Rich, Heather and Alana’s Blog

At our monthly OSP lunch last week, the sweet and talented Michelle Wilson offered to us the photos she’d taken the evening Rich and I modeled for the Chattanooga Photographer’s Guild. I thankfully accepted the disc and enjoyed looking through her images when I got home. I thought I’d share a few of them here!

I cannot get over this city. It is beautiful! So picturesque with the Tennessee River and all of the bridges…

We had stumbled upon a picnic table and decided it would integrate nicely into the photo shoot!

I love it when photographers capture totally natural, authentic moments!

Thank you again, Michelle! We appreciate your photos so much and it was great to see you again!

As my longtime blog readers are aware, I worked at the Chattanooga Youth Network from the time I got married until 3 years later when I was 37 weeks pregnant and ready to quit my job to be home with Alana and work for Rich Smith Photography.

In my years at CYN, I had the privilege of planning an annual golf tournament fundraiser and always had a blast the day of the tournament. This year I decided that even though I was no longer on staff, I wanted to volunteer.

I was not tremendously helpful, though, since Alana accompanied me and stole the show. Every time I tried to be productive and helpful, someone would approach and want to meet Alana, ask me how motherhood is treating me, and catch up on my past six months away from CYN.

I have a few photos from the day, and since it was Alana’s first time on a golf course (Black Creek Golf Club), I thought it imperative to blog them!

Thanks to Jessie for the following picture of me and Alana!

And thanks so much to my honey for these two shots of Alana’s first time in a golf cart!

And, I haven’t blogged about this yet, but Alana is smack-dab in the middle of a super-clingy phase in which she refuses to be held my anyone but myself or Rich. Wow. It’s been fun! She literally starts to cry the moment we pass her to anyone. Anyone. It is so sad! We are hoping that, since she hit this phase so early, by the time most kids are going through it around 1 or so, Alana will be completely well-adapted and the trauma will be long gone. Here’s to hoping!

Here is Alana, beginning her ascent to screams…with our dear friend, golfer, and missions pastor at church, Erik Dine.

And, if you have a passion to support youth leaders in the greater Chattanooga area, please check out CYN and the great work that they are doing in our city!!!

Rich surprised me last week by telling me that he wanted to take me to Atlanta for the weekend, for my first ever mother’s day!

It is something that we loved to do together before we had the baby - just plan a weekend getaway somewhere and enjoy each other. Since things are a bit more complicated now and we aren’t able to be quite as spontaneous now that we have a wee one, Rich decided it was about time to resurrect our happy pastime and give me a special weekend.

So, on Saturday morning we took off on the familiar I-75 South route into the heart of massive Atlanta. Our first stop? Lenox Square Mall, complete with one of my favorite places (Macy’s) and one of Rich’s favorites as well (the Apple Store)!

Here we are, in the brilliantly marketed technological utopia.

Ahem, the Apple Store.

Rich grabbed this shot of Alana and I…

And I took this one of Rich and Alana…she loves to hang with her daddy!

Just for kicks, I asked Rich to list the top 5 Mac products that he’d love to have. It’s a fun little game we play from time to time. Hey, we can dream, right?

Here is a bit of self-portraiture outside the {beautiful} Apple store:

Checked into the hotel, Rich and Alana chilled for a bit before the three of us headed to dinner at the fabulous Cheesecake Factory!

I ordered a menu item called the Burrito Grande, and I didn’t take them seriously. It came to the table and Rich and I just started laughing. It was absolutely enormous, and could easily have sufficed for four meals if we’d had a place to keep it while we were away!

Alana was intrigued also, and has been practicing her grabbing skills. She reaches for absolutely everything, and suddenly, as of a couple of weeks ago, items on the table are fair game. Eating is now a very exciting combination of throwing food in my mouth while gently removing whatever Alana has managed to fist in the meantime. Here she is, enthralled by my burrito…

So I gave her something age-appropriate to enjoy while I ate and Rich snapped this keeper:

Ah, she is so animated. Full time entertainment.

And of course, our usual documentation!

Then on Sunday morning, we enjoyed a fantastic breakfast at our hotel before checking out. We saw this beautiful monument a block away from the hotel, so Rich took a couple of photos to memorialize my first Mother’s Day ever!

We had already decided that a trip to Ikea was in order since Rich had never been before! So, we were even more excited when we heard that the Holritz’s would be in town to take Amber to the airport! We met up for lunch and roamed about Ikea for a while before Amber’s flight.

Rich and Alana, taking in the vast, crazy place!

I love this one of Rich with Nathan and Amber! Clearly, they found the comfiest section of the store!

me and Amber!

Hooray for fun new experiences! What a blast! We left exhausted and over stimulated from our four hours at Ikea!

And to all of you wonderful moms out there, and especially to my mom and my mother-in-law, Happy Belated Mother’s Day!

Alana was busy today, helping Rich and I with all of our accounting catch-up:

She was such a help. Wow.

It is amazing to me that she is already watching everything we do and beginning to mimic. That is a huge responsibility as a parent! Will she have the same flaws and quirks that I do? She always reaches for my cell phone and bluetooth, even when she has toys in front of her! She has already entered the phase in baby-dom of wanting to do what all the big people are doing!

Look at her little hands! She was very intense!

Below is a photo of Alana and I at church tonight. We only have one Wednesday night service each month, on the first wednesday of each month…appropriately dubbed “First Wednesday.” We pray together and have praise and worship time, and then we spend a couple of hours eating a ton of homemade food that we all bring. It is the highlight of my church experience as of late. Even though I don’t get to be involved the prayer part because of the baby, I always have so much fun seeing everyone and enjoying the food and fellowship!

Rich grabbed this shot of Alana and I on our way in tonight. As of last week, friends are commenting that Alana is starting to look like me! I dunno. I just think she has a super cute round little baby face with big blue eyes.

We had the incredibly fun privilege of hanging out with some good friends on Friday night, and I always leave wondering why we allow life to get too busy to do it more often!

The wonderful Scott and Kristy invited us, along with our dear friends Tim and Steph, to bring the kids and enjoy a pizza-movie-milkshake night at their lovely home! We jumped at the chance, and had an amazing time. After dinner, the boys went downstairs to enjoy Hoodwinked (such a clever flick) while Kristy, Steph and I stayed upstairs and enjoyed each other’s company.

It’s awesome how God created friendship to be the most encouraging thing. Kristy and Steph, being the selfless, considerate women they are, asked how I was doing and how life has been for me and I got to share what’s been on my heart.

The boys emerged from downstairs once the movie ended, and Scott began preparing masterpiece milkshakes for all of us! He makes incredible chocolate shakes, WOW!

And about my non-dairy diet because of Alana’s milk protein allergy, I tried to re-introduce some dairy and poor Alana, she is definitely still allergic. I have to go back off of everything, and we will just have to play it by ear. It seems I may have to be rigid about dairy until she no longer nurses.

Here is the group, complete with the coolest kids ever!

Kristy took this adorable shot of Alana - thank you, Kristy! Alana did really well since we stayed out way past her bedtime! She was a bit lethargic, but surprisingly, not fussy!

We had a fabulous time, Scott and Kristy! Thank you so much for everything! We love you guys!

And here are a few shots I took yesterday…Alana can sit up well if I prop her against something, so I experimented with our dining room wall! She did well for a minute, and then started falling over. I caught her with my lightening quick reflexes

And true to her quirky obsession, Alana is always doing something funny with her tongue! From the minute she was born, she has been sticking it out and contorting it. Hilarious!