IMG_1750, originally uploaded by bieloh1.

The other day this pretty dog wandered up to our house. He was starving. He saw me put some food down and he ran as fast as he could toward me to the food. He was so hungry.

He is a beautiful hunting dog. We learned later that he is a “trigg walker”. He is a coonhound – related to the American Foxhound. He just had a flea collar on, but we thought he might have gotten separated from his family when he was hunting or something. We asked around at church and in town, and we were directed to some people not far from us. (Turns out they are distant relations to David.) They didn’t own the dog, but they knew who did. So David took him back.

I miss him. He liked to lay on our back deck and at the corner of the house. He is one of the calmest sweetest dogs that I have ever met. I am glad he is back in his home though. He was probably ready to go. All we had was our lowfat geriatric dog food. He probably wasn’t thrilled with it, although he was so hungry that I guess he didn’t mind too much. I was planning to get him some better food, but then we found his home.

We didn’t name him officially, but we liked calling him “Walker Texas Ranger” since he is a Treeing Walker Coonhound. I thought he looked like a Charlie, and David liked Carlisle. As in Charlie the Coonhound, or Carlisle the Coonhound. Such a nice dog.

IMG_1610, originally uploaded by bieloh1.

Janis gave us some cucumbers from her garden, and I made pickles. I thought they were so pretty that I had to take a picture. They are already almost gone though; I need to make more.

However, I should add that these were refrigerator pickles, so they couldn’t have been much easier. But they look so official in those jars!

IMG_1659, originally uploaded by bieloh1.

It is going to be a scorcher today. 98 degrees and high humidity. This is where we should be. Back at the water park.

(and if you can see the kid in the back waving – we don’t have a clue who he is!)

Davey and the Fruit Rollup, originally uploaded by bieloh1.

Karen, Kevin, Mikayla and Jadyn visited last week. and one afternoon we went to the water park. It was really hot out that day, and it was a great day to hit the water. They had a shaded area for babies which I loved. Shallow water in the shade – he loved it.

Then Karen gave him a fruit rollup. He loved working on that thing. He had it everywhere, but he had great fun!

20080714100733, originally uploaded by bieloh1.

Yesterday Davey crawled for the first time. He had been doing a little scooting and what Karen observed and called the “corner pivot”, but yesterday he did some real crawling.

Today he crawled from the dining room where he plays into the kitchen to find me. That was so sweet to see him pop into the kitchen.

(Click on the picture and it will take you to the flickr video of him crawling! – I am still new to linking from flickr and posting videos there – but I think I got it!)

I have been such a blogging slacker!   Davey has just been growing and changing tons.  In 2 Days he will be 8 months old.  Last week we noticed that he is starting to cut a bottom tooth.  It was making him a little fussy, but I think he feels better now.  He’s a drool king though – he may start growing moss on his chin soon.

He wants to crawl so badly that he can hardly stand it.  He has crawled a few steps (steps?  that’s not the right word I guess, but I am not sure what a crawl unit is).  Even though he can’t totally crawl yet, he can still definitely get around.  If you turn your back for a second all of a sudden he is up on his knees leaning into some box.  We have to get everything off the floor!

We took him to the zoo a couple of weeks ago.  He loved the flamingos and the fritos bag (empty) that we let him play with.  I think he enjoyed some of the other animals as well, but the flamingos and fritos bag were a definite hit.  We also took him to walk on a nature trail.  It was just a half of a mile, but I will put the pictures up which will indicate how he wasn’t interested in staying in his stroller on that day.

Walk along the trail:

The other day, I put him in his highchair and gave him jello to play with.  He loved squishing it around, trying to pick it up, moving it around.  He tried to eat a little, but it was too slippery to get much to his mouth.  He got very sticky, but he had a great time!

Here’s Davey exploring his first wildflower.  As you might imagine, he tried to eat it!

We are having a great time at Mama Pearl's.  We got a TON of rain last night, and today everything is so pretty and green.

We are preparing to head to Little Rock for two weeks to house sit for Will and Lisa.  Our three dogs and their three dogs!  It will be fun. 

We took David to the Caddo River the other day for the first time.  He wants to eat the rocks.  All of them.

Mom and Papa were here last week.  We went to the river again with them and over to town to see the school.  They had a good time with Davey, and he loved seeing them. 

Sunday we went over to Little MO Falls.  It was beautiful although abit treacherous to try to carry the baby.   We made it though.  Well, David carried him and I stumbled and tiptoed along behind him across the rocks. 

We found some little shallow pools where he could play.  He liked SPLASHING and…trying to eat rocks.

On a totally different topic, we tried to give Davey some baby food beef the other day.  We are thinking he needs some protein, but this did not go over well.

Guess we will have to search for alternative protein sources for awhile.  He likes his cereal and we introduced oatmeal cereal as well – it has a little more protein anyway. 

I have been scrapbooking as much as I can too.  Last night I did a layout that I like of Mikayla.  I think Mom took this picture maybe last year.

Hi from David!!!
Big David went to school today, and Davey and I are hanging out.  He is taking a nap at the moment.  He had big fun with his Pa for the past two days, and so today he is taking some recovery naps!  They played and played and had a great time.

We went into town this morning to this downtown small town drugstore.  Very fun.  It's great to be back in a true small town.  I met the people who own it at church yesterday.  They have a 16 month old daughter and she was too cute with Davey.  They were really looking at each other and touching each other's hands and hair.  She reached out to his foot and said "tickle tickle".  It's one of the few times he has interacted with a small child.  He enjoyed it.

It's hot and humid here today.  HUMID!

I am scrapbooking again with my limited supplies.  I never tire of moaning and groaning about my scrapbooking supplies being in storage.  I do have a few things though and they force me to be more creative!  I am just happy to be scrapping again.  I did this layout with some material from Davey's old Gerber zip ups and a burp rag. 

We have been in Arkansas for I guess almost two weeks now.  We love the house in the country where we are living until our house sells.  It's beautiful here.  Very peaceful. 

Davey is doing well here too – he is as happy as ever:

He is sitting up well in the bath now and he has a good old time. 

His Pa is visiting us tonight and then his Oma and Opa will be here later in the week.  He loves to have company!  He's lucky to have so many people to love him.

Just put Davey down for a nap.  He is a tired little guy.

He’s been so busy.  He is getting so good at sitting up.  He’s practicing a lot these days: