OK kids first..  Selma is doing great and loving her daycare or "School" as she calls it.  She has the cutest little red backpack!  She is has learned to say her ABCs and recognizes about half of them.  Her potty traing is going well so far.  After several weeks of bringing home daily reports that she was using the potty at school, she finally used the potty at home for #1 and #2 this week. At his 4 month checkup, Beck weighed 16 lbs 14 oz, and was 26.5 inches long. He smiles, coos and is still a pretty good sleeper.

 

Selma was Snow White for Halloween this year, her brother was a dalmation. I did look for a sleepy dwarf costume to go with the Snow White theme, but never found one and did not have time to make one.  Oh well, maybe we can coordinate their costumes next year. I took her around to the neighbors for a little trick-or-treating. She insisted on taking her jack-o-lantern basket AND her Easter basket. Well, I guess to a 2-year old the 2 holidays are kind of similar.

 

Our babysitter, Kristina, who watched Selma for over a year, just had her first baby, Jamie Alexandria!  When she feels up to it again, she will watch baby Beckham a few days a week, allowing me (Suzy) to go back into the office.

 

Steven's brother moved out to San Francisco, California in September.  He is so excited to be out there, but said he was really going to miss the kids. He dropped off at least 40 potted plants at our house (and a Honda Civic), which has filled in some of the blank areas in our yard.  He is planning on coming in for a visit next weekend.

 

Suzy is working 20 hours per week now, and has been training for the 1/2 marathon she will do in February.  She had a minor temporary setback with an infected toenail but is getting back on track now. Thank you so much to everyone who has made a donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society as part of her fundraiser!

 

We had a great time in MN!  We saw lots of Suzy's relatives, visited Minnehaha Falls, the Children's Museum, Como Park Conservatory, and the headwaters of the Mississippi River.  We spent 3 days on Cass lake, where Steven and Suzy's dad did some great fishing. 

 

The reunion was great.  All of the 7 sisters and their spouses came. All of the cousins and their kids came except Erik, Emily and Carl (Carl's wife and kids came though).  We didn't think to take more pictures while there, but everyone else did...  Selma was adored by everyone!  Beck got to hang out with his older (but smaller!) second cousins Samantha and Nate. Liz announced that her family will be moving back to MN from California, because she wanted her kids to be raised with Minnesota values. There were tons of family photos and there was also a copy of writings from Suzy's grandpa Marvin.

 

We spent one night with Jason and Karen (and Sam!)  They have a beautiful home, complete with a secret wine cellar and bar refirgerator with frosted beer mugs!  We gotta get one of those!!! Jason shared his slide show from his service in Afghanistan.

 

While we were gone two of our neighbors passed away.  Special thanks go to Eric, who drove us to the airport and picked us up, and Ruth who took in our mail!

Well its official... Suzy will be a part of the Team-in-Training (TNT) for the Gasparilla 1/2 marathon in January.  She completed 4 miles in 66 minutes tonight!  Thats pretty good for walking. She has a minimum contractural fundraising goal of $1800, and a fundraising website http://www.active.com/donate/tntscfl/tntscflSFolsom1 

 

Selma spent a week with her Granny & Papa (Folsom) last week and had a blast! She came back with some home made playdough and another pair of crocs.

 

Steven came in third at his bass tournament this month, and is in 2nd place overall in the club for the year. 

 

While Steven fished, Suzy attended a funeral down in Ft.Myers for Henry Markel last weekend.  Henry was 33, and had been fighting cancer since he was diagnosed at age 25.  Henry was quoted saying that he was happy that he had gotten cancer, because it made him live life to the fullest and smell the roses, literally and figuratively. I'm not sure I could be that positive in the same situation...

 

Suzy's parents are in route to MN, and we are hoping that Hurricane Dean does not put a damper on our plans... Steven has been studying the family tree and reviewing photos and trying to memorize the names of Suzy's family.  Most of them he met at the wedding, and has not seen since.

