We survived the flood!

Wow, what a wild few weeks we've had. The muddy Mississippi rose to record levels in the last week and caused a lot of major flooding in Memphis. We live on Mud Island and there are only two roads off the island. One was shut down over a week ago and is still closed. The other route was narrowed to two lanes while one side of the road was built up in case everyone on the island was ordered to evacuate. Only a portion of homes on the island actually had to evacuate. Sofia's school had to pack all of the toys and equipment up and close the parking lot because the Wolf River harbor rose so high. Although we received several scary warning letters from Shelby county we remained safe.

Sofia is doing great. It is amazing to see how quickly she is growing up and become a sweet little girl. She is very adventurous. She started officially walking right at 14 months and now acts like a seasoned walker. With the weather being so nice we have taken her swimming a lot and she absolutely loves the water. This was no surprise to Tim or I since she has been swimming since she was about a month old and almost always enjoys bath time. Our pool has a little shallow circle pool with a fountain in the middle that she loves to play in. She also likes to walk around on her own and when she thinks we aren't looking she holds her arms out and just drops forward to go under water. We definitely have to keep a close eye on her. Sofia babbles a ton! She has a very mixed vocabulary of Spanish and English words, I expected this since she spends 7-8 hours a day entirely in Spanish. Sofia still loves to read and points to the words and babbles and will read to anyone who will listen. She has also become very affectionate to her baby animals. She could care less about her baby dolls but loves the animals. She holds them, brings them to me to kiss them and walks them around in a stroller. It's adorable to watch. Sofia also dances and will try to sing along to different songs she is familiar with from school. Sofia is a great eater. She will try almost anything but really loves fruit, all types of beans, yogurt, chicken, turkey, eggs, and pancakes. She used to really love vegetables but she is picky about them.

It's hard to believe we only have 2 weeks left in Memphis. We are going to try to pack in a lot of our favorite things in Memphis for our grand finale. It's amazing how much this city has grown on me. Working in Memphis City Schools has not been easy and definitely made my time in Memphis challenging but I will miss a lot of things about teaching, especially since I'm not sure when I will teach again. We will miss the early spring and long fall but I'm so happy we are moving home before the sweltering heat hits Memphis. Tim graduates a week from today and then we are spending the weekend at a cabin on a lake in Arkansas with some of our nearest and dearest friends we met in Memphis so we can have a proper goodbye. Many of the people who will be at the cabin were away for part of fourth year so I am so excited to catch up and relax with everyone.

I'll leave you with some adorable pictures taken from Sofia's one year photo session back in March. We picked up her pictures from the studio today and they turned out great!!