My Favorite Day of the Year!!!

Yipeee!! I experienced my favorite day of the year today. I look forward to this day all summer long, waking up to 50* weather, puting on my sweatshirt, warm socks, and Birckenstocks!! I can't explain how rejuvinated I feel. Natalie and I were all comfy and warm as we went out this morning. Fall is here and summer is over!!! YIPEEE!!!!! I love the cool, fresh, crisp breeze coming in the windows. My ideal place to live would be a place where Fall could last for 5 months, Winter for 2 1/2, Spring for 3, and Summer for 1 1/2. Now that sounds Glorious!

We have a walker!!

My favorite picture from Alaska!

Hi Everyone!
Things are going well here in Omaha. It's HOT but hopefully we'll be experiencing a cool down after the "forecasted" thunderstorms tonight. Natalie is officially walking. She had a big walking day last Friday and has been doing it ever since. She sometimes forgets about her new skill and she'll crawl so we say "Natalie, stand up and walk" and she stops, stands up, and walks. It is so cute. We are excited about this stage because of her extra-sensitive skin she inherited from her Daddy. If she crawls on the grass she breaks out into a rash and her knees are rubbed raw, so, now we don't have to put pants on her in 100* weather. We had a great time in Alaska, it is so beautiful up there. The word of the week for me was "wow."
In the picture below my brother Chaed is dancing for Natalie. She thought he was pretty funny!

This was a beautiful scene on one of our hikes in Alaska. Sorry, I can't figure out how to flip it around (Kerri, do you know???)

Here is Natalie sleeping on her Uncle Chaed during one of our hikes.

There is such a variety of scenery in Alaska, here is a hike where it seemed like we were in a jungle. (don't worry, my brother has a gun he carries that's used for bears)

Here is Natalie with Chaed's fiance, Kari. This is on a tour through Denali National Park. We saw bears, moose, and caribou. It was pretty amazing.

We camped one night in Denali National Park, it was unbelievable. I went to bed around 1:30am and it was still light enough for me to read!! Yeah, that was a big change, 20 hours of daylight. I loved it. Natalie is helping put the tent up, we slept with bear pepper spray. :)

So, there's some pictures and a quick glimpse into our trip to Alaska. We have been keeping busy since we got back home. James is in his second week of his Driven Hockey Camps (www.drivenhockey.com) and it is going great. This is the 4th year. His dad always comes down to help him run the camps and his mom came this year too. We decided to put in a fence in our yard so that's kept us busy. It looks great and his dads' precise measuring has given us a ridiculously straight fence, seriously, I don't know how it's so straight with all the slopes and slants and bumps in our yard. James wasn't able to help after the first night because he ended up turning into bubble boy from an alergic reaction to something in our neighbors trees. Man, that skin of his, it's pretty bad. He went to the doctor when his arm started to swell up, we'll see if the prescription helps. Well, that's about it for now. Take Care!!

1st Birthday!!!

WOW!! This has been an incredible month. There has been so many great times and experiences. Most importantly, Natalie is now one year old, we can hardly believe it. We had a party with all the babies from our Bradley Birthing Class and a party here at the house with friends and family. They were both great.

Look what a difference a year can make, here's Natalie the day she was born!!


Here's Natalie at one year old!


You can check out the slideshow below for more pictures of Natalie's birthday parties. She did not dig into either birthday cake, she did pick the strawberries off the one I made. That's good, maybe it means she doesn't have my sweet tooth. She is such a blast. She loves being outside, drinking from the garden hose, and playing with her Dad (she definitely thinks he's more fun than I am). She spends time outside with me while I work on my garden. I've never had a garden and I've loved it so far, I'm excited for the "harvest" :) She does the signs now for please, eat, all done, and milk. It's so amazing how she learns so quickly. She also started playing with her toys and using them for what they are supposed to be used for as opposed to just eating them. :) James and I watched in silence and amazement last night as she sorted her plastic shapes into one bucket and her wooden blocks into another bucket. The teacher in me got excited, "that's an early math skill, sorting and classification," James just laughed. She loves walking around everywhere as long as someone is holding her hands. She's taken a couple of steps but hasn't gotten the courage to tackle any more on her own. She still takes her 2 naps a day, she's a busy body so she needs her rest. She's still pretty tiny for her age as far as weight goes, she's smaller than 82% of babies her age but she is taller than 78%. She has James' body type, tall and thin. She is such a fun baby and we enjoy her so much every day.

James & I left Natalie for the first time over Memorial Day weekend. We went to Washington DC and Natalie stayed with James' Mom, Nana. We decided to take a trip to celebrate our anniversary. I loved it and it was so fun to spend all that time together. We saw all the monuments and some of the museums. We spent 4 hours in the Holocaust Museum and I have a new desire to learn and read more about WWII.


