Weekend Getaway: Part Dos

On Sunday afternoon, after we left the "interracial convention", we headed to Plano to see my friend, Erin and her parents. Her dad, Tom took us downtown and took some much anticipated pictures of Saylor. He took pictures for us last year and he does an OUTSTANDING job--I couldn't wait for some new ones! Saylor was pretty grumpy--she hadn't had a nap all day, and it was about 100 degrees outside, but he can take great pictures, even with a high maintenance, crabby model! Thank you so much, Tom. We can't even begin to thank you for all your hard work and patience! To say we LOVE our pictures, would be an understatement!

Here are a few:

Weekend Getaway: Part Uno

Just a warning: the next few posts might be slightly overloaded with pictures.

We went back to Fort Worth on Friday to hang out with three other couples and their kiddos. I really love that although three of the four couples have moved away from Amarillo, we still make a point to get together, hang out and fellowship with each other. On Saturday we went to a water park called NRH2O, and we had an absolute ball!

Annie and Bennett

Daddy and Saylor

Dara and sleepy Caleb

Saturday night after the kiddos went to bed, we played a hysterical game of Guesstures and Battle of the Sexes! Here are some funny pictures of the boys. I didn't get any pictures of the girls because I obviously had to concentrate while they were acting out our clues....and of course the girls WON both games!!

Jessica and Snap

Snap acting out a flamingo, I think

Annie, Jared, and Dara

Jared

Mas

We had lunch Sunday at the Rainforest Cafe and then said goodbye to our friends and the "interracial convention" as DaShawn calls it!

DaShawn and Caleb

Beautiful Bennett

Caleb and Dara

Us

Caleb and Bryce...Bryce is such a good big brother and was a huge help to everyone this weekend.

Saylor and Caleb--they would kiss, but we kept missing it with the camera. They were so cute!

Jared, Snap, and Jessica

The Whole Crew

We love each of you, and are so glad that we got to share in the fun this weekend. Hopefully we can do it again soon! We are so thankful that we have been blessed with such wonderful friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dara and DaShawn for planning and organizing such a great weekend!

SPOON FED

I took Saylor to her eighteen month doctor's appointment today. She exceeds most of the developmental milestones....except for the spoon feeding. It takes her almost an hour to eat a cup of yogurt and I doubt that half of it gets in her mouth. This is so my fault! My OCD tendencies keep me from encouraging that she constantly practices with a spoon. But, from here on out, that is my new goal! Although, I really don't mind feeding her myself until she starts kindergarten. :) Anyways, she is still my big, tall girl measuring in at:
26.6 lbs=75th percentile
33 inches= 90th percentile
And she now has 12 teeth--four front top, four front bottom and four molars. It took her a while, but she is finally catching up!
She was such a good girl today during her appointment, she was all smiles the whole time, and didn't even cry (or even wimper) when she got two shots! I was so proud of her! Mostly because it makes my heart hurt when she cries from those shots--and I was ecstatic when it didn't hurt her!
Sure do love my curly-headed, brown eyed beauty!

Back to TEXAS

Saylor and I tagged along with Mas last week when he went to Fort Worth for a conference for work. I was in need of a little mini vacay and some really nice cold air conditioning and I also went to see a few friends. My have things changed since we last stayed in a hotel with Miss Priss (when she was nine months old). She is a lot harder to entertain now in a little bitty hotel room. And my child is SO SCHEDULED and LOVES her routine. She had a hard time falling and staying asleep in her pack-n-play--especially since she could see us right there beside her in the same room! However, it was a really nice change of pace.

We got to see Lamont, who was in Mas' training class last year while we were living in hotels. He and Saylor had a special bond. At that time, she would rarely go to anyone but Mas and I, but she would gladly let Lamont hold and play with her. Lamont joined us for dinner most nights during our travels last year. It was great to see him again! We had not seen him since last October. Saylor didn't quite remember him at first, but soon warmed up to him. Here is pic of Lamont and Saylor--sorry it's terrible. I took it with my phone in a hotel room, but that's the only one I got.

Saylor and I also spent a day in Plano at my friend, Erin's mom's house. We hung out in their awesome pool and had some much needed girl time. Saylor loved the pool, their dogs, and climbing up and down the stairs! She would have gone up and down the stairs for hours if I would have let her. Thanks Erin and Karen for letting us hang out. We had so much fun!

We went and had dinner down in the Fort Worth Stockyards. It was so nice to be back in Texas for a few days.Here is Saylor showing us what a fish does.
Erin and Saylor
Erin and I--miss you friend!
We are actually going back to Fort Worth this coming weekend for some fun in the sun with our friends! More pictures to come!

A WHOLE YEAR AND A HALF!

Where did this baby go?

Yesterday Saylor turned eighteen months old. How did that happen? I’m gonna have to say all the cliché things that all parents do, but they really are true! It seems like just yesterday we laid our eyes on our sweet baby girl for the first time. It seems like just yesterday we brought her home. It seems like just yesterday she learned to roll over, and sit up, and crawl! Where has the time gone?!!

