Sunday, January 28, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
Two Thousand and Seven
Two thousand and seven has already been a busy year for the Martin family! Right after the New Year we headed off to Arizona for 4 days to go to the National Championship game, which was SO much fun. Savannah is now an expert traveler, having been on 6 different airplanes in 5 different airports. We had a marathon trip out there- we left Tampa and flew to Phoenix via Denver and then Ontario, California. I was very nervous about Savannah on the airplanes because of her ears. We had a very long trip and I might have been shoved off the plane midair if she'd screamed the whole time. I tried nursing her on take off but she had no interest and chose instead to look out the windows and play on the floor at my feet, hardly making a peep. It was a long first day which we capped with a 2 hour nap as soon as we got to our hotel. We got to see a lot of the country, though, and was well worth the trip.
Brad's parents and brother came out late the night we arrived- actually around 5 am. We spent Sunday exploring the Sedona and Flagstaff areas of Arizona and I swear I've never seen more beautiful landscapes than we saw in Sedona. The famous red rock cliffs are even more breathtaking in person than any photographs can show. It was a very strange sensation when we got to see snow up in the mountains- who would have thought it snows in Arizona?? Certainly not me! It was a long day, taking in as much as we could in a very small window of time but well worth the exhaustion at the end of the day.
Monday was the Gator game and it was just as fabulous as we could have imagine! We had run into a lot of smug Buckeye fans over the course of the weekend- very polite and nice, offering us "good luck" when we parted ways but there was an air of, "you have no chance of winning this game" underneath it all. What a surprise when the Gators not only won the game but handed the Buckeyes there worst defeat in recent years! It was a magical night that won't soon be forgotten. Savannah definitely has brought the Gators good luck this year! The basketball team didn't lose a single game after she was born last season, starting on her birthday and going all the way through the NCAA tournament. Then the football team did what no one thought possible!
On our way home we flew from Phoenix to Tampa via Denver and Alburquerque. We got to fly over the Rocky Mountains in daylight twice which was just beautiful. I kept looking out the window, wondering where they were... and then suddenly they sprang up from the earth in all their majestic beauty and I realized they were just as large and magnificent as I'd always heard.
We spent the following weekend recovering from out exhaustion and took a trip up to Riverview to check on the progress of our house. As you can see in the photo above they put our garage door on and paved our patio, driveway and sidewalk. Now that all the doors and windows are installed they lock the house up so we weren't able to get inside but we peeked in our bathroom window and saw they had installed our tile. I am hoping that they will have painted the exterior by this weekend because I am tired of looking at plain stucco- I want to see our pretty gray paint!
As for Savannah, she is enjoying fun filled days of exploring on hands and knees. She loves to pull up on anything and everything and will cruise around but refuses to support her weight unassisted. She has yet to pop a tooth so we are expecting that she will either never have a single tooth and we will end up fitting our toddler for dentures, or she will pop 3 or 4 teeth in a single day. Who knows. The poor child has an absolute love affair with food and it breaks my heart that she can't enjoy too much without teeth to chew with! Her favorite new treat are biting biscuits that she cannot get enough of- but she better watch her back because Peyton is right there, ready to grab it from her unsuspecting grasp! Even Tebow likes to get in there and have a lick or two.
Savannah's newest discovery is the toilet. I caught her with her hand inside the bowl the other day and when I close the lid she made her way around it and spent the next while trying to flush it. She has also discovered the bathroom cabinets and forced me to (attempt to) install safety latches. I think I am going to sit down and invent an easier system for these latches because the current ones are a little ridiculous. I was laying on the floor of the bathroom trying to hold the doors all the way open with a drill in my hand and the (tiny) latches in the other trying to drill through the cheap MDF cabinets in the apartment. Needless to say it didn't go to well and I only got two of the four installed- and one is so crooked that you can't open it at all. So I gave up, moved all the dangerous items to the side that won't open and said, Have at it!
I can't remember if I mentioned before Savannah's new favorite word- "baby". She absolutely LOVES babies. She will stop short at the mere mention of the word and will stare, start waving her little hands and say it over and over. On Christmas weekend Julie and I were sitting with Savannah and Caleb and Savannah looked at home and said "baby" perfectly clear. It was the cutest thing. She has also started saying "bye bye" and calls for "ma ma ma ma" or "mi mi mi mi" when she is upset. She has given up on "da da" for the time being.... I am sure it will be back soon!
It is hard to believe that her first birthday will be upon us soon- thinking that this time last year I was still pregnant and now she is almost one and my sister is gettting ready to have her little girl! How things change in a year....
