Watch out world...He's Crawling!!

Samuel really started crawling on March 4th, the day after he turned 7 months old! He's scooting around the living room and chasing the cat everyday now. When we were watching him take his first few steps, Daniel put into words what both of us were feeling. It was like watching a baby dinosaur hatch out of it's egg - he's so cute, and he's working so hard to do what he's been trying to do for weeks, and you're genuinely proud of his accomplishments thus far...but you just know all the things he's now going to get into and destroy in the coming months and years and how your world and just shifted in an day. It's incredibly exciting, but somehow completely terrifying at the same time!
This is from the 4th, the first day he figured out how to put one hand in front of the other without falling down to his belly.


And this is from today. He loves the camera, so to get some good video of him crawling, I put the camera on the ground so that he could go get it. Do you get the dinosaur reference yet? :)


Last week, Andi, Dellaina, and Wyatt came down to hang out on one of my days off. The cousins had a big time playing together. This was just before he really started crawling well, so he was just trying to scoot around and keep up with them. He and Wyatt were able to spend a lot of time together this past weekend when mom and dad took both of them down to the lake house for the whole weekend so that Daniel and I could go camping! We had a great group - Andi, Greg, Dellaina (her first camping trip), Doug, Morgan, Garris, Joe, and Melanie.

We had a really great time but I missed Samuel a lot more than I thought I would. I went to Wal-Mart on Friday to get groceries and supplies for the trip and there was a little boy riding in the seat of the cart in front of me in the check-out line. He was holding his mother's sun glasses and playing with them. He tried in vain to put them on his head the way his mother had been wearing them, but gave up and decided to fold them up and hang them on the front collar of his shirt the way I'm sure he's seen his mom and dad do many times before. Except he wasn't very coordinated and ended up dropping them down his shirt. He started trying to dig them out but couldn't get his arms inside the collar, then tried to lift them from underneath but his shirt was tucked in pretty well. When he started getting frantic, his mother at first couldn't figure out what was happening, but it didn't take her long. It ended up with the mom, dad (cracking up all the while) and the frantic little boy all three trying to work the sun glasses up his shirt and out the top, while I tried my best to stifle my laughter. I was laughing so hard by the time they were done that it turned into tears before I could help myself. I immediate missed by baby boy and had to collect myself before making my way up to the checkout counter.

I promise I wasn't a mess all weekend, but the first day was really tough. We had a great time all getting together though. We met at a Mexican restaurant for dinner Friday night, and Joe and Melanie even made it up in time to eat with us. Saturday morning we all got up (relatively) early and headed out for our adventure. We went up just north of Suches, GA. When we got to the final turn on our trip, the road the campsite is on, we discovered that the recent rains last week had completely ruined one section of the dirt road. We ended up having to leave Joe and Melanie's car at a recreation center nearby and take 2 trips in the two 4 wheel drive trucks to get all the people and equipment across the muddy bog of a road.

The campsite was beautiful and there was a river running right next to it. I think we all, especially Dellaina - this being her first camping trip ever - really enjoyed it. We had Silver Turtles for dinner Saturday night (ground beef, onions, peppers, carrots, garlic all wrapped together in aluminum foil, one pouch for each person, and cooked on the hot coals of the fire). Sunday morning, we woke up leisurely - some more rested and fresh than others... - and ate a really great breakfast that Daniel and Morgan fixed. After that, we packed up the tents, loaded up the trucks, and headed home. Andi and Morgan got some great pictures, but for some reason I didn't even get our camera out of the bag the whole trip. Of course, I didn't even know we had packed it until after dark Saturday night when Daniel finally told me. But at that point, I figured the girls already had it covered and I could just get some copies later. :P

It was so great to see Samuel when we got to Andi's house. Mom and dad had driven back from the lake and were standing outside waiting for us when we arrived. I felt like he'd grown a few inches just in the 3 days since I'd seen him!!

I'm so glad we took this trip with everyone and I can't wait for it to be Samuel's turn for his first camping trip. Dellaina did so well, and I was really impressed. However, I know Samuel had a great time with his Mammie, Grandaddy, Mema, and Wyatt at the lake.