Sacramento Where You At?

Before we made it from Carmel to Sacramento, we made a stop in Santa Cruz so Callie could meet not only the Nice family but also two of her great great aunts. For the record, all of these pictures and the good times captured below occurred while John was back in Lexington teaching. Because pictures of John sitting home watching TV don't make for good blogging, he will not appear in this episode.

Here is Callie with her Great Great Aunt Mary and Great Great Aunt Lorraine. Both Mary and Lorraine went out of their way to meet Callie and showered her with love during their visit. You might also notice that Callie is wearing the handknitted hat that Lorraine made. It will come in handy as the Kentucky fall turns to winter. Callie's parents only wish the hat was big enough to fit one of them.


Santa Cruz, or La Selva to be specific, is home to Callie's Great Uncle Tommy, Great Aunt Isabel, and her cousins Sophie and Brian. Unfortunately the time together was too short. But this will be the first of many visits she will have with the Nice family because she will get to see them at either Thanksgiving or Christmas every year.


Once we finally got to Sacramento we had our first dinner at Uncle Zac's place. Callie was excited to hang out with Zac and her cousins Keith and RJ. They boys couldn't stop oohing and aahing over Callie and she didn't mind it one bit. Meanwhile, Sarah and Gayle were excited to sit down and eat Zac's tasty chicken tacos.




This is a great picture of Callie with the guys. She got a chance to spend a lot of time with them over the course of the week or so she was in Sacramento and can't wait to see them all again. Hopefully she will be able to give them a tour of Lexington soon.


Although Callie and Sarah spent a lot of time running around and visiting family and friends, some of the best time was spent just hanging out with Grandma Gayle. Here Grandma and Callie take a break from Snood to point out to the world who the Snood champ of the family is. For those of you who don't get the reference to Snood, it may be one of the most addictive computer games ever. Whenever we are in Sacramento there is always a competition over access to the computer and Snood.



And if time with Grandma was fun, time spent on the couch was even better. Everyone does say that you should take advantage of the opportunity and sleep whenever the baby sleeps. Indeed, the only one with eyes open in this picture is Cheyenne.





Grandma Gayle, Sarah, and Callie. These are the best kind of pictures. Hopefully Callie will cherish images like these as she grows older. It can be a bit tough having Grandma Gayle so far away, but everyone is doing their best to make it all work. In fact, Grandma Gayle made the trip back to Lexington with Sarah and Callie and the three of them got to spend more time together...oh yeah, John was there too.


Auntie Lauren flew up from LA to be able to meet Callie and spend the weekend with her. It was a wonderful weekend filled with great conversation, coffee, and diaper changes galore. And it's only going to get better since Lauren and her husband JP are expecting their first child in April.





Speaking of children, here's a picture with a few of them. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, Sarah and Callie went to a get together that truly showed how times have changed. All of the fine women below were friends at UC-Santa Barbara, and I'm sure there are pictures somewhere that might provide a contrast to what we see below. Callie got to meet all of the following: Rachel with her son Braden and daugher Simone, Jen and her daughter Zoe, Jenny and her son Jack and daughter Megan, and of course Lauren. Not pictured are the wonderful fathers - Kent, Anil, and Brian - JP and John were not in attendance.





The above brings the blog almost up to date. Sarah, Callie, and Gayle arrived back in Kentucky on November 5th. Needless to say, John was extremely excited to see all three of them. Eight days of separation doesn't work well with the psyche of a new dad.

Stay tuned for more to come...in only two days Callie gets to meet more cousins as Aunt Katie, Michael, and Brendan hit town. The fun never stops!!!

Haley and Ryan's big day!

On October 25th, a mere three weeks and one day after birth, Callie made her first of what will be many flights to California. And she behaved so well, only melting down while in line to get on the plane. She had the other passengers thinking twice about their seat selection.

