The Wattsonian: Ari's First Summer Sunshines

How may I help you today?

I’m happy to say that 2014 gave us a rockin’ summer of family fun! It was especially nice because our 2013 summer was spent family-less in California, my first summer ever where I was so disconnected from family. I went a little nuts.

This year we made up for it with oodles of family time, though I’m sure everyone was more excited to see Ariana than us. Oh, right, there was a baby somewhere in all this summer craziness! How’d that happen? Just kidding, I know. I saw the stork through the window when it dropped Ari off on the porch.

Before your eyes partake of Ari’s cuteness, I want to thank her unofficial photographers for making this blog post possible: Grandma Glenn, Grandma Watts, and Great-Aunt Carina.

July: Shindigs and Mingles
If you're wondering what happened to June, apparently it's lonely and forgotten. Nobody does anything in June. (Except celebrate my mom's birthday - I haven't forgotten you!)

So now it’s July. First, Ari and I partied at the grandparents’ homes:

Cousin Abigail is going to be an opera singer someday.

Then we rocked the Mahoney reunion:

She looks so much smaller in Uncle Josh's arms than in mine...

Ari was exhausted, so she fell asleep on Grandma Watts! (She never does this for us.)

Then we brought down the house at the Watts reunion:

Uncle Josh has got some great hair.

Why are we looking at dead animals...? (at the Bean Life Science Museum)

Then we celebrated July 24th in Beaver with my Glenn grandparents. Ari went to her first parade and horse races.

They throw candy? Let me go!

Ari had a better view of the horses than I did.

There's always serious betting involved with horse races, especially with the Glenns. It's a quarter for every race lost/won, and there are 9 races. Ari bet with plastic rings. We start them young.

Later she bewitched my parents’ dog Riley into bringing her his toy bone to throw, despite the two fiercely active 10-year-old boys trying to play with him. He eventually caught on to who could throw the bone more than two feet.

August: More Stuff Happened
We started August off right with a baby blessing of Clayton’s cousin’s little boy, Flint. So Ari’s second cousin, I suppose. She received a lot of attention and had a blast.

This was Ari's first real exposure to rain. When her hand felt the drops, she laughed the weirdest happy laugh I've ever heard, and haven't heard since.

Next, Grandma Watts and I took Ari to a splash pad for the first time. Not having had a child in my possession long enough to go to a splash pad before, I hadn't been to one in twenty-ish years. So naturally I didn’t plan ahead, and we let Ari soak her onesie and diaper. But what’s a little inconvenience compared to a child’s wonder and happiness? She had so much fun playing with the strange water, I just had to share a bunch of these.

Water is totally trippy.

We also took Ari to her first art museum. Even though she’s young, she still found a piece of art that really spoke to her soul.

Don't you take me away from my horse statue!

Someone save me from Evil Red-eye Mommy.

Here are some other random photos:

September: It’s the New June
We had a pretty warm September, and that was fine with me. Ari had gone to Seven Peaks a few times during the summer, but we didn’t take pictures until her last day there. This is called procrastination.