Back from ATL

Some of you may already know that Charles has been working up in Atlanta since mid August.  His company had a big project up there and they needed some extra help.  They started off by flying him home on the weekends.  But by the time he got in late Friday night, slept Saturday due to exhaustion and then went to church on Sunday it was time to fly out again.  For any of you who have had your spouse travel for work, you know it's not fun.  Well, we decided that instead of Charles flying home every weekend, Isabelle and I would go up and stay with him in Atlanta.  So Isabelle and I went for a month and stayed with Charles at the Ritz during the week and then we would check out on the weekends and go stay at Carol's house.  The Ritz was, well, Ritzy.  They treated us so well.  When we first got there there was a gift bag for us.  It was a little pink kid shirt that said the Ritz Carlton.  Then when we got up to our room there was another bag in the crib with all sorts of gifts and toys and safety stuff for Isa.  It was so thoughtful.  Isabelle got to know all the workers at the hotel and they all loved her of course.  Isabelle and I spent most of our mornings on walks around downtown Atlanta and then we would have lunch with Charles.  We took the MARTA (subway) to Carol's house in the afternoon.  It was great!  We got to see Charles a lot and we got to spend a ton of time with Carol and her family.  While we were there Carol had a baby shower, which was great.  We also got to go and see Les Miserables, which I absolutely love!!!  I will never get sick of that show.  Of course we watched all of the Gator games, one of which we won't mention.  We went to the corn maze, a pig pickin' at the bishop's house and lots more.  One of the best things we did while we were there was we got to go and do my Grandma's temple work as well as many others on my dad's side of the family.  It was a really special time.  Carol had been working hard on our genealogy and so we had 22 or 23 names that we took to the temple.  Also, while I was there I read the entire Twilight Series.  I am not one to read, but I absolutely loved it and I couldn't put the books down.  I can't wait for the movie to come out next month.  Oh and did I mention shopping????  Yeah.... we did a lot of that too.  But don't worry I saved a lot of money!  I think we hit up all of the sales in Atlanta. Well fortunately for my checkbook Isabelle and I came home last week.  Charles has one more week and then he will be home to stay.  Maybe he'll go back to Atlanta next year and we can go again and have another month of fun.

Isabelle had a great time at DSW, I'm not surprised, what girl doesn't love shoes? 

What do you think of these shoes mom?

One of our many outings was a day at the Atlanta Zoo.

Isabelle was completely fascinated by all the different animals.  She really took a liking to the Panda and I think it liked her because it kept coming right up to the glass next to her.  

The petting zoo was also a lot of fun, Isabelle didn't shy away from the animals one bit.

After the petting zoo, we all had fun playing in the park.

We got to go to a couple of Chloe and Cassie's soccer games and practices while we were there. Isabelle loved watching them play.  The twins have gotten a lot better since the first time we saw them play.

The day after Isabelle turned 10 months she started standing on her own.  She had done it a few other times, but it seemed more like an accident before.  My mom and Mikenzie had come in town for Carol's baby shower so we were excited they could share the big moment for Isabelle. Once she started, she got a hang of it quick and wanted to keep standing.  4 days later I stood Isabelle up to show one of Carol's friends her new trick and she took three steps.  We were all shocked.  Sure enough, she figured out how to walk and kept doing it over and over.  After a half hour or so she had taken 13 steps in a row.  She is a pretty driven child.  Everyone back home was pretty bummed to miss her learning how to walk, but I was glad that we were with Charles and that he didn't miss it.  Now she is walking even more and she does it on her own rather than being prompted to do so, but she still finds the quickest way from point A to B is crawling.  I'm sure that will change very soon.  I took some video of her progress, I just need Charles to come home so he can put together a video of it to show everyone.  

First day standing, she was so proud of herself!

Did I mention she loves to eat?

Carol needs to work on baby-proofing her house, Isabelle found lots of places to play.

Isabelle's new favorite face