Suzy got a pamphlet in the mail inviting her to be bart of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society TEAM IN TRAINING (www.teamintraining.org/sun ) for the Gasparilla Marathon or 1/2 Marathon.  They do other marathons all over the country, and you can train to walk or run.  Suzy is going to attend an information session on August 9th.    We are still keeping tabs on Parker Underwood, the little boy who is the same age as Selma and has Leukemia. (www.parkeru.org) 

 

We walked 2 miles as a family on Friday and Suzy walked 2 miles tonight. This ill be a great way for her to get in shape post pregnancy, and raise money for a worthy cause.

Today is Selma's 2nd birthday!!  We are throwing a small party for her on Saturday. She really loves her new brother, but has been behaving badly, mostly due to the change in her routine.  We had to let Kristina go since Suzy is home now, and the affect of the Grandparents have resulted in a very spoiled defiant little girl... She won't sleep on a normal schedule and all she wants to eat is cookies

 

Baby Beckham is two weeks old doing great. He sleeps almost all of the time, and preferrs to be curled up in a ball. Suzy has nicknamed him "Butterball"  He likes to feed often, but in small amounts.  We will post some more pictures...

 

Suzy's recovery is going really well also, only 2 weeks and no more bleeding or pain!!!!  She has started working out, and now she just needs to loose enough of that belly to fit into some normal clothes again One thing at a time though...

 

We have had several visitors already, and will have many more this weekend at Selma's party.  We will be erecting a swingset for her on Friday (funny construction pictures to follow???)  Her party has a "Monkey" theme.  (Again, pictures will follow)

 

Steven came in 2nd at his bass tournament on Lake Tarpon on 6/16.  Overall he is in second place in the league. 

 

Our garden is still producing plenty of peppers, tomatos, okra and eggplant.  We also got a spaghetti squash and 2 cantaloupes!  One of our neighbors gave us 2 banana trees, so now we have a grapevine, plums, mango, paypaya and banana in our fruit orchard.  The hydroseeding is subpar...we only have bahia grass growing in the front yard so far.  If the rain ever starts, we hope it will come up in the rest of the yard...

 

Greetings from the recently expanded Folsom Family!  Beckham Stevenson Folsom was born at 1:30 on Wednesday.  He was 8 lb 13 oz.  Suzy and Beckham came home from the hospital on Friday afternoon and are doing well.   We hope you will enjoy the pictures!

Well we are down to less that 2 weeks now before baby boy gets here!  The due date was moved up to June 15th.  Suzy has been feeling surprisingly good.  The pre-registration is don and the hospital bag is packed, now it is just a waiting game!

 

 

We bought a co-sleeper to go next to our bed, and plan to keep the guest room available until after Christmas.  We ordered the co-sleeper online, so of course when it was delivered it was the wrong color.  We ordered toffee, and it came blue... at least it was not pink!  Suzy sewed two covers for it that matches our bedroom, so now we are set.  We also got another super soft blanket for the baby similar to the one that Selma loves so much. 

 

We are not sure if the hydroseeding is working or not, the first round of grass (millet) came up well, but we can't tell if the bermuda and bahia has started to come up.  We were watering every day, but watering is restricted to one day per week now.  Thank goodness TS Barry brought us 3-1/2" of rain last night and this morning.  We really needed it.

 

We had friends over on monday for the 2nd Memorial Day fishing tournament.  Steven and Dave Page won.  (Whew!) We had a "Low Country Boil" with lots of veggies from the garden, potatoes, sausage and shrimp.  Mmmmmmmm!

 

Wish us luck on a speedy and safe delivery! 

Well we have returned from our beach getaway with some very pretty pictures.  We hope you will enjoy them!  Our trip was beauiful and relaxing. The weather started out very cold and rainy (lows in the 40's)  but by Thursday the weather was in the 80's.  We ended up with  two good beach days!

 

On Monday, during one of the bad weather days, we went to Panama City Beach (complete waste of time).  The only good thing I can say about Panama City beach is that there was no one on the beach ( we could let Selma run free), and the ocean water was crystal clear. 

