Northern Italy with B&B - via captions

Since 2003, early November has always been when Barbara and Bill (hereafter referred to as Oma and Pop-Pop) visited us ... wherever we've lived. Thankfully here in Germany, their visits have been longer than an extended weekend. And so this past visit found us taking the time to explore Lago di Como and Lago di Garda in Northern Italy.

I won't bore you with details. So here are pictures with captions:

There's actually a tip of an ice cream cone sticking out of E's mouth. Girl loves her dairy.

I think she could have wrapped the scarf around a few more times.

Tubby bear want more ice cream

Bill ruined this photo by smiling

Come on feel the noise

Sirmione: Northern Italy done got medieval on my ass

Under Kate's smile are teeth clenched in a deep, grunting strain

Here too

Looks serene, right? She's actually pooing in this photo.

Pecos and the floating leaf

We thought this was cute.

A very varied Halloween

Elizabeth had three outfits for Halloween - only two were costumes, the other was an orange blouse and black tights number.

Outfit #1: Univ. of Md. Cheerleader

Outfit #2: St. Bernard

Outfit #3: Orange-and-black number

And here are mom and dad, as "French Toast and Syrup."

Birthday extravaganza

As the capstone to a week-long celebration of Elizabeth's first year of life, Grandma and Opa hosted a truly memorable doggy-themed bash, including Elizabeth's favorite foods (ribs, roasted red peppers, bread) presents, balloons, and a personalized birthday banner.


We then followed it up with a puppy-themed cake (Elizabeth enjoyed one of the cupcake paws).


Elizabeth went into a sugar shock, but could thankfully remember some commands.

We had to go for a walk the next day to work off the calories.

Elizabeth's birthday bonanza

As today is Elizabeth's first birthday, we did the traditional thing by allowing an sweet indulgence - banana bread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

At first it was cute.

Then it was endearing.

Then we realized we probably overindulged our doughy munchkin.

Yup, she's gonna be a fatty.

Birthday weekend - the fun begins

Tuesday, Oct. 20, is Elizabeth's first birthday. Really, though, it's like a weeklong celebration. Maybe even longer.

The festivities started this weekend, when we had a few photo shoots with the birthday girl. Here are a few of the best shots.

More pictures, as always, here: elizabethward.shutterfly.com

Umbrelievable Umbria

Just wanted to share a few photos from our recent trip to Umbria (in central Italy), which involved sleeping, eating, napping, eating, driving around a bit to look at some rolling hills and the hill towns that dot the countryside, and watching Elizabeth eat rib bones.

We stayed one night in Pescara (which did, indeed, smell a bit fishy), two nights outside Norcia (home of truffles and smelly hog heads), and two nights outside Deruta (home of famous pottery which, thankfully, we didn't dote over).

Seriously, the rib bones were great. More pictures here: elizabethward.shutterfly.com

Thanks to Jay and Linda for planning a wonderful and memorable adventure. Molto Bene! Grazie Mille! Viva Italia!

Alpenhorns!

Kate is normally not a very demanding person. But a few weeks ago, she was driving me crazy.

"Why aren't there any good places around here to hear some alpenhorn music?" she would ask.

Or, "How come we just can't seem to find any good alpenhorn CDs? It just sounds better in person." On and on it went.

A few days went by when I realized that we were thankfully only a few hours away from

alpenhorn central. So we made plans for a musical weekend in the Swiss Alps where we could hopefully find some melodic mountain dwellers (as well as some cheese and good hiking paths for me).

And boy did we succeed!

Here's our attempt at a family photo on our first hike to get to those heavenly horns. The best part is not the ridiculous looks on all of our faces or the fact that we completed missed getting the mountains in the background. It's that Pecos is being squished and poked ... and yet manages to keep it together for the only nice smile in the bunch.

And here they are!

Not impressed? I guess you had to be there. Or not. They really weren't that impressive.

We also tried to get Elizabeth in front of a background that looked fake...just for her Gigi, who still thinks the photo we took in front of the Picos de Europa was fake. Here's our best shot, on the train up to Kleiner Scheidegg.

Here are some other attempts.

Oh and here's Elizabeth's first taste of sauerkraut.

And finally, here's a family photo outtake.

A smattering of updates

Hello, faithful blog readers. Same ol' same ol' going on here at the Ward household. Well, except for the awesomeness that is Elizabeth. While she's still our little munchkin, she apparently is now in the same lofty cohort as giraffes and Tyra Banks, measuring in at the 95th percentile for height for her age group.

Here's our amazing amazon now dancing like Tom Cruise in Risky Business. (Tom's photo is the bottom well, in case you couldn't tell...he's the short one)

And while I'm frankly not a fan of this picture because I think it looks like E is stoned, Kate indicated that she likes it. So here it is, our stoned baby.

In order to be as tall as she is, we had to change her diet to include "growth" foods such as ice cream and french fries. Here's Elizabeth enjoying her first tastes of both.
And when she's not showing off her super dancing or super eating skills, we like to think she still retains some super-ness....perhaps super baldness....so we sometimes give her a cape.
Finally, here's a cute video of a future whirling dervish and metaphysics major ... when she finally gets it in video two.

Kate's little helper

Kate and I had talked about getting a maid recently...someone to help with the cleaning while Kate tends to the baby. But we think we found a solution: Elicit the baby to help with the cleaning.

Because we thought this was SOOO adorable, here's another video of them finishing up...again without pants (Elizabeth is battling some diaper rash, you see. So the more fresh air, the better).

Cleanliness is Godliness

In this first video, Elizabeth shows the world her love of simple, clean living. In the second she flaps her arms like a city-dwelling pigeon who just discovered the powdered sugar remnants in the ziploc bag weren't powdered sugar. .... Now if only she could combine these attributes to dust the apartment...

More photos at elizabethward.shutterfly.com!