It's been a rough day for me...

...I found myself thinking a lot about Dad today, which is never all that easy for me.

It will be five years at the end of December since Dad passed away. There's so much he hasn't been here for - my wedding, buying my first house, and most notably, the birth of Claire. Of course there are a million other times that I wished he was here as well.

I hadn't heard the song "Everything I Own" by David Gates until after Dad was gone, and to be honest I can't really say for sure why I listen to it sometimes when I know it will make me miss him more. Yes, it makes me sad, but I guess maybe it's just the idea that I identify with, so I listen anyway.

I realize my thoughts are pretty jumbled and incomplete at the moment, but I wanted to post something anyway. My dad had his faults of course, but he was the best man I've known, and hopefully those of you reading this who knew him have good memories to look back on.

Deer hunting season has come and gone for me this year. For many years I couldn't bring myself to go out hunting without Dad, but I've gone two out of the past three years now, and I'll continue to go I believe. If my kids want to learn to hunt, I'll teach them like Dad taught me.

I talk to Claire about her grandpa sometimes, and I like to think that she'll grow up knowing him as much as she can from my stories and pictures we show her. Maybe if I'm really lucky she'll think I'm at least a fraction of the father mine was.

6-months old already!

We had Claire's 6-month pictures taken this past weekend! I can't believe she's already that old... The time is going by too fast!

Here are a few to show everyone. Enjoy!

Hi all!

Here are just a few of the newest pictures we have for the fall. Enjoy!

Claire's peeking out to say hello!

Claire with her cousin, Meghan

We are out at the apple orchard in Worthington, MN. We went to pick out a couple pumpkins for Claire!

Grandma Cheri and Grandpa Paul

Claire next to her first Jack'o'lantern! Thank you Grandma Cheri for buying Claire her pumpkin, and thanks to cousin Billy for the camo!

More Pictures!

Howdy folks, as promised, another pictures update from various times in the past month. No time for text update as I must be leaving for work very shortly, but enjoy the pictures for now!

My new favorite picture of Claire, although it's tough to say that definitively

I managed to get a great picture of Claire and Adam when we were over at Friedo's last week - the Vikings/Packers rivalry is already in full swing! (Vikings onesie was a gift courtesy of Friedo and Robin)

Auntie Robin playing with Claire...I know Robin is greatly inconvenienced by spending time with Claire :)

For those who remember, here is a 4-month update of Auntie Erika's work picture

Claire loves her bathtime

Claire seems to think my hair is for eating when she's on dad's shoulders

She's discovered her feet. I like to think of this as her exercising pose, stretching her little legs.

Tanya captured this little sly look on Claire's face

Claire's doing so well with sitting up against things, soon it'll be on her own!

Here's just another one of Claire on my lap during the day

With her bear blanket on the floor. She likes to play peek-a-boo with it.

Pictures and update for all!

Hello again. Once more, it's been quite a while. No excuses, just a busy, busy time for us. Not a lot of downtime overall, but when we've been able to, we've tried to shove some R&R in there. I managed to golf a couple rounds with Friedo, Robin, and Glen. While I'm not terrible, I could definitely stand to improve, so maybe that'll be a good project next spring and summer.

Lots of other news going on, but right now we'll give you a couple days of pictures and then update on other things later. So, without further ado...


Claire's first horse ride ever - Cheri's horse, Kota

Claire was really happy to spend some time with Great Grandma Phyllis in Worthington

Glen, Cathy, and Granny gave Claire an amazingly cute horse dress that she's just getting big enough to wear! Still a tad big, but looks great nonetheless.

Claire likes to look around when she should be burping. Silly baby.

This was taken the day she first rolled over (we have video, just have to get it edited and uploaded!)

A closeup of Claire, just to say Hello!

Claire has moved on to her bigger bottles now, but she was holding the small ones up on her own earlier.

As promised (a long time ago) here are a few pictures of the finished baby room.

A colossal Thank You! goes out to Jamie for sketching and painting the baby's room for us, it's so awesome!

The yellow and orange camel in the bottom corner is the first stuffed animal Claire ever got as a gift, from Auntie Erika!

We're back! - Part Three

Hello hello...gonna be a short update, with not a lot of text here, but pictures nonetheless of course.

We're getting pictures up from our visit to Grand Forks at the end of June tonight, along with a couple pictures of Claire in her little boots and a robe. I'm sure we're overloading with pictures of the little one, but then again, if you're here looking at the site, you probably don't mind.

As a quick text update though, moving further towards the end of July, we went to Mike and Laura's wedding on the 31st, which was a very enjoyable evening. Very short wedding (17 minutes long), good food, and since Robin was gracious enough to come over and babysit for us, Tanya and I both got to go out to the Doublewood bar for a couple drinks with Chris, DeAnn, Russ, Josh, and Libby. It was really nice to get out as a couple, especially since that hasn't happened in a while!

Claire and Great Grandpa Grove - she's giving him the weird eyes!

Claire with Great Great (I think that's right) Uncle Art

Claire with Auntie Vi

Cathy Prichard bought Claire some little cowgirl boots...much to my chagrin and Tanya's delight

Claire in her ducky robe after bath time. Good night all!

We're back! - Part Deux

Hello again folks. Continuing on with the updates...after the Red Lobster get-together on the 10th, we had a pretty standard next few days, until Tanya went back to work on the 15th and my new schedule began. So now I work at night and come home to watch the Squeaker until Tanya gets home from work, I catch some sleep then, and get up to repeat the process. Luckily most days I get to nap while Claire naps for an hour or two in the late morning/early afternoon.

Al came up on the 15th and stayed until Sunday, which was awesome. We had people over on Friday evening and I grilled up deer sausage and a beer can chicken. The sausage was good as usual, and the chicken turned out really really good (in my opinion anyway). It was fun to have everyone over and it was a good trio-celebration of birthdays for Erika, Al, and Jamie (Jamie is on the 19th).

On the 17th we went up to Fertile, Minnesota, for Scott's wedding and dressed the Claire bear up in her little white baptism dress. Unfortunately, she got her white dress dirty before we got any pictures that day with her, but we had her purple dress with too, so that turned out nicely. The reception was held down in Fargo, at the NDSU Alumni center, which was good because Claire started getting sleepy pretty quick after supper. Since Grandpa was at the wedding also, we were able to get a four-generation Grove picture, which is posted below.

Al went back down south on Sunday and life resumed normally (or as normal as it is) after that for the next few days anyway. The pictures below take us up to the 22nd, so we'll drop more of an update tomorrow or the next day. We'll also post pictures of our visit with Aunt Vi, Uncle Art, and Grandpa in the next post.

Hope everyone has had a good weekend.

This is Claire's contemplative pose when she gets tired

Claire in her purple dress at the reception

Four-generation picture of the Grove side

Mom playing with Claire in the living room

A tired Claire bear, or as Erika says, a tired smooshieface