We also were able to go to the Tim McGraw & Faith Hill concert. It was UNBELIEVABLE!! We went with James' work and had appetizers at a country club here in Omaha, we were taken to the Qwest Center in a limo and then watched the concert from one of the Suites. Words cannot explain how much fun I had. I love both of them and was able to sing along with almost every song. It was great, the Qwest Center was packed from the floor to the ceiling, as you can see in the picture below.


We had a great Father's Day yesterday. We went to church, lunch, and then out to Louisville lake. It was so fun to watch Natalie experience the fun of a lake. She hung out in her floaty and then played in the sand. She only ate one handful of sand before she decided she'd rather just play with it. She was filthy, we had a great time.


Well, that's about it from the Chalmer's Household. I'm getting ready to go visit my brother, Chaed, in Alaska on Thursday. I'll be there until the 28th. I'm so excited!! He had a free ticket that I was able to use so Natalie and I are heading up there to spend some time with him. James is busy getting ready for his Driven Hockey Camps, www.drivenhockey.com, in July. Have a great June and I'll post some more pictures after our trip to Alaska. Take Care Everyone!!

Here's the slideshow, don't forget to click on play and for some reason you have to keep moving your mouse in order to read the captions on the pictures. Enjoy!

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Growing so fast!

Here is another slideshow of Natalie from April. Remember to press play on the slideshow and you have to move the mouse every once in a while for the captions to stay on. Enjoy!! (Please feel free to leave a commment if you want, I'm beginning to think the only people that read this blog are Kerri, Christi, & Missy :) Thanks Girls!

Click to play | Make your own Smilebox

Well, April flew by and we are already in May and one month away from Natalie's first birthday. We cannot believe it. We are having such a hard time believing that it will ever get better than it is now. My friend Donna that I taught with assures me that it just keeps getting better and better with every age. James and I have so many conversations where we think this is the best it's ever going to get, we just love her so much in this stage. We think she's the cutest and most fun now. I have to believe Donna that it just keeps getting better and if that's the case (which I'm sure it is) then we are in for so much joy and excitement. One new bit of news is that we are pretty sure that Natalie did her first sign language back to us. I've been doing it with her since January and was beginning to wonder if she would EVER respond and I think she did. We are teaching her the sign for please. We ask her if she wants more food or water or milk and do the sign along with it. If she reaches for it then we say "say please" and do the sign for please and then take her hand and make her do it. Well, on Monday night she did it ALL BY HERSELF!! We erupted in "YEAHHH" and laughed and clapped. She looked at us and laughed back. I immediately said, "I don't think she did that on purpose" and much to our surprise she did it AGAIN. I still wasn't convinced but then she did it 2 times during lunch on Tuesday, once at dinner last night and twice during breakfast this morning. I can't tell you how excited I am. 4 months of doing the signs and she finally did one back. I still get very excited when she does it and she always laughs back, it's so cute. Well, that's about it from the Chalmers' household. Enjoy your spring days!

Spring is here!

At the very end of this post is a new slideshow of Natalie with her pictures from the month of March. She is ten months old now which means she is almost a year!! We can't believe how fast time has gone and how much she is changing every single day. I feel so fortunate that I'm able to see watch her every minute of the day because she explores and experiences something new every day. The latest heart stopping event occurred a couple of weeks ago. She has never touched the steps, climbed anything, or showed any interest in either. Well, I was washing dishes and Natalie was playing in the living room. I peeked in to see what she was doing and she was exploring her stroller. I went back in the kitchen, washed a couple more dishes, remembered Natalie's bottle was in the living room so I went back in to grab it (the ONLY reason I went back in) and Natalie was at the top step!!! I COULD NOT believe it. She turned around, smiled, and laughed. I rushed to grab her and then thought all the normal things, "what would have happened if I would have come in 30 seconds later," "what in the world inspired her to climb the steps," "how did she not fall backward down the wooden steps," "seriously, how did she know what to do to get up the steps?" So, I now block the steps going up, as well as down.


