Family Photos Are In!

Our family photos came in this week and we are pretty pleased with them :) I mentioned here that we were having some done a couple of weeks ago. There are about 25 final pics but here are about half of them...

 Photographer is Laine Johnson and we totally recommend her for family photos around the the North DFW area. The most affordable BY FAR!

Have I mentioned...

that we are doing Time Out and that it's not working? 
He thinks it's really funny, which depending on my mood, makes me really frustrated or laugh right along with him. I'd imagine my reactions don't help at all! The first picture will make you feel sorry for him. The next picture will make you feel sorry for me!

A mix of so cute and so sad! :/

He's pretty much thumbing his nose at my punishment (sigh)

that we love our neighbors?!
Not only do they give us tons of hand me downs for Grayson but they're just fun people. In fact, we all got together Friday night and are planning a big block party for next month. It will be in our front yard/driveway and I think it will be so much fun :) Bounce house and all!

This happens about every 2 or 3 months. They are fresh out of the dryer and wondering where they will live. I'm wondering the same thing!

The guys grilled for us on Friday, moved everyone's patio furniture out here and we had a fun, little party. We all look forward to doing this more often this season. There are about 6 kids total and the older ones are really great with Grayson!

that Grayson can say a lot more words these days?!
Melt my heart - I love hearing his little voice! I can't wait to hear more. :) Here are some videos ...

Beau walks in at the end of this one. You can tell b/c Grayson completely loses interest in me. ;)

that I had a Manic Monday this past week?
Grayson was in school for a part of the day and it was STILL a crazy day. I've heard women complain about this kind of thing where they just want to run away from home and I now know what they mean! Fortunately, bad days pass just as fast as good ones so it's behind us! Here's a little peak into that day....

Sadly, my clumsiness caused this mess and I was wearing more of the milk than the counter was.  My hair was too. Ugh. Sweet Grayson was trying to salvage his sippy cup. ;)

that we finally signed up for the Frisco Athletic Center and swimming lessons?
I've only planned to become a member for a year now! We simply love the place and I can't believe how nice and large it is along with everything they have for families. Great exercise classes and a really big aquatic center. All for $60/month for the whole family. I'm in!  Yay for getting into the April swim class! Boo for being in a swimsuit - it's too soon!

I can not wait to experience this with the entire Frisco population this summer (sarcasm)

The children's area of the indoor pool. There are lanes and a lazy river too for adults.

that April may be the busiest month to date?! 
Just when I'm thinking about going back to work, I have more fun things on the calendar with Grayson, our friends and family than ever before! It makes me all panic-ey that I may miss some things and that maybe I need to weigh my options again. :/

My beautiful boy in his new Spring clothes. It's a really tough decision. :( 

that my child (and all others too) looks frikkin' adorable in a bucket hat?!

that Brinkley can walk himself? He's so good ;)

Don't worry, we don't make him do it often. It's just cute every once in a while!

Grayson's Latest Interest

I mentioned in Grayson's 21 month update that he has really taken a liking to construction equipment. He points them out and gets so excited when we drive by a construction site - it's pretty adorable. So I thought it would be fun to wake up one morning and surprise him with a trip to Toys R Us to pick out some construction toys and books about the different pieces of machinery. While Grayson is more interested in books now than he ever has been, the books were selfishly for me so that I can learn the difference between them. You should see us when we drive by a site and I'm like "what do you see?! Um, a yellow, um...big, uh piece of construction equipment?" 


So after a quick trip to get the toys, we headed to Half Priced Books and scored 5 books for under $20 (score) and I'm MUCH more knowledgeable on this stuff now! Front end loaders, mixers, bulldozers, excavators, cranes, and if you don't know what it is, just call it a tractor! ;) 

Missing the pieces he was playing with but you get the drift.

The really large book at the top left is about 5 puzzles - one of each piece of equipment - so much fun. 


You may wonder why I'm so excited and thus, blogging about this. Two reasons. 1) I love seeing him grow and develop interests. This is really his first long-running interest outside of household items (tongs & shopvacs don't count! :)) and 2) we haven't really bought toys outside of Christmas and his birthday. It's rare that we just jump in the car and head out to buy new things like this. It was a fun morning for us and I could tell that he knew it was a different day than most others. And here we come full-circle, he's getting old enough to know that this was a treat :) Not to mention, the way he says "tractor" makes my heart melt!

St. Patrick's Day 2012

What a fun day down in Dallas with our friends! We actually didn't even go to the block party on Greenville and just stayed at Whitney's for the day. I know that tons of people that live on the M Streets who have house parties don't even make the trek to the chaos and we were definitely those people this year! It's just not as much fun as it used to be and since we're pretty good at entertaining ourselves, it worked well. Here's a snapshot....it was an iPhone pic kind of a day...


RIP froggy baby. Major inside joke but this doll has been passed around the group for almost 6 years and makes an appearance at every notable gathering. It finally met it's fate Saturday with an unfortunate mixture of gasoline and Josh's green Nike's. But not before Kate terrorized Beau with the doll's plastic-fork-hand. Also, on the right, yoga tips from the best yoga instructor in Dallas....

 Trivia question: What would you get if Whitney and I had a baby? KAELI! Whitney (sitting in green)'s younger sister Kaeli is standing next to me in the green shorts. She has always resembled Whit a lot but doesn't she kind of look like me here?! Maybe it's just the hair. Anyhoo....

I loved spending so much time with the girls on Saturday! We missed Nikki and Carissa though. And of course Mandy and Brooke. And Kristi, Molly, Pam and Hailey were there too but left earlier. (sigh) It's tough getting everyone together!

