Brushing teeth

With new teeth comes brushing.

This one is for Aunt Carrie.... Ayden and Carrie's dance party

(Sorry for the clicking noise again... the spirits are back and haunting us)

Sprinklers

Sadly, we are back in AZ, and I say sadly because we all miss Michigan already, particularly the lovely weather (second to the family time of course.) We had a late flight on Saturday so we spent the day in the pool and Ayden got to experience one of life's great joys as a child - playing in the sprinklers.

This one got him right in the forehead, a bit startling, but he kept crawling.

Adios Michigan

Today is our last day in Michigan :( In this picture we told Ayden we had to go back to AZ, this is him protesting.

One last play date with new girlfriend, Sylvia. Ayden has met more new friends this month than any of us combined.
Driving the van.
One hand - its the cool way to drive.

The little guy has the crawling thing mastered, but while we've been in MI he has had to adapt his crawling on the cement around the pool in order to salvage his knees. This is what he came up with...

Four generations....

Ayden is our Grandma Willison's first Great-Grand child..... he didn't really want to cooperate for the photo, but sometimes you take what you can get.

Ayden's first pair of "walking" shoes.

Grandma in all of her glory!

The ZOO

We took the whole clan and went to the Grand Rapids John Ball Park Zoo the other day, Ayden was mesmerized the entire time. This photo of the wallaby goes out to the "family down under" (link on the left).

We went to see Kate's best friend Shari today, and Ayden's best friend Bentley, the cat.

Studying all the toys
Shhhh....
For the most part he was being gentle, the 8.5 month old version of gentle, but gentle nonetheless.

Another random post of just photos from the week...

Baby jail, Ayden loved it!

(It is just the railing up the steps)

Out to dinner celebrating Carrie's new job.... Congrats to her and her first "real" job post-college.
Ayden's private pool. This gave him a bit more freedom to crawl around than the big pool was allowing him to do.

After an afternoon swim we had to take a lunch break. This is the best way to eat... outside, with the swimming diaper still on, Aunt Heather letting him make a COMPLETE mess, then, swimming again. Ahh... life at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Aunt H and Ayden getting some exercise in by swimming laps. We did this about four or five times just going back and fourth, happy as could be.

STAIRS

Since we arrived Ayden has learned and mastered the stairs. Now its a fun game.

randoms

This week the weather has been perfect, so there has been lots of time to spend in the back yard swimming.

Ayden was busy for 15 minutes trying to hold on to the ice cubes. Such concentration.
He does this new thing were if you put something on his head he giggles trying to get it to fall.
And he loved Bode (Matt and Trisha's dog) when we were at their house the other day for a party celebrating Matt graduating from fire fighting school.
Carrying around (more like pushing around) Carrie's purse. He was very stylish.

Jeremy with "Lt. Dan" from Forrest Gump (Gary Sinise) among others.

Just watching the cars go by the house

Last Saturday we spent the day up at Blue Lake (our Grandma's cottage) so Ayden could meet the whole extended Willison clan. With all the chaos an noise he did great. And even got some quiet time with G and G Willison down by the water watching the boats.

Along with the 4th of July fun comes the Willison-Olympics, we were the loud, annoying neighbors during this competition... but we all had fun.
Matt rescued Ayden from the three legged race
And for those of you trying to keep up on my friend Jen, whose blog is lacking updates, here is a quick picture from her baby shower we had at the house.

Fireworks

Kate was nervous how the little man would do with the fireworks, considering he screams any time the blender in the kitchen is used, but he loved them. He sat and watched almost the whole show. He went inside my Aunt Val and Uncle Mark's house just at the end.

Ayden meeting Aunt Val and her baby Ali

Parade

We went to the Grandville 4th of July parade and all the chaos and noise didn't bother Ayden at all. Grandpa was talking about "daddy's friends" here.

The girls
Ayden's Great Uncle Bob
The faithful blog watchers
We need to get some grass for Ayden to play in back in AZ... he loved it!