August

It’s been too long since I last updated the blog. 

We have had a busy August already. The first weekend of the month Mom and Dad came for a visit so we hit the beach and enjoyed the sun and sand. Mom enjoyed the shade with Brynn. The upside to the beach trip is the stop at the German Bakery on the Island. SOOO good! They also came down because they had tickets to Antiques Roadshow. Shockingly Roadshow came to Corpus, so both Mom and I put in for tickets and they were picked in the lotto for two tickets. Tune in next fall, you might see them in the background.

Reese and the dolphin at the Aquarium. We go there every Monday morning!

This picture is from the end of June but how cute are these 3 at the Hooks Game!

Brynn loves Kobe!

The day she figured out how to walk around the table. Yes we have kids, yes the house is littered with toys.

Brynn and Nana

I hosted Bunco at our house the last week in July so Ryan took Reese out for dinner. They ended up at Mr. Gatti’s and Reese had a BLAST. This was the pirate patch she won with all her tickets.

Ryan took the day off two weeks ago and we surprised Reese by taking her to Schlitterbahn for the day. We left Brynn home with Oma and took the big girl out for fun. She was crazy! Reese has NO fear. She was a trooper and stood in line for over an hour to ride the Master Blaster, the number one rated water ride in the US. She didn’t bat an eye lash. She also went on all the big kid rides alone. Ryan or I would go down the water slide first, the other would send her off from the top and then follow her down. She went in those dark, twist and turns flying through the water like she does it everyday. She is going to love amusement parks when she’s older. It was a ton of fun and I know we’ll do it again next summer. There are no pictures because cameras and water parks don’t go well together.

Brynn has been REALLY busy. Over the course of one day (this was a few weeks ago) she went from pulling up on coffee table, to walking around the coffee table a few hours later. Since then she has been unstoppable. She’s pushing her toys all over while she walks behind them, scaling the furniture, walking from couch to couch (as long as she can hold on) and most recently started really balancing herself and letting go. I don’t think it’s going to be long before she’s brave enough to let go and take a step. Reese walked 13 months to the day, so we’ll see if Brynn will beat her or not. I better be careful though because yesterday she figured out that if she stands on her tippi toes at the back door she can turn the lock. She is also saying MaMa, Dada, and Pu-peee (although she only whispers that). Brynn is OBSESSED with dogs.

BFF’s. They don’t go anywhere without the other one following close behind.They LOVE looking out the window!

tired baby!Grampy and his girls!Thurman is such a good sport. He lets me dress him up all the time and leaves the get-ups on. I used a scarf to create this lovely flower behind his ear. We all LOVE Thurman. As you can see he is always within arms reach of Brynn and Reese.

I love this picture of Reese.

Two sisters who LOVE to play rough.

First time to feed herself spaghetti. This particular night, she had spaghetti and 5 meatballs. Yes I said 5! They are her absolute favorite thing to eat!

It’s hard to believe that in a few short weeks my baby will be 1, and in just over a month my big girl will be 5!

Lots of major milestones!

I haven’t made a post since Father’s Day, sorry for the delay. We had a big couple weeks. Reese had swim lessons everyday for 2 weeks, we headed to Kingwood for our annual 4th of July celebration with Chips and back home again for Brynn to make some major moves.

Ryan turned 33, so I made an awesome cookie cake I found from Pintrest and we had a party.

I forgot to bring my camera home for 4th of July, but Brynn got to meet Chips, the great-grandmothers got to enjoy the girls, and Reese got to improve her swimming skills even more in Meme and Grampy’s pool. You could hardly keep the girl out of the water. She’s a fish that is for sure, and pretty dang good at swimming if you ask me. She’s also perfected her cannonball.

This week we hit the park one night after dinner for some fun. Brynn turned 10 months old on the 8th, so here are a few shots of her at 10 months. I can not believe we almost have a one year old on our hands.

