On Saturday, Jenny and I took advantage of Jenny's Mother and Aunt and went out for the afternoon to see Circ de Solei (I don't know if that is spelled correctly) with some friends. Wow! It was a great show. Our favorites were the strong men, the juggler and the bungie jumping. It was the most unusual show we have ever seen. One thing that surprised us is the size of the audience. It was full but only about 2-3 thousand were in the tent.

Fran (Jenny's mother) and Barbara (Jenny's Aunt) arrived on Wednesday. They have been having a great time with Ilea.

Yesterday, Friday, I took the day off and all of us went to Portland, OR to visit the Rose Gardens and do some other tourist activities. As we got closer to Portland we found out that the Blue Angels were going to be flying at an airshow. We visited the rose gardens which impressed all of the women in the group and then, due to my prompting, finally took off to see if we could find the air show before the Angels took off. We arrived at the airshow about 5 minutes before the Angels did their thing and we found a great place in the shade to watch. As usual, they were great. Ilea liked watching them but was a little scared, due to the noise when they flew right overhead. After a 45 minute show we all got some ice cream from Fosters Freeze and headed home. We stopped at Red Lobster in Kelso to have Jenny's Birthday dinner. All of us were pretty tired when we arrived back home at 10:30pm. It was quite a day.

Gorgeous day today (75 degrees).

Here are the words that Ilea can say (some only a parent can understand):

1. All Done
   
2. baby
   
3. balloon
   
4. ball
   
5. bee
   
6. bird
   
7. book
   
8. bubbles
   
9. car
   
10. Cheese
    
11. cracker
    
12. Dada
    
13. down
    
14. food
    
15. hat
    
16. heart
    
17. Ilea
    
18. juice
    
19. lunch
    
20. Mama, Mommy, Mom
    
21. moon
    
22. night night
    
23. pasta
    
24. please
    
25. shoe
    
26. squash
    
27. sun
    
28. star
    
29. socks
    
30. two
    
31. up
    
32. water
    

Today we went to the Kent street fair. Lots of booths with food and your typical "street fair" merchandise. Since Ilea loves bubbles, we bought some bubble wands with heads about 8" in diameter with different patterns. When you swing them in the air, they produce lots of large bubbles. We will try it tomorrow when we get the bubble mixture created.

Here is the next list with the sounds Ilea knows:

1. cow
   
2. cat
   
3. sheep
   
4. lion
   
5. duck
   
6. pig
   
7. horse
   
8. snake
   
9. goat
   
10. train
    
11. mouse
    
12. bee
    
13. bird
    
14. chicken
    
15. rooster
    
16. fish
    
17. bear
    
18. clock
    

Recently Jenny and I have been writing down all of the words/sounds/signs that Ilea knows. Today I'll list the signs she knows so far (as far as we can recall):

1. cat
   
2. dog
   
3. bee
   
4. bird
   
5. bunny
   
6. fish
   
7. bear
   
8. cracker
   
9. more
   
10. please
    
11. thank you
    
12. all done
    
13. food/hungry
    
14. light
    
15. book
    
16. fan
    
17. air plane
    
18. helicopter (very similar to fan)
    
19. swing
    
20. potty
    
21. hat
    
22. flower
    
23. toothbrush
    
24. up
    

As you can tell my first blog entry worked. Blogger asked me for my FTP username and password when I tried to publish the entry.

Well, I did a dumb thing tonight with Ilea. Jenny bought a plastic tricycle for Ilea recently so we were trying it out on the driveway. I had to fix something and (this is the dumb part) left Ilea at the top of the driveway on the tricycle perpendicular to the slope of the driveway (it was only for a second) thinking that she did not know how to turn the handle wheel. After a few seconds I turned around and she had turned the wheel just enough to start rolling down the driveway. She wasn't going very fast when I first saw her but started to pick up speed heading toward the street. I ran, of course, and just when I got there I tried to grab her but she was starting to tip over and fell on her face. I was able to get a hold of her so she did not skid. I picked her up immediately and she only had a scratch on her knee. She cried for about two minutes and then went about playing on the tricycle again without another tear. She doesn't get the pedal thing yet but she did put her feet on the pedals a few times. It was a good lesson (learning to ride the tricycle) for her and a cheap one (never leave her alone on the tricycle) for me.

Creating the first entry in the Howard Family Weblog (blog).

My goal here is to just be able to document thoughts, activities and happenings that might be of interest to others. Send me a note if you want to comment on anything.

I don't know how this is going to work since I have not provided any login info for the FTP server. Let's see what happens when I click "publish"...