Red Stripe girl

Sawyer shows she's clearly her mother's daughter.

Girl's best friend

While the fetch runs aren't quite as long, ol' G and lil' My seem to love the Dog Park runs with Evie playing the role of ball tosser just as much as when Dad does it.

Field of Dreams

Also packed into this Father's day weekend was a day trip to New Ulm to see Grandpa Tom and Great-Grandpa Calvin Elmer.


While it's always good to see G'pa Tom, Evie's personal highlight of the trip was seeing Hannah Banana (E & S's 1st cousin once removed) work the mound and mow down her opposition in the Windmill Classic softball tournament.

Happy Father's Day

The gang treated dear ol' dad to breakfast in bed on Father's Day this weekend.


(Note to self: Add 'king-size bed' to 2011 Xmas list)

Driving Ms. Sawyer

The other reason for last weekend's Fairmont trip was celebrate a belated (Grand)Mother's Day with Nana. The thing is... all the attention, pampering and gifts (like the electric Jeep pictured above) went the way of E and S!

Try-athletes

Always looking for good reason to rendezvous back "home", Jay and Brett rallied the troops to zip down to southern MN for the Fairmont Triathlon. Linds resisted the peer pressure this year, but won't be getting off so easy next time around.

*"try"-athletes because hacking one's way through a tri "cold turkey" (i.e. without training) does not a a "triathlete" make... though we did truly earn that post-race Bloody Mary at the Channel!

8 months

On June 13, SRB hit the eight month mark. Here's the monthly update:

A few of Sawyer's latest tricks are...

• Crawling (previously noted, but S has it mastered now)
• Pulling herself up (when awake, the child no longer lays or sits... she's on the move or on her feet)
• Talking/squawking (still mostly on the squawk side, but the "da-da"s, "ba-ba"s and "ga-ga"s are more common daily)

A few of Sawyer's latest favorite things are...

• Finger food (spoon feeding is so last month... Ms. Independent prefers hand feeding herself fistfuls of anything in arm's reach)
• Water, particularly splashing water
• Evie's toys (specifically, those in Evie's hands... which gives Linds and I frequent "teaching opportunities" with a frustrated big sis')

Buds

BBQs, ice cream cones, swimming pools and the summer sun... now that's what friendships are made of, right?

And she's off!

After a few long, frustrating weeks of 'rocking', Sawyer finally figured out the crawling thing.

Big sis' is 50% proud (she'll even praise S with a "good crawling, Sawyer") and 50% annoyed, as this newfound mobility means Sawyer can get up in her business a bit too easily/frequently.