This week Brynn got her first tooth, started army crawling, mastered the art of sitting up in her crib (she did it a week earlier but it was a one time deal until this week) and stood up in her crib as well.

On Wednesday I lowered her crib one level because she was sitting up more in there and I caught her standing up in there. Well today (Sunday), we lowered it again, because now nap time translates to stand up time and she was bound to fall out at some point. She would stand on her tippi toes which meant she had a large amount of upper body that was able to lean over the crib rail and I was fearful she would lurch herself over if she tried. Plus this morning she was wiggling the tower fan I have close to her bed, so now she can stand up in there but not reach too much of her hands out.

In the last two days Brynn has gotten VERY mischievous and has been in EVRYTHING. She was pulling herself to stand up on the rocking chair in her room and as I type this, she’s going through the dog toys which she proudly drug herself over to. She’s still not interested in fully crawling and I am afraid she’s going to go right to walking. Only time will tell but she is getting herself into trouble every time you turn your head. She LOVES clapping at herself too. Kobe is visiting up this week and Brynn is in LOVE with that dog. She’s also been getting really excited when Ryan comes home from work.

SOOOO proud of herself!After a failed attempt at playing in her crib I found her asleep like this. I moved her after I took the picture because there is no way she was comfortable like that.

I think I will be busy chasing Brynn around this week, wish me luck.

Father’s Day Weekend

My Mom and Dad came down for Father’s Day weekend. It was also Dad’s birthday so it was a super celebration weekend. Reese got to make Grampy’s cake and we took him to the beach for his birthday,  one of his favorite things to do. Brynn loved the beach, this time she spent less time on the sand and more in the water. Reese & Grampy built sandcastles and Meems spent some time with Brynn under the shade of the umbrella. We all enjoyed the water as it was the perfect temp. I could go to the beach everyday!

Now that Father’s Day and Dad’s birthday have passed I can post some pictures of the girls that I took for some gifts I made Ryan for Father’s Day and for Dad’s birthday/Father’s day gift as well.

We put the three pictures next to each other to spell “Dad” and obviously “Grampy” for my Dad. I was happy with how it turned out, especially since I am not an expert at taking pictures.

Since we lost our old fence to the wind storm we finally were able to get a new one put in. To save some money we decided to take the rest of the old fence down ourselves, so with the help of our neighbors we took it apart, Ryan and Mr. Ferguson hauled it to the dump and Ryan brought home the work tractor to pull out the posts. Reese had a blast driving it up and down the driveway.

Brynn is not a fan of sleeping in the pack and play when we go out of town which is just a giant pain in the butt since I don’t really like hanging off the bed to ensure she won’t roll out in the middle of the night. So I have been making her play in there a lot more lately to get her used to it. The best part of it is that she enjoys herself and she’s out of Reese’s grip. If we sit Brynn down on the floor she’s either pushed down by Reese or the dog, which she loves but it’s a bit much at times, so I can stick her in the play pen and she’s great! She loves it too, I think she knows Reese can’t touch her.

When Reese was at Ryan’s parent’s camper she made some fun foam visors for herself and Brynn. We tried REALLY hard to get a shot of Brynn actually wearing the hat but she’s a little too fast and had it in her mouth before I snapped the shot each time.

This was our 6th attempt at the picture which is why Reese is laughing

I don’t have any pictures of Ryan with the girls on Father’s Day, which is kind of fitting, since I had no pictures with the girls from Mother’s Day.

Reese started swim lessons this week so we’ve been busy in the afternoons, trying to get Brynn to nap (which is always cut short by a very loud older sister) and then off to swim lesson JUST in time to come home for dinner. It was easy this week since Ryan was gone all week for work, less cooking for me. Reese and I are happy with breakfast for dinner!

Tomorrow is Ryan’s birthday so we’re baking him a cookie .cake and celebrating by watching him eat a 1.15 lb bone in rib eye, which is what he requested for dinner.  No,  he’s not sharing, we had to buy more meat for Reese and I to eat.