 

Tuesday we drove to Tallahassee and had lunch with Becky.  It was great to see her!  She recommended a great place for Suzy to get her hair done.  We planned to meet up with Heather and baby Gemma afterwards, but Selma bumped her head pretty hard while she played at the park with Steven, and was very cranky, so we headed back to the Beach house.   

 

If you have never been to St. George Island, I would definitely recommend going there someday...  The area from Mexice Beach to St. Marks is known as the "Forgotten Coast" of Florida, because all of the major tourism guides left out any mention of them.  Steven had stayed on St.George Island before (College Spring Break)  and I had worked in Pt. St. Joe at a remediation site... So we knew how beautiful the beaches are, but what we did not know was that nearly 1/2 of the beach houses and condos have been built in the last 4 years!  This boom in construction and the huge downturn in housing sales has created the perfect marked for cheap rentals!  There are for sale or for rent signs everywhere! 

 

The house that we ended up renting is owned by a couple in Temple Terrace ( small world! just a few miles from Lutz, where we live) and they have a 2 year old also, so it was well equipped for our needs. Stevens parent also came over and spent 2 nights with us, enjoying the best beach day on Thursday. 

 

Selma really had a blast at the beach.  She never got tired of running ino the freezing waves and played until she had 0 energy left. She is quite the social butterfly, marching up and playing with various groups of kids, grabbing their toys like they were her own and taking food from other adults whenever she was hungury...

 

Well if you haven't heard already, we are expecting a boy!  Steven and I could not be more excited! Suzy has been feeling great in her second trimester. We have been getting lots of yard work done, and hope to plant our vegetable garden soon. 

 

Selma gets more adorable every day. She is so friendly and outgoing, but definitely an attention hog. She has no idea that in 4 months, she will have a little brother!

 

Steven has caught a small bass for the fish tank ahnd has been feeding it earthworms and goldfish.  Selma is very entertained by the feeding... we got the deer mount from Thanksgiving,  and have it hung in our office,  its a Florida Sportsman's paradise around here.

 

On a sad note, Suzy found out that the son (only 19 months old, the same age as Selma) of a friend of hers from high school has leukemia. The adorable boy was rushed to a cancer center in Orlando last week and has been fighting for his life ever since.  We can't imagine that ever happening to Selma...

 

We are trying to plan a vacation in April,  renting a beach house on St. George island or perhaps Cape San Blas... 

 

 

 

Happy New Year!  It has been a dreary rainy Christmas and new year, but we needed the rain! Looking back on 2006... a new house, learning to be parents, and watching Selma grow.  It is impossible to really explain all of the ways a baby will change you life " (95% of them for the better)

 

2007will come with  many potential changes for our family.  Suzy's parents are still planning on moving to Tennessee, although this is taking much longer than they expected. Steven's father is planning on retiring this year and selling his surveying business.  A new baby will arrive in June! Steven's brother Eric got a nice promotion, and will hopefully have more time to visit his niece this year...

 

We enjoyed Christmas in Ft. Myers and New Years in Mayo.  We do get tired of traveling, especially when Selma has been sick.  She benifits from familiar surroundings and her normal schedule. (i.e. SLEEP!!)

 

Some of Selma's new phrases:

"Oh My!" think Mic Hubert

"Why you do that"  angry/frustrated

"Bye" nonchalant

"Merry Christmastree" where did she get that?

 

We spent Thanksgiving with the Folsom's in North Florida.  Grandma and Grandpa Kuhn also made the trip up from Ft. Myers. 4 days of gorging ourselves with the best food of the year. Highlights this year were the yummy turnips (although Selma did NOT like them) and Grandma Kuhn's flaming pumpkin pie (it worked!)

 

The Lee Family reunion was really nice also.  You should have seen Selma playing with all of those older boys.  They were so sweet to her!  She ran until her little cheeks were bright red!  Our fearless child also took a dive off of the front steps, scraping her nose, forehead and giving herself a nice shiner.  She cried for a very short while until I let her go catch the ball that she was after, and then it was all fun and games again.

