First Taste of Nutella

I LOVE Nutella. I practically survived on Nutella and bread when I was living in Austria. So I just had to share this delicious spread with Corrina, and true to her genes, she also LOVED it. Here are the pics of her first Nutella experience. As you can see, she was licking the Nutella off the bread.

Palestine

For those of ya'll who don't know, the Grahn side of the family has a fun family tradition every year. We go to a rodeo in a small town near the Illinois-Indiana border every Labor Day Weekend. We camp for the weekend, and on Friday night the little cousins ride some rides at a small carnival on the campground. Saturday morning we eat pancakes downtown, then spend the rest of the morning going to rummage sales. Jimmy has added a great addition to the rummage sales; we now have a contest for the sales---this year the contest was who could find the funniest thing that you could attach some marital advice to. The object was to be given, along with the advice, to my cousin MG and his new bride JG. We had some pretty good laughs when everyone showed their items and gave their advice. Saturday night, we go to the rodeo, and the rest of the weekend is filled with all the little cousins running around playing together, while the adults get pretty competitive in cards, washers, wacky ball, and oh yeah, of course there's lots of great food. Here are a few pics from the weekend.

Corrina on the train. She thinks it's Thomas the Train (she's really into Thomas for some reason, although we're not sure why b/c she's never seen the show....anyhoo, she thinks all trains are Thomas.)


Picking frogs to win a prize, and the prize is....



a dolphin!




Riding the race cars with cousin PH.





Riding "Thomas" again, this time with cousin AS.



"Driving" the firetruck with cousins AS and PH.

Daddy and Corrina on another Thomas.

Corrina and Auntie Em in their matching jackets.

Eating pancakes with Pawpaw, Deedaw, and Auntie Anne.

Cousin ZH with his crazy hair!
Side view...very nice!!

Playing ball at the campsite





Cousin PH in her lawn chair.





Cousin ZH after his mommy fixed his hair...hehe...




playing tickle monster with cousin CS.

Miss Independent

Corrina's new thing now is to dress and undress herself. Really, it's to do EVERYTHING herself. She says, "Nina do it; Nina do it." (Her nickname is Nina.) or "Self. Self." I believe we have Pawpaw to thank for that, as he has tried to teach her, "I do it myself." He'll tell you that she gets it from me, though, because apparently that was my favorite saying. He's just returning the favor. Thanks Pawpaw! Seriously though, it's pretty cute (except when we're in a hurry). These are pics of her trying to dress and undress herself.


She picked this outfit out herself. It is a onsie then a skirt over top of the onsie. We let her wear it out; I thought it was pretty cute. I look forward to when she really picks out some funny outfits. I'm going to let her where them and just laugh. It's just too cute!

Here she's trying to take off her jammies. She likes to get behind her rocking chair in front of her mirror and check herself out. She thinks we can't see her back behind that chair. She'll just stand there and giggle.


In this pic, she is trying on Momma's dress. She even put it on herself.


And this was her attempt to take off her nightgown. As you can see by the finger up in the air, she's telling me, "No, no, no, Momma."

Fourth of July...hmmm

Wow! I didn't realize I was this far behind on my blogging. On the Fourth of July weekend, we stayed at our friends' lake cabin. We had a great time swimming in the lake; Corrina just loved it! She laughed and splashed the whole time. We had some really tasty food and enjoyed fun games and conversations with our friends. The entire weekend was just really wonderful. Thanks LK and NK for sharing your house with us. Sadly though, we had a small going away party for our dear friends SB and MB, who just recently moved to Wisconsin so he could go back to school. But just to lighten the spirits a little, we got them a cake that was supposed to say "We'll miss you" but instead it said "Will Miss You". That gave us all a little laugh despite the sad occasion.

Corrina eating corn on the cob for the first time with Daddy and Momma. There's some speculation that she had already eaten it with Pawpaw and Deedaw though..hehe..

Wiping butter in Daddy's hair. Ewww...

First experience with sparklers. She was fascinated.

Our friends SB and MB who just moved away. We soooooo sad to see them leave.

The infamous cake...