The results are in.....

Well, America voted (or at least 40 of Karis's fan club :) and decided that she looks most like me! Sorry Daddy, but I've got you beat, 72% to 27%. he, he. A great big thanks to all of you who took the time to vote. Now the big question is will she continue to look more like her Mama as she grows, or will she start looking like Daddy again? Guess we'll ask you again in about 10 years :)

This week with Karis...

This week, Karis has been amazing us with how much she is growing! Pretty much every day, I am chomping at the bit for Mark to come home from class so that I can show him what new thing she is doing! She has really been cracking me up lately :)

While at the beach, she really got into running around holding onto our hands. She has had so much fun this week tearing around the house. She will grab onto anything she thinks will stabalize her and just go flying...at church she decided the bottom of my skirt would work nicely and dragged me all around and this morning she grabbed the tie of my bathrobe to hold onto as she tried to run through the kitchen, ha,ha :) She loves her push toys and no longer needs us to make sure she doesn't go too fast...the faster the better!

We read a lot of books every day and this week she randomly decided to pretend to eat little objects she sees on the pages. It is really hilarious to watch. She will "grab" it (usually a picture of a ball, block, or flower), open her moutht wide, shove "it" in, and make a gulping sound. Of course me laughing so hard at her every time only increases the frequency of such silly behavior :)

She's still loving peekaboo and nothing makes her day as much as when I say "where's Karis?" She will run out from wherever she is, grinning and laughing up a storm. Its a great way to get her to come back to the room I am in if she gets wandering :)

I think that she really thinks the cat is her big brother. They really chase each other around the house. Monday morning, I found her pulling on his foot and he was just laying there purring. I told her no, because its really not a good habit to get into; not all cats are that nice! So she let go of his foot and grabbed his tail and pulled hard....and he just kept laying there, purring! I am so thankful for such an easygoing cat! She also loves to swing his mouse toy for him to catch (its on the end of an elastic string.) When he grabs it, she laughs and squeals. Its great fun. Lats night, we had a horrible storm and my fraidy cat came slinking out, whining. So Karis crawled over to the other side of the room, grabbed his toy, and set it down right beside him! It was like she was trying to cheer him up! So sweet!

If you made it this far, thanks for reading my long post. Karis just makes my day with all the little things she does and I feel like a hog if I keep it all to myself :)


Well, here are the last of the beach pics. We had such a fun time and it was so sad to leave. Thanks you so much, Mom and Dad, for providing us with such a great vacation!

Our shadows in the sand (+ a stroller)

Oh, how I love my little sweetie!

So much fun in the sand!

Just wanted to show you how much fun Karis had once she finally decided to play in the sand :)

"I have to do it MY way!"

After trying again to get her to play in the sand, we gave up and let her play in the chair. She loved it! So much, in fact, that she decided to get down in the sand to investigate it up close :) Luckily, we were able to catch each progression on camera! The funny thing is, once she fell into the sand on her own, she wasn't scared of it any more! We thought for sure that she would start fussing like the other days when her hands or feet got sandy, but no, she dug in and got dirty!

She doesn't even realize that her feet are in the sand :)

She decided to crawl down to investigate the arm of the chair :)

All the way in, but she doesn't even notice! Too busy using the shovel on the chair!

Getting dirty now!

After making that first plunge, Karis couldn't get enough of the sand! She ate it, threw it, dug in it, squealed at it, and laughed at it. It was so much fun and I have never seen my baby that dirty!

"You just can't make me do it!...."

So Mark has been itching for an excuse to get Karis some cute purple off-brand Crocs, and we finally decided to do it because we thought maybe it would help her walk on the sand that she so desperately didn't want to touch...

...And she was really quite excited about them...they were great fun to carry around the house and chew on...

...but as you can tell from this pic, she still didn't want to put those feet on the sand!

Daddy and me :)

When we were out on the beach, a storm came right up on us! It was pretty neat and I got to take this pic with Daddy before we got soaked :)As you can tell, Daddy and I are best buddies!

Still not ready to touch it :)

When we went to the beach the 2nd day, Karis still didn't like the sand. She was incredibly happy to play with her sand toys on the beach towel, but if we tried to put her down in the sand, she would raise her legs so high and fuss. But we still had a lot of fun playing on the towel and chasing the birds :)

Karis loves outlet mall shopping!

We went shopping at the outlet malls and were so proud of ourselves because we only bought exactly what we had previously planned on getting and we got some great deals! And Karis had a blast. I love this pic of her all kicked back in her stroller relaxing :) She loved talking to all the people, trying to grab all the tags she could reach, and grabbing the leaves on the palm trees! The Carters outlet was her favorite because she managed to find a huge pile of softblankies/animals and started rubbing them all over her face and talking to them. She was in heaven :) It wasn't so fun pulling her away from them, but then we found their lego table that babies were actually supposed to play with and she had a blast with that :)

Mama had a birthday!

Mama had a birthday and is feeling really old since her cake had 26 candles! But she had a lot of fun celebrating with her family and got to eat lots of delicious food :)