More important than all of that, however, was the reason for the trip. Callie made her first public appearance in California at the wedding of Sarah's cousin Haley. It was such an amazing celebration and one that we would not have missed for the world. Callie hasn't stopped talking about it ever since she got back. One of her favorite moments was when she got to have her picture taken with the beautiful bride.




You might notice in the picture above that Callie's dress is not only cute, but also matches the bridesmaid dress worn by her mother. This was all due to the amazing handiwork of Sarah's Aunt Teri, who is officially Callie's great aunt. Unfortunately Teri is not featured in this blog update since she was moving around too much that weekend and cameras couldn't capture her. We'll get her with Callie sooner or later.

And for the record, there are also no pictures of what happened shortly after the picture above. Long story short it involved Dad and what was supposed to be a routine diaper change. Callie and her father were lucky to make it to the ceremony.


It's not every day that a girl gets to meet her great grandmother. Great Grandma Hazel had quite a weekend as she celebrated the marriage of her granddaughter and spent time with her new great granddaughter. They make quite a cute couple.





And now we have four generations of strong, beautiful and witty women. Here they sit, relaxing and enjoying the wonderful Hawaiian themed evening that was all part of Haley and Ryan's rehearsal dinner. The food was delicious and the setting was gorgeous at Holly Farms in Carmel Valley.



The rehearsal dinner was a good warmup for Callie as she was passed around all evening. She met many of her relatives, but it was only the beginning. The day of the wedding would only bring dozens more into her life.



One person who could not keep his eyes off of Callie throughout the weekend was proud Grandpa Dan. He held her every chance he could get, and she loved every minute of it. And he lived up to a promise made to his daughter, and refrained from pinching his granddaughter's cheeks.





A wedding just wouldn't be a wedding without seeing the bride and groom gazing into each other's eyes. For all that Callie made a splash, Haley and Ryan were truly the stars of the weekend. All of their planning and efforts paid off in a big way. The weekend was beautiful, and as everyone present can attest, there were tears of joy aplenty. (Mainly shed by the groom) We cannot thank Haley and Ryan enough for allowing the three of us to be part of their special day.




More to come...Callie hangs out with Grandma Gayle, Uncle Zac, and countless other aunts, uncles, and cousins in northern California.

Fall is here

Sorry it has been so long since our last update. We promise that this post will be the first of many we write this week in order to catch up. Callie changes so quickly and it is tough to keep up with her.

So where were we? When last we saw Callie, she was hanging out with some of her first visitors. This post captures the last part of the first visit of Nana Taffy and Grandpa Jay. We'll start with a new baby/fall tradition - the pumpkin patch. Below we see the happy family hanging out with a mess of pumpkins at Evans Orchard. Doesn't Callie look cute in her pumpkin hat? Thanks to Hannah Flynn for that seasonal accessory.




Well, the family may be happy overall, but the picture below indicates that Callie does not like to be sized up with a pumpkin. There may be other explanations for her demeanor, but who knows at that age?


If you have spent any time with Callie, you may recognize this face. Fortunately she only resorts to this face rarely. But it happens often enough that it has its own name. We refer to it as "The Alien" and we have learned to recognize when Callie is about to bring the Alien out for a visit.




Not appearing in the above pictures are Nana Taffy and Grandpa Jay. They were in town together for about 4-5 days, and they could not get enough of their granddaughter. We took lots of walks, got a new water heater, and just enjoyed our time together.

And it's clear from this picture that Callie was quite happy to hang out with her East Coast grandparents. It is only a matter of time before she will start learning Nana Taffy's fun little songs and will start undergoing Grandpa Jay's rice puff versus Cheerios breakfast table experiment. It was great to have them here and Callie can't wait to see them at Christmas.



As we have mentioned before, Sarah and I are pretty competitive people. Although we try not to put too many expectations on our daughter, there are certain things that needs to start working on before her peers. We fully expect that she will know more about Black Hawk and all other aspects of Native American history before too long.




Stay tuned for the next post where Callie takes her first flight to California and wins over her West Coast family at Haley and Ryan's wedding.