We've been spending as much time as possible outside with Natalie in the beautiful weather, she loves the swing, HATES the grass, and watches the birds! She loves sitting in the swing at the park, well, at least we think she loves it. She will sit in it for 20-30 minutes without making a sound. She doesn't really smile or show any emotion, we are beginning to think that her little personality is going to be pretty chill. Any new situation she experiences is the same, she just takes it all in and doesn't show that she loves it or hates it, just kind of "does" it. We just let her keep doing something if she's not fussing about it. The one thing she did show an obvious dislike for is when her skin touches the grass. As you'll see in the slideshow below, she doesn't like any part of her body to touch it. It's hilarious. Here she is trying as hard as she can to climb up on James her feet don't have to be in it! :)



We are all doing great here and hope you are all doing well. Take Care

Signing off from Omaha - dreary, windy, and 37*

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Crawling, Standing, Sledding

Hello Again Everyone!
I finally downloaded some recent pictures of Natalie and made another slideshow. I'm in love with smilebox, you can download all your pictures on it so quickly. I know I always say that but it's so great and people can see how she changes and grows. This slideshow has pictures from January till now. She is still pulling herself up on everything, she's discovered the steps, she's had her first injury that drew some blood, she laughs when she sees us, and she is extremely quick. She didn't even cry when she hit her chin on the corner of the stairs. We truly believe in the whole "it's all how you respond" theory. She will completely fall over, hit her chin on her toybox, hit her head on the floor, and as she's rolling back over she'll look at us for a reaction. We avoid eye contact with Natalie, often say to eachother, "Oh man, that was a HARD fall, that had to hurt," and then look at her and say "YIPPEEE, you're such a big girl," and she's on her merry way to bonking another part of her body. When the blood incident happened I was actually downstairs doing laundry, I heard a loud bang, a uhhhhh, uhhhhh, and that was it. When I came back up I was surprised that there was blood because I would have thought she would have let out a loud scream. No reaction, no tears I guess.

Is everyone able to view this smilebox slideshow, I just realized that maybe you have to download something in order to view it. If you could let me know that would be great. You can leave a comment if you want, I only have 2 people that ever comment, Kerri Young & Christi Jensen, you two are so sweet.

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Here is a little slideshow from yesterday, we took Natalie sledding. She was not sure about the whole experience. It didn't start off so great, the first tug on the sled sent her flipping over backwards landing in the snow, kind of high centered on the sled with her head in the snow and her legs on the sled. We picked her up, held her for a bit, put her down, and off we went. Then James buried her in snowballs, we fed her some snow which she kept eating, and had her touch it. All in all, not too bad, we had fun. Enjoy and everyone have a great day.
Love, The Chalmer's Family
28 degrees and dreary

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Halleluia!

HELLO!! Here's a little slideshow for those of you who haven't seen or barely see Natalie.

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Well, in my last blog I mentioned that Natalie was sick and getting better after 5 days, well, I was wrong. She didn't get better for quite some time. Now, she is finally back to her self again and we are so thankful for that. She was sick for 2 WEEKS!! She had some nasty virus and was in to see the doctor twice, which, for those of you who know us well know that's huge because we never go to the doctor. It started with a day of diarrhea, followed by a night of throwing up and diarrhea, and then ended with another 13 days of diarrhea. Sorry if that's too much information for some of you, but hey, she's a baby. It was so sad, she would just cry and cry all day. I would put her down and she would scream. She wanted to be held for about a week and half straight. She wouldn't smile or laugh,just lay and cry. It was terrible, she would only smile when James got home from work because she apparantly thinks he's the funniest person alive. Then, in the midst of it she got a cold!! Ughhh... We had to go to the doctor because she had one wet diaper in about 28 hours and dehydration was becoming a major concern because she was only eating about 10 ounces of formula in an ENTIRE day. She was losing weight and dropped from the 10th percentile in weight to the 3rd, so now 97% of babies her age are bigger than her. Oh well, she's just our little peanut and we love her. We feel that it was only because of God's protection that she didn't have to go to the hospital for dehydration, somehow 10 ounces total was enough for her little body and she fought through it. Praise God!

Now she is making up for it and eating like a mad women, the picture above is her first time eating carrots, she's not quite sure. She is actually finishing her bottle without us having to force her to and she's crying when it's done because she wants more!! That has never happened in her 8 months of life. It's crazy! She's also eating a ton more solids which is encouraging, she's making up for lost food I guess. She is also practicing her new skill of standing up on her own. She crawls all around, following us from room to room and then she pulls herself up to standing if she's able to find something that's the right height. It's so amazing how she learns a new skill and then it kind of consumes her, that's all she wants to do. She is also great at catching herself when she falls. :) Other than that, we're doing great here at the Chalmers' household. On another note, James was recently promoted to a Franchise Support Manager at his job! He is very excited and I'm so proud of him, he's only been there 6 months so it's great to have people believing in him and his abilities. The church we are a part of, Coram Deo, that started about a year and half ago with 40 people has now grown to around 150. We are so excited about that and actually "multiplied" our current Missional Community (small group) into two seperate ones. There was a need for one to meet downtown and we are currently heading that up with other people that live downtown. We are really enjoying getting to know some new people and digging into Romans together. That's about it, everyone take care and all you teachers enjoy the snow day today!! YIPPEEEE!!!!

14 degrees and 4 inches of snow here in Omaha