 

It was a very productive hunting weekend also.  Steven shot a 10 point buck (that means that the horns have 10 points on them...) on Friday, and Suzy shot her first 2 turkeys (ever!) on Sunday.  The last time Steven killed a deer was way back in 1998 when he was first dating Suzy.  This was the biggest he has ever killed! WooHoo!

 

We have so much to be thankful for this year. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

 

 

Yep, thats right... another is on the way, so SCUBA certification is delayed for another year...

 

I'm about 8 weeks along, althoug this has not been confirmed by the Dr. yet.  It looks like if all goes well, baby2 will be due within a week of Selma's 2nd B-day.  We are very excited!  I've been alot sicker and more tired than last time. Craving are completely different.   There are three pregnant girls in the office right now that are all due within a week of each other (the first week in december)  one is on bed rest and the other two have all of my maternity clothes. I should be able to get them back just in time!

 

Selma is absolutely fearless these days.  She throws all caution out the window.  She runs towards loose dogs in the neighborhood.  She climbs anything.  Last night while playing with her, she knocked her two front teeth on the futon and cracked them diagonally up to her gums.  Of course I called Ping right away. (she is in her second year of dental school at Nova) She is going to be a great dentist!  Her advice and diagnosis was right on the money! We got her into the pediatric dentist first thing this morning.  The dentist was able to restore about 1/2 of chipped area by building up layers of composite.  This was then sanded and polished to look fairly similar to a real tooth. (did I get that terminology right Ping?)  It looks MUCH better now.  I don't recommend taking a 16 month old to the dentist unless you absolutely have to, and make sure you bring another person to help with paperwork, entertaining and just carying all the stuff that you need.  I brought the babysitter...

 

We should be putting in our sprinkler system soon.  The weather has been beautiful lately, perfect for gardening.  now if I could just get some energy! 

 

 

Today was Halloween.

Selma had a good time dressed up as a bunny rabbit.

We towed her around in her wagon through the neighborhood.

 

We had a really nice week long vacation in the mountains just outside of Gatlinburg, TN.  We rented a cabin from one of Steven's co-workers.  The weather was a nice break from the FL hottness. 

 

Construction is progressing on the property to the north of us.  It's starting to get really dusty and sometimes they start at 6 AM on Saturday  morning...

 

Suzy is finally finishing her SCUBA classes that she started before she got pregnant with Selma.  She tried to dive at the Blue Grotto in Williston, but her ears really bothered her, and she did not get below 8 ft.

 

Selma had her 15 month checkup (a couple of weeks late)  she is now 33.5 inches tall, weighs 25 lbs 15 oz and has a 47 cm head.  I thought for sure she weighed 30 lbs! She is not talking much but she really is beginning to understand what we say.

 

Halloween is coming soon. We are not sure what our plans are just yet...

 

 

Steven turned 30 a week ago.  We has a get together at Skippers Smokehouse and saw Moonshine Still in concert.  Becky Jeff Heather Mario and baby Gemma came for a visit on Friday, Travis stopped by on Saturday, and Suzy's mom and dad came on Sunday.  VERY busy weekend.  It was great to see everyone!  I wish I would have taken some pictures!

 

We are very happy to have football back in season. We are watching the Florida-Tennessee game right now!  The Gators look great this year, but this is their first real test...

Our progress on the house if moving slowly.  We have ground out all of the Cypress stumps and we removed the tree that was struck by lightning (twice) After several weeks of cleaning and a $300 filtration system, we got the fish tank up and running! We initially caught 2 brim and a shiner from the lake.  One brim died and it clouded up the whole tank.  We threw the other brim back and caught two smaller fish (not sure what kind yet). The shiner jumped out and died.  It seems silly to have such a a big tank for two fish...  maybe we will get some more tomorrow...

 

Check out the pictures of Steven's bass he caught a few weeks ago!  What a monster!  This place just gets better and better!

 

It seems like life is moving faster now (just like everyone said it would after you have a baby)  Its hard to beleive I've been working for the same Engineering firm for 5-1/2 years and Steven for 7 years! We've been out of college longer than we were in!  