Our next trip is to Kingwood for the 4th of July and to see Chips. It’s his first time seeing Brynn, and she’s very excited to learn all the important life lessons he taught me over the years. It’s also time for Reese to fully understand the concept of “It’s 8 o’clock, time to go to bed"! I can’t even tell you how many time I heard that line, I think Chips has been saying that since the day I was born!

Sea Turtles

Last year my Dad bought Reese a book all about how sea turtles nest on land and then “helpful humans” keep the eggs safe until the baby turtles are ready to hatch and swim back into the water. Last summer I tried to take Reese to see the sea turtles hatch and head off into the water but it never worked out. On Saturday I just happened to call the hotline and heard there was going to be a release the next day. So I convinced Ryan to wake up at 5:15 a.m. yesterday and head down to the beach to see these little babies head off back into the wild. We drove about 14 miles further than we do to go to the beach, we were about 1/2 mile from where the road ends on North Padre Island. In the book the turtles names are Tammy and she has a sister name Tessie. Yesterday while watching the turtles walk to the water Reese said “Go Tammy, Go Tessie”…too funny!

They released 96 turtles yesterday and they were the size of an Oreo cookie. It was a great thing for Reese to see, and even though he woke up really early Ryan enjoyed it too. Reese rounded out her Sunday by heading to the pool with me, followed by dinner with Ryan’s parents and heading to spend the night with them at their camper. She’s still out there now spending the day with them, I bet she’ll sleep well tonight because the heat index is 110 today! Although we’re outside every morning for Stroller Strides, we’re done by 10 a.m. and being her mother’s child, we don’t go outside in the afternoon unless we’re in the pool. It’s  really HOT!

The park ranger releasing the turtles

They carried the ones who needed a little body heat to get moving, around so we could see how small they were

These volunteers stand holding long poles of PVC pipe and flag so scare off the seagulls so they don’t eat any turtles.

March of the TurtlesSunrise of Padre Island

Saturday while Ryan was at work Reese played “office”. She came  to find me in the kitchen and said “excuse me Ma'am I need you to come in and sign some paperwork”. She had a desk set up, her computer out, and lots of construction paper. There I sat listening to how the adjuster came out and looked at my roof and I signed all kinds of insurance paperwork for her. (If only our actual insurance adjuster was that easy to work with). She asked me for my address, phone number and signature. She claims she already had my bank account number on file in her computer. I am glad she didn’t ask for my social security number or I might have started to think this was some kind of scam. After Ryan got home she needed him to sign some paperwork too. He was wearing shorts but didn’t have a shirt on, she told him very seriously that he could not come into her office without a shirt on. The funniest part was when we were waiting for him, I said “Oh my husband is always late”, and she started small talking with me about my kids. That girl is too funny and knows exactly how to conduct business if I need her to step in for me.

Class of 2012

We headed to Kingwood for Memorial Day Weekend but the main focus of the trip was to see Emily graduate high school!!!

Before the excitement, Brynn ventured into the pool for her first time. Just like Reese, she took her first dip in Mimi and Grampy’s pool. As it should be! Brynn loves the water JUST as much as Reese does!

Higher Daddy!

The fan club was ready and waiting in Reliant Stadium to see Emmy make her way across the stage. I can still remember Bob calling to tell us that Emily was born…and she can say she was here when Brynn was born. We were all super proud of Em and so glad she accomplished her goal! Go Emmy! Reese is going to miss “her Emmy.”

The fan clubLeslie and Sean arrivedDon’t mock my lack of Photoshop skills. Em walking into graduation!On the big screenWalking off the stage! She didn’t trip either!

It was a great weekend in Kingwood and we were sad to bid farewell to Emily as she has headed back home to NJ. Hopefully she’ll be back soon!

Reese got all gussied up on Tuesday for Stroller Strides!

It’s officially summer…we started our afternoon trips to the pool. Both girls had a blast!