concert, birthday and more painting

Last week we celebrated Murray's birthday on Sunday. We had several couples over for dinner and it was so much fun celebrating with them. I made Gail's sweet and sour chicken per Murray's request and hot fudge Sundaes. It was a good time.
We went to a Jim Brickman concert with some friends and that was so much fun. He was very funny and his music was beautiful to hear live. We left Mary with friends who tended her. We are thankful for Paij and Brent, Mary really likes them. It is so amazing to spend a few hours with Murray alone, dating is wonderful!
Saturday we painted our dining room/kitchen yellow. It is a little brighter than we imagined but that's okay. It is just a very cheery place to be. Murray says maybe it will fade with time.
Mary loves to go over to the bottom shelf where all of her books are and pull them all off. It is funny to find her surrounded by books! I wonder if she will have a love of reading. We do go to the library every wednesday for story time.
Mary loves her bath time, it always cheers her up. I usually give her a bath after dinner because she is a bit of a messy eater as you will find in her pictures. I think more gets on her than in her!

Mary's Trick #5: Video of Mary Crawling!

Mary will be 8 months old tomorrow and has really become a great crawler this last week. It was only about a week and a half ago that she took her first few crawls and now she can get around most anywhere. It is really cute and Mary is happy that she is more mobile. She can also sit herself up from laying down. Also she is starting to lift herself up to a standing position, but she needs some more practice on that. We are very proud of Mary and hope you enjoy this video of her.

crawling and painting

This week Mary took two little crawls, it is pretty cute. Now she is crawling to get to things and can go forwards. Which is really great because she could only go backwards until now. You can tell she is proud of herself and we are too. We went to Homecoming for Murray's school. It was a casual BBQ with a lot of fun games. We went in a blow up ring (like the bounce houses) and jousted. Mary had a flower made out of balloons for all of five mintues before we had to take it away for fear she would eat the pieces when they popped. They did pop and she did want to eat them. It made us too nervous so we were happy when we got to throw it away.

Murray built a small fence to go around the air conditioning unit outside with leftovers from building our fence. It looks great!

I finished painting our bathroom on Saturday and we now have one room that isn't white! It is green. I learned from my mistakes in the little bathroom and am deciding which room to paint next :)

Fun Days

It has been a fun few weeks in Southaven, our new home! We have made some great new friends and done some fun things.
If you are familiar with the song "Walking in Memphis" you can hear Beale street mentioned. We went and walked down Beale street and it was pretty cool. We saw a man playing the harmonica and ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. There are so many restaurants and lots of music. We also went to the Peabody Hotel ant took a picture with the famous ducks by their fountain. The ducks are famous for a little routine they do.
There was a BBQ for all of the LDS students at SCO. There were so many families there and about 25 two year olds and other cute babies. SCO has more students from BYU than any other college. We even ran into Mallory who was Shawnas roomate from BYU, small world! Mary loved seeing all of the children run around and made new friends :)
Mary has two little teeth on the bottom and they make her smile all the more adorable. Her favorite new trick is to hold toys in her mouth with no hands. She should be crawling any day and we are excited for that even if it means we're crazy. Since that day is coming soon we spent the weekend looking for something to cover our fireplace.
We went bowling for a friends birthday, we were a little hesitant because it was late and we are trying to get Mary to bed around 7:30. We went and had a great time anyway. When we came home Mary fell asleep BY HER SELF in the crib, a miracle! We might be spending a few evenings a week in the bowling alley, if that's what it takes for her to fall asleep in her crib.

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We Made It!

We are now Mississippi residents and even have license plates and driver's licenses to prove it. We are all moved into our house and have unopened and half-opened boxes everywhere, but we love it. We are just happy to be in our house after a stressful series of events kept us out of it for an extra week. We are getting used to the area and making friends as fast as we can. People here are so friendly. Murray even found a few school/church friends that helped him build a 200 foot long fence last week in our backyard. It was very hard and the 100 degree weather didn't help, but we got it done. We've also been borrowing things from, getting medical advice from and getting to know our neighbors. It's a very nice neighborhood. Margaret is making friends and finding playmates for Mary. We are also getting to know our way around Memphis. We had a picnic at a park on the Mississippi River, walked down Beale Street and through the Peabody Hotel and have been eating a lot of good barbeque. Murray had orientation for school and will start classes in two days. Mary is growing fast and loves to hold our fingers and stand up. She is also getting close to crawling and can actually sit and play with toys for extended periods of time, which we love. Everywhere we go, people stop and look at Mary and talk to her, saying she is so cute.

We are happy to be here and invite you come visit us if you are ever in the area.