Her favorite things at eighteen months old:
~She still LOVES all animals. They fascinate her. She still sleeps with her big monkey that she calls “Ah Ah” (as in the sound a monkey makes “ooh ooh ahh, ahh”). She can make about a bajillion animal noises. Seriously. I really need to video it. It’s adorable. Sometimes I wonder if she will ever learn the name of some animals because she calls most of them by the sounds they make—like the monkey for example.
~She still LOVES to read. Her favorites at the moment are “Brown Bear Brown Bear” (which has been a favorite for quite a while now) and “The Little Mouse The Red Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear” which my mom read to us when we were little and I just love it! She is even starting to tell me what’s coming up in the book because we read them so often. (And of course I think that makes her brilliant :)
~She loves windmills (“in-miw”) for some reason. They have a huge wind farm between here and Amarillo, so she exclaims “in-miw, in-miw” over and over and over again for every single windmill she sees—and there are A LOT of them! And she gets so excited if she happens to see an occasional windmill here in town!
~She also points out EVERY SINGLE airplane (“aiwpane”) that passes our house or car all day long. Sometimes I am amazed that she can see the little speck in the sky, but she doesn’t miss a one!
~Her very best friend, besides Momma or Dada, is Averey! Saylor adores her and wants to hold her hand almost the whole time they are together. They are having so much fun together and I love that they are getting to spend so much time with one another!
~She loves food. Thankfully we have only had about one week ever that she did the “picky toddler” thing and refused to eat much. Her favorites are still fruit and cheese, though. Strawberries, oranges, and raspberries are her favorites right now.
~She loves the library. We go 2-3 times a week to their toddler activities and she is really getting to know other kids and slowly coming out of her shell when there are a lot of people around. (And it is also great for me to get to know other moms). We have learned lots of fun songs and games from the groups and she wants to me to sing them all the time at home. I love seeing how much she has learned since we first started going in November.
~She now knows three shapes—heart, star, and circle—and she loves to point them out to us whenever she can.
~She loves being outside—even in 105 degree heat, but she hates being barefoot in the grass. As soon as her little feet touch the grass she will sit down and stick her feet up in the air. She is such a girl! Her favorite things to do outside are ride in her car, blow bubbles, play with the water sprayer, put all kinds of things in her wagon and pull it around, and to help me water the flowers.
~She likes to help me brush my teeth. She will run to find me if she hears me in the other room brushing my teeth. She doesn’t think it is as exciting when I brush hers, though. She makes me smile!
~She loves for me to sing to her--just about any and everything. She has even started trying to sing Jesus Loves Me with me when I rock her before bed. MELTS MY HEART!
~I swear she learns a new word or two every day! Her vocabulary is constantly amazing me!

The most common things I hear from strangers (other than “she is beautiful” of course!):

~“She is so EXPRESSIVE”—Yes, she is! She takes after her momma on that one!
~“I love her hair”—Don’t know if they really love it, or just feel sorry for me that I have to TRY to manage that crazy mess! It’s a full time job!!
~“She is SO TALL”—yep, takes after her daddy. She has been in the 95 percentile in height since she was three months old. Mas thinks it’s wonderful that she is so tall. I, however, can foresee the difficulty in finding jeans to fit those long legs someday. And we already have trouble getting shirts to cover her long torso (and big ole belly). Some of her 2T shirts are too short.

My little princess is stubborn, sensitive, so sweet, and fully of personality. It has been a fast and amazing eighteen months. I really just want my baby to quit growing! I want to be able to rock her and hold her forever! What a beautiful blessing Miss Saylor is to us! She keeps us laughing!

Our Fourth of July Weekend

Friday morning Saylor woke up with a high fever but with no other symptoms other than crankiness. Averey had been diagnosed with a virus on Wednesday and she had an outrageously high temp with it so I am assuming they shared their bug. The doctor's office said there wasn't much they could do so we just alternated motrin and tylenol all day trying to keep her temp down (in a pretty warm house--not easy or pleasant). On Friday night she fell asleep like this after her bath before I could even get her PJs on. Poor little pumpkin.

On Saturday Kellen, Tana, and Ave came over for a cookout before we headed to see the fireworks. Unfortunately the fireworks got postponed for the next night because of a nice big rainstorm we got. We definitely needed the rain and Saylor still wasn't feeling fantastic and was running a fever off and on, so it was probably better we just got her to bed at a fairly decent time.

Sunday evening, Kellen, Tana and I took the girls to the carnival and fireworks show here in Moore (Mas had to work). It was a lot of fun! Ave loved the rides and Saylor cried when we had to leave the "herse" and the "e-atant" (elephant) on the carousel. She wasn't too excited with the carousel actually moving, though--she would have been fine just to sit on the still horse for hours.

I love this picture that captures her excitement for the fireworks. She loved them!

Happy Birthday, America!

Little of this, little of that

This is the latest on the AC situation....thankfully our next door neighbor's dad is in the heating and air business. On Sunday night he came over to check things out. He spent almost TWO HOURS checking different things and thoroughly cleaning out the unit. (The guy that the warranty company sent spent less than 20 minutes and told us there was nothing they could do.) He also told us we had too many filters so we removed one. He did tell us that our unit was the original one that was put in when the house was built in 1985 and at that time the ACs here were only equipped for a max temperature of 95 degrees. Obviously that doesn't cut it here! So, we will need to replace it, but for now he bought us a few degrees by cleaning it out and removing a filter and later this week we are having some wind turbines installed in the roof so that should help some too, and maybe buy us a little time to get some estimates for a new AC. We have to do something fast though, because our electricity bill is going to be OUTRAGOUS! Our poor air conditioner runs non-stop, all day long until about 5 in the morning and then starts back up about 7. It's going to be a sad day in our house when that bill arrives.

Nothing else too exciting has been happening...just trying to stay cool. Saylor got to share her FIRST popsicle with me last weekend and we even went to the ice cream truck to get it. She loved it! (I know some of you are shocked that she got a popsicle--but it's just too hot to deprive the kid of a cold treat every now and then. I'm actually a little shocked at myself as well.)

Blowing bubbles with DaddaShe seems to think the bubble wand should actually go IN your mouth. And she doesn't seem too concerned with the soapy aftertaste!
Little more swimming pool fun!

She loves to wear our shoes

She's got some BIG shoes to fill!