 

Heather just celebrated her 30 birthday.  We celebrated ab Becky's in Tallahassee.  She was very surprised.  It was good to see baby Gemma.  It seems like yesterday that Selma was that small...  She really loved when Becky played the piano with her... maybe she will play someday.

 

Mom and Dad (Kuhn) have been taking more trips to TN, looking for their retirement destination.  Steven's parents just got back from vacation to Montana and the Dakotas. It looks like we are going to try to get up to the mountains in a few weeks. 

 

Our buddy Lee Singletary won one of those online poker tournaments and got an all expenses paid trip to Vegas and Camp Helmuth.

 

Today we have been married 4 years.  We both agree that things are even better than we thought they would be. I guess thats pretty good!

 

Selma loved her trip to MN to see Suzy's side of the family!  She was such a good baby on the plane!  We went to the zoo, Lake Minnetonka, and a very fancy reasturant at teh Mall of America.  She entertained everyone at the Kuhn family reunion.  Aunt Barbarah was very surprised when all of the extra people came in for her 75th birthday celebration.  Then over to Moose Lake for the reunion of the Bauer's ... six of the seven sisters made it to the get together and 5 of the 14 cousins...  the food was excellent and the kids had a blast.  Valerie was a gracious hostess at her new place with the bright yellow basement.  We also stayed an evening with Ginger and Tom in Hewitt at the farm.  The temperatures were warmerr than we would have liked, be we still had a great time.

 

Steven really missed us though.  We went to the Florida Aquarium the weekend we got back. She was not as excited as she was at the zoo in MN, but she liked seeing the lobster,(she even said the word lobster!), but she loved seeing all of the other kids the most.  (hmmm ... maybe mommy and daddy will have to start thinking about a little brother or sister...) 

 

We had more hot air balloon in our neighborhood. these two nearly came right over our house! The other picture is of a pretty flower in our yard.

 

 

It has now been a year since Selma has joined us.  It really doesn't seem that long, but they say time flies when you're having fun.

 

We had Selma's party at Granny and Grandpa Folsom's.  Papa A.F, Grandma and Grandpa Kuhn attended of course, along with Teresa and Ava, Becky and Jeff, Heather and Mario with little Gemma, and Travis.  Selma really seemed to enjoy herself, especially with the cake.  After some warming up to it, she ate half of the thing in one sitting. She got a lot of nice gifts.  Learning gift, and fun gifts, and "Annoy Mommy and Daddy gifts".

 

Selma walks about 50% of the time now and is quicker than a cat.  Every time you look she is into something new.  Her and Suzy are taking a trip up to Minneapolis, MN to meet Grandma and Grandpa Kuhn and a lot of her cousins for some family reunion time.

 

Well I guess this is turning out to be a monthly blog...  and I had better hurry up and get my May entry in...

 

Apparently our house is still listed for sale on www.buyowner.com if you want to see some before pictures-TPA59601... BTW, we did NOT pay THAT much for it!

 

We had some family over for Suzy's birthday, it was our first real attempt at entertaining in the new place.  Several relatives canceled due to having the same rotavirus that Selma had a couple of weeks earlier. It was a bad BAD bug!

 

Selma took her first steps on Mother's Day!  We can't wait to see what she will do on Father's Day! She hasn't walked much since then though...

 

We traveled up to Mayo for Ava Grace's 1st birthday party.  Selma had so much fun with all of the kids.  We definitely need to get her around more kids.  Of course she picked up a virus (Roseola? little red bumps all over her neck back and stomach) but it really hasn't slowed her down at all.

 

Gosh I know we sound like hypochondriacs, but Selma has only really been sick 3 times in the first 11 months so that is really good.  Everyone says waht a happy baby she is!

 

For our final news, Steven hosted the first annual Folsom Fishing Tournament.  He and his partner Lee captured 5 fine fish, however Brian and Dave outweighed them 11.7 pounds to 10.0 pounds!  We had a nice swim and BarBQ afterwards.

 

 Oh, and we are FINALLY ALMOST done with the floors, we just have a couple of peices of trim left, and the doorways to finish!