hubbard State Park in Montpelier, Vermont. We walked out to a stone tower. According to the 1700s map in the coffee shop, the tower is located on a once cleared hill. Built by Ethan Allen as a lookout for the land mongering New York granters? Who knows... Now it the hill is dark and dank, a true New England woods- filled with huge old deciduous trees: oaks, maples, birch.




It was really nice for both Sid and I to be back in our college state. We ran quickly from Burlington (and all its traffic), but did try to get out to Middlebury on the way back to the airport. We were denied by a roadblock on the Middlebury Gap road and a doughnut eating sheriff ("who hadn't seen his toes in about 10 years", according to Sid).

We really liked Montpelier: walking community, at least 2 bookstores in the downtown area, treed, old houses, great restaurants, a river, running and walking trails everywhere, small-town feel....

Emma Cute (Part II)

I had a friend over the other afternoon who is learning to knit. Her name is Ellie. Emma enjoyed meeting a new friend (they are all friends of Emma's these days- Emma is not shy) and having a new toy with which to play: yarn.

Emma Cute (Part I)

Here are some cute pictures of Emma and in the third one you can see her not-so-new bottom "teef"....She has top ones now too!

New Toy.

We got this on loan while a friend is in Canada. Sid is begrudgingly happy about. He does agree that Emma looks adorable in her helment. Mom is unequivocal. She loves it.
Emma likes it too!

The baby holder is called an "iBert". Sid and I have both agreed that the ride-along-backs and baby trailers are not our cups of tea. The trailers scare the b-geesus out of us when we see them and behind is nowhere near as fun for baby....

Places we've gone on the bike-along: The Farmer's Market. Rockford's (of course). The Bozeman Public Library. Downtown. The Linear trail.

So fun! I love this thing.

Other vacation pics, part I:

Some of the nicest parts of the trip was stopping in small towns to take a break from driving. Not only was Emma happier, but these towns were quiet, mellow and just plain fun. In the pictures below, we are returning to Bozeman via the "east side" down along the Rocky Mountain Front.
















A portion of the RMF. (Sadly, I am not the author of this picture)

But, last year I did make a map of the area we drove for The Wilderness Society:
Half way through the trip back south, we hit the towns of Choteau and White Sulphur Springs. Both towns are notable for a variety of reasons. Choteau has a David Letterman residence to brag about (and sometimes Dave himself shows up I hear) and White Sulphur Springs has "Red Ants Pants".
At times with Emma, our world tunnels down and becomes so small. It really is beautiful. Red Ants Pants Store in White Sulphur Springs. I've talked about this friend of a friend (Sarah's) business before in emails. Go here for more beta on Sarah's chutzpah. Go here for the even better commercial/video.

Other vacation pics, part II:

A pretty day on Flathead Lake.

Big Fork / Glacier Adventure

Define adventure. Everyone's is different. I have to admit, circumstances these days have forced me to revise mine.

Adventure is now: "Getting out of the house"; which the Montana Williamson Family did last week. Emma, Sid and I travelled to Big Fork, MT. Big Fork is about 5 hours from Bozeman. North of Missoula, on the east side of Flathead Lake and ~1.5 hrs south of Glacier National Park.

We stayed in a lovely cottage along the Swan River. Big Fork is a small lake-side community of about 2,000 people. It was very quaint. We took morning walks to the coffee shop, strolled the downtown and nature trail and skipped around nice outdoor dinner spots; just like at home. Except at home we don't eat out as much.

I even got to kayak the Swan and out onto Flathead Lake.



Next, we travelled to Glacier National Park. Our original plans were to take 10 days and go Banff NP in Alberta. Realities of Emma, driving, sleeping and our anxiety thresholds caused us to revise our plans to the closer U.S.A. Glacier. Consequently, we were late getting cabin/hotel reservations. GNP is not the place you want to do this. Suffice to say we took NO pictures of our "cabin" on the "lake" in tranquil ("not"), border-town of West Glacier. We did take a great drive/hike in the park to Logan Pass (up to the Continental Divide) on the Going to the Sun road. Sid had never been. The bear grass and the alpine flowers were blooming and everything was green and lush. Emma was a great traveler that day and the weather was BEAUTIFUL!

Why I love this product: Cold Smoke microbrew in a can

Why do I love this product?

Is it because it is called Cold Smoke (that is referring to suberb hyper-cold snow that is amazing to ski through)? No.

Is it because it has a skiier on it and I love to ski? Uh huh.

Is it becaue I like the taste of the beer? Not really.

I love this product becaue it is beer, WORTH DRINKING, that is in a CAN. I know, I know, Murphy's Stout is in a can. Guiness. It is in a can. But, for summer time imbibing, who wants those heavy dark beers? Not me.

Really the crux of it is that to help with the environment and to reduce our trips to our smelly, far away garbage totle. I want to drink my beer FROM A CAN. We have a small trash can. We have a small outside garbage tote. We like it that way. We want to produce less garbage. Bozeman is so small and far away from an urban center, it is not affordable for the city, or any recycling entity to take glass.

The consequences? It no longer works to choose glass if you want less garbage and to feel like you are part of the solution and not the problem. Plus I hate taking out the garbage. The less glass we buy, the more we use products we can recycle, the less garbage-taking-outing. Plus, curbside recycling is coming to Bozeman (finally) in October, which will mean walking the recycling right out our front door and not the long walk around through our back yard to the alleyway where the garbage tote is.

And just as I was asking my friends about my wish for more microbrews in a can? These guys: Kettle House Brewery in Missoula, Montana! They package their microbrews in cans! Why? Because they did their research and found out that aluminum is the best recycling product out there (they explain all of this on the can); it is cheap to recycle, lighter weight package that has one the best recycling bank for buck.

In short, I love these guys. Thank you!

p.s. Forgive me for being ridiculously ecstatic, but ask and you shall receive. Plus they are doing it for the *right* reasons. AND they are in Montana, and therefore local!!!!!

Okay, back to Emma....

Emma, plastic bottles, and one metal mixing bowl

Here it is. The constant reminder that kids love anything that is "interesting"... Well, they love anything that is interesting to them. And that does NOT necessarily mean that it need be bought at "Natural Baby Works" or "Babygenius.com".

What does Emma love today that isn't extensively researched for child stimulation and development? Three plastic water bottles (caps off and of different size and shape) and one large metal mixing bowl.

How much was she interested? See pictures below. For how long? I took probably 50 pictures of her playing with these things (ahhh the beauty of my D70 and the digital age). While I could rapid fire them off in about a minute, this went on for about 30.

Being a Daddy is hard work: evidence

Sorry this video is sideways. I don't have the technology or know how to fix this, at this time. But, it was too cute not to post.