Sunday, October 25, 2009

Happy Birthday Molly and Max!

Gretel sends a shout out to Molly and Max on their birthday! She can't wait to meet all of you lovely Mugniers! (and Alistair misses you Max!)




Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Family Life

Mom and Gretel got some new basil plants today to keep in our sunny south-facing windows this winter. Alistair and G decided to pose with it when we got it home....


Here are Gretel and Pops cracking each other up!





Mom and Gretel wearing matching outfits!






The Greats and a Grand!

We were lucky enough to get one last visit with one set of Gretel's Greats before they headed back down to Arizona for the winter. Here are Norma and Jim proudly displaying their newest great-grandchild!


Gretel got to spend an evening with Grandma Liz (while Mom and Pops went to a concert - Rodrigo y Gabriela - yahoo!) and the whole following day with her as well!


Gretel's new thing is that she's started playing with her toys. She can grab them and shove them into her mouth now! It will often keep her entertained for a good 15 minutes, which allows us a chance to do, well, something else!




And The Rains Have Come...

I caught this picture of Gretel and Pops looking wistfully outside at the rain last Saturday. Typical Portland fall weather seems to have finally hit us in full force.



Dinner with the Camerons (Gretel meets Matt!)

We had our friends the Camerons over for dinner last week. As you can see we got pretty nerdy at the dinner table! Gretel had met Andrea and Henry before but this was her first time meeting Matt.



Henners (who is already 6!) sure likes Ziggy and Alistair. He spent the evening entertaining them for us!


More News of the Wall

The whole family helped last weekend to get a start on building the wall. Again, thanks to Gretel for taking such a long nap! We spent half a day moving the other big column into the back yard and getting it just right. Then we hauled gravel galore and started the fun part - piecing it all together!


Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, we discovered that Casey and I have very different wall building styles! After a few hours of building this is what we got. Below is the fruit of Casey's labor.


And Liesl's work is to the west of the column...


It may not look so different to you, but to us it is significant. We think we'll correct it by switching sides often!


Gretel and Ziggy

I think it's official that Gretel weighs more than Ziggy now. He feels like a feather when I lift him in comparison to her! The two are becoming better friends by the day - well, Ziggy is becoming more tolerant and Gretel is becoming more curious! Here they are romping on the bed together. What a pair!



Sunday, October 11, 2009

Weekend Baby Pictures

Gretel is all laughs and smiles these days, but it's still hard to catch on film. Here's one of her great smile that Pops took!



Gretel has her first cold - a runny nose and a slight cough. We've had her all bundled up but she doesn't seem to mind it as much as we do. There's still plenty of singing, hollering, laughing, hand gnawing and general good times happening at this house!











A Sea of Stone

This weekend our goal was to move all of the stone for our wall into the backyard. We were able to get all the small stone back on Saturday, and Casey worked on moving the columnar pieces on Sunday. Gretel helped by taking some monster naps, which allowed Liesl to chip in for several hours.
We've laid all the stone out so we can see each individual piece, which will make finding the right one much easier once we start building!

Casey moves the big columnar basalt pieces by rolling them on metal pipes. Alistair eats figs in the background!