I can't tell you WHAT exactly, but something majorly funny/epic/humiliating went down in the front yard. Thank God it was after all the kids left. Scott had the best seat to watch it all. :)

Okay, well here's a hint...our friend Josh is another Borat so it was no surprise when this man-o-tard (man's leotard?) thing came out. ...and then he tried to distract the other team in a fierce game of Cornhole. I strongly discourage you from enlarging the picture on the right...

Later, Beau's tattoo sleeve ended up on the dog....and we ended up at First and Ten to watch some March Madness and eat some chicken fried steak (or was that just me?). So much fun!

Had to get a shot of my baby in his green.  Loves himself some squeezable fruit. :)

Hope everyone had a fun and safe St. Patrick's Day! 

Family Pictures

We had family pictures taken this past Saturday and already received a few back! Laine is super speedy and a pleasure to work with. My main reason to do these is that we needed a picture for his 2nd birthday invitation (tractor theme). I'll post the rest when we get the disk but in the meantime...

I'm praying the rest don't come back with super-squinty-eyes.

He didn't smile once for the family pictures but this makes up for it!

A shot I have been wanting to do for a while - hence, the boot shopping we did for G last week.

Not to mention, I'm in love with the Adriatica place in McKinney where we took them. Very Italian feeling, lots of textured backgrounds as she put it, but overall a cool place. 

I never pass a Starbucks where I just really want to go inside and curl up with a book and coffee! It looks so cozy.

Have to rave about Cavalli's Pizzaeria. Amazing food, great atmosphere, a nice patio and some super special rating with the Italian govt that only 30 US restaurants have. Lovies. Can't wait to go back for dinner when we can try the wine.

Grayson loved the pizza that had the egg on top! I must admit, it was good!

Overall, Grayson was such a trooper! He changed clothes 5 times before noon. Pictures involved a lot of walking and driving to each locations. We would typically never try a morning of running around, pictures AND lunch at a restaurant. But he didn't make a peep and then crashed before we left the restaurant parking lot. Success!

Grayson is 21 months!

For a while there, I stopped posting Grayson's monthly updates  for fear of boring people or coming across as too into my child. But I've realized that no one really cares - if you don't want to read it, you just don't. And then you'll never think about it again but I will ALWAYS remember. I'll always want to look back at that time and try to remember those months. Here's a silly example for you, we were at the boot store last weekend and a woman and I started talking about the toddler cowboy hats. She asked me how big I thought Grayson's head was at 17 months old. I quickly pulled up my blog on my phone pretty impressed by myself that I have that information written down! But I didn't! I didn't do an update that month, although I wanted to, because I was worried people would be bored. Do you remember me skipping 17 months? No! Do I? Yes! So on that note, here is month 21....

• 32 lbs! You are now one of the tallest kids in our play groups. We moved you to size 5 diapers and you now wear a 7 1/2 Wide shoe! You are in 24m bottoms and 2T everything else. I actually have you in 3T polos and t-shirts from Old Navy.
• You are sleeping from about 7:30 or 8pm - 7 or 8 am. I love this!
• You said "Mama" and pointed at me the other day and it brought Mimi and I to tears. All of these incredibly clear words just go to show that you know exactly how to talk - you're just holding out on us! You stopped talking altogether there for a while so it has been so fun to hear the words come back.
• You have started saying milk, "NO" and "knock knock" while knocking on the wall.
• Yes is "yeah, yeah, yeah" with an incredibly enthusiastic nod. Seriously, the cutest thing. You know exactly what you do and don't want. You're like this little adult!
• You used to be a great "helper" but now you are a DOER. You no longer get a thrill of running over and POINTING at the dog doo, no. You want to scrape it into the dog doo scraper-thinger-pan. But your cute, non-cordinated self just gets dangerously close to touching it or flinging it in my general direction - eww. But you don't care! And I love watching your interest. 
• You are still SO interested in sticks, brooms, mops, rakes, yard sticks, anything that can be swung like a sword. ;)
• You are growing increasingly interested in heavy construction equipment and get so excited when you see it out the car window. You can spot it so far away when I haven't even noticed it yet. Pretty cool!
• You now try to clip your own nails just like you have watched me do for you. And you try to do it JUST like I do. It's pretty funny :)
• You have perfected the whole "buttering up" of us. You will stand there and kiss our legs and smile until we melt with love and then you ask for a cookie or point to something you shouldn't have. The first to give in EVERY time is Pop. Root beer, ice cream, cookies, random kitchen tools you shouldn't play with and yes, the leaf blower in the house are all things you know you can get out of him! He's so weak when it comes to you!
• Other things this month...

You like feeding the ducks. :)

Watching movies with the Asel kids. Maddie was holding Molly tight because you LOVE babies and wouldn't keep your hands off her baby sister.

You ate popcorn with Maddie later that night  while we all watched TV.  Too cute. 

You like plugging things in. But since we don't let you play with electrical outlets, you use other things like bowls. :)

You smile so big when we ask you to!! 

This is so blurry but the only picture I have of your puckered up lips. To DIE for! 

You have a special bond with Ma. She came with me to pick you up from school and you dropped what you were doing and RAN to her with a huge smile. Not only did that mean so much to her but the teachers were just in disbelief. You have always had something special with Ma! :)

Still a fan of pockets :) 

You LOVE watching videos of yourself. This is you watching one and just laughing at yourself. You actually sit still to do this and I love this time with you.

My beautiful boy going to church.

So content with milk and animal crackers.

Ahhh, you're are the cutest in your penguin towel!