What a beautiful day we had for Finn’s 8 month birthday today! It was a beautiful day, sunny and 65, and we spent all afternoon at Cade’s Cove in Rocky Mountain National Park, TN. It is a driving loop about 10 miles long, but there are many places to get out and explore, go hiking, and look at buildings that date back to the 1800 and early 1900’s. How about this for a background for some photos! We love you little man!
We’ve had a crazy busy week this week and I haven’t hardly picked up the camera! I promise, even though Finn is in the same sleeper as a lot of the photos from last week – these pictures were taken on different days! Though there aren’t too many there are a couple of fun ones with some good expressions this week.
We were busy working with dad and mom to get HostaWorks up and running with the 2013 Seed offerings. It was another good year for seed harvest. Only a few weeks until seed planting day!
Thursday we went to the David Nail concert at the Bluestone, one of our favorite venues for a live show. The image below is of one of the opening acts, Brother’s Osborne, who were quite good! It was a good show and a late night! I was off on Friday but spent the day trying to catch up on domestic chores and such. We hosted Small Group on Friday evening and Saturday we were at church for the entire day. Thankfully, Grandma Beilstein came to babysit Finn. He didn’t sleep much at all (for Grandma or us!) and he has been extra fussy the last two days, Friday and Saturday, just not wanting to sleep (though extremely tired!) and not liking alone time. I forgot to get photos with mom, so here are a few she took from Saturday of Finn!
And now….we are off on vacation! There will be plenty of pics to come next week. Yay, we are looking forward to relaxing!
We started this week off on Sunday at the zoo! We walked around for a couple of hours in the brisk afternoon breeze. Finn was the warmest of us all in his cozy stroller!
Monday we celebrated Lily’s 5th birthday with some treats, new toys and playtime in the backyard. It was a lovely fall night.
Thursday was another story! It was trick-or-treat in our neighborhood and unfortunately, the weather was awful! Huge storms and tons of wind and rain came through town and the end of the night we had 6 trick-or-treaters! Finn dressed up to help daddy greet our visitors and pass out the treats.
Finn is moving all over the place these days and getting into everything. He loves to stand up and pull magazines off the end table, empty the dog toy bucket, and play with the curtains. He is most definitely developing his likes and dislikes and in particular, will let you know when he’s not happy you have taken away something he was enjoying or move him away from something he shouldn’t be near. He ramps up the pipes every now and then. And especially when he’s a bit tired and you leave the room (even if you weren’t really playing with him, you were just there) he will fuss. He hears everything and looks the direction of any noise he hears. He in quite intrigued by the littlest of things. He loves the dogs and often crawls to the closest bone on the floor…see one of the videos. His face lights up when the dogs come near him, and especially when they greet him in his room after a nap.
Finn loves to upright himself on his knees. He is getting much more confident while standing up and often only uses one hand to balance himself while he’s standing. Sometimes he lets go and thinks he can just stand there! So far we’ve only encountered a few bruises, I’m sure more are in our future.
Bear and Cammie are doing better and mostly recovered from their infections. Bear is having a harder time kicking it completely. This week I was on the floor with Finn and had my feet near her and she cuddled her head right on my foot. Sweet Bear. She has always been the best of cuddlers. 
The fall color in our backyard has been beautiful! Here is quick glimpse from our bathroom – such a beautiful signt!
Here are a couple of videos from this week.
Enjoy!