Family Vacation

Our little girl is a traveler! We made a spontaneous decision to spend a night in Morgantown, WV last weekend and she did great. As Midwesteners, we're still a little surprised about how close we are to West Virginia and although we had planned to drive further into the mountains, we ended up having a good time in Morgantown. We explored the campus and discovered some great restaurants. Interestingly, it seems every other business in Morgantown is an Asian restaurant of some kind. We had great sushi--notice the picture of Mali watching Daddy eat. Not knowing what to expect, we had pictured eating somewhere like Cracker Barrel...I guess the lesson is don't judge a town by its stereotypes.

Maybe we'll be Mountaineers fans this year?

Amalia's Baptism

Amalia was baptized on July 2, 2006 at our church, First Trinity Evangelical Lutheran. Although it seems strange to our human minds to consider our precious 6-day-old daughter a "sinful human being" and in need of salvation, knowing that she is now cleansed of her sin by the grace of God is wonderfully relieving. As much as we want to protect her from the world in so many ways, we recognize that we simply can't as parents, and instead can only rest on God's mercy. That was pretty consoling as she has experienced her first mosquito bite the other day and we know that there are many more everyday "dangers" yet to come. Click here for an overview of our church's teaching baptism, specifically infant baptism.

More facts about her baptism: her godparents are Derek & Karianne Kurth who traveled in from Austin, TX for the celebration. The Kurths are also parents of our beautiful goddaughter, Kaeta Bernice Kurth. Does that make Amalia and Kaeta god-sisters? Amalia's Grandma Deni lovingly made her gorgeous baptismal gown including using fabric from Kaethe's confirmation dress. Tracey Johnson, a member from our church, made her banner. And of course, having friends, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, great-aunts & uncles and even a great-great-great aunt there made the day even more special for all of us.

Click here for more pictures from that day...

More pictures of our little model...

Here are more pictures of the first week in the life of Amalia June Ward, including shots of her meeting lots of family and friends. So far, she approves of everyone and now that the out-of-town company is gone, she's wondering what happened to all of the action.

We've also had some questions about her name. Amalia is named after her paternal great-grandmother (Dena Amelia Ward) and paternal great-great-great grandmother (Amalie Wernicke). Her middle name is from her maternal great-grandmother (Dolores June Koch) and June is Mommy's middle name too. Amalia also seems to enjoy the nicknames Malia and Mali (pronounced "Molly").

Promised pictures

Here is an album of her first few days at Allegheny General Hospital