1.18.2019

Life Lately & What I've Been Reading

Derek got a new riding lawnmower last week, and we were all very excited about it! The first lawn we ever had was teeny--our house on base at Keesler. We purchased an electric lawn mower at the time, and it was absolutely perfect for our small yard! It also worked perfectly at our old San Antonio house during fellowship, and we didn't need a lawn mower at all for our "desert landscape" in Vegas. Fast forward to this house, and it was taking Derek hours upon hours to cut our yard. We are SO excited to have this new lawn mower! Derek really enjoys yard work, but we are so thankful he'll be able to get it done much more efficiently now!




For Christmas, the girls each got a gift card as part of their present from Grammy & Grampy. They were so excited to have a little "girls day" this weekend to La Cantera to do their gift card shopping at Claire's for Hadley and Barnes & Noble for Shelby. We also tried out a new cookie dough shop called "Scooped," which was really fun!



And our first school lunch dates with Brady's big sisters for the New Year!




These next two pictures are perfect representations of Brady at age 2.5. He is never more content than when he's sitting in his room by himself reading his books! He LOVES to do this! And the second picture below is how he always sleeps--both arms tucked into his sleep sack and curled up in the corner of his crib. :)




And lastly, a few books I've been reading lately! I love doing these round-ups b/c it makes me look back over what I've been reading and reflect a bit...like why are the top three books all memoirs if I don't really love memoirs?! I think I like the idea of memoirs, so I keep going back to them but I never actually really enjoy reading them. I have enjoyed a couple of Nancy Thayer's other books, but An Island Christmas was just eh in my opinion. I absolutely loved The Great Alone and We Were the Lucky Ones though--I would highly recommend those two!


We're so excited about the long weekend! We're ready for a little break after the first two weeks getting back into the swing of things after Winter Break. We're also excited b/c the end is finally in sight for our backyard--fingers crossed, everything with our pool & fence installation should be wrapping up next week!

1.09.2019

New Year's Trip to Georgia

Happy New Year! I am feeling all kinds of productive b/c I already had my 2018 blog book ordered before I even typed my first 2019 blog post! Woot, woot! The girls didn't start back to school until Monday (January 7th), so we were able to celebrate Christmas here in San Antonio just the five of us and then we took a trip to Georgia to visit our families over New Year's. The kids and I have taken lots of solo trips to GA recently, but this was Derek's first time going with us in four years! Needless to say, it was long overdue and we had the best time! But whew, traveling with a 2 year old isn't for the faint of heart. Brady is usually our best sleeper when we travel, but he wasn't feeling 100% at the beginning of our trip which led to virtually no sleep our first two nights there. And then our flight home was something! Up until this trip, we have always had the best luck with our kids on flights. But the streak is over! Brady literally screamed, tantrumed, and hit me for about 40 minutes straight as we waited in line to board our flight back to SA and then sat on the tarmac waiting to take off. I'm sure everyone around us hated us, but thankfully Brady fell asleep as soon as we took off, slept for about an hour, and the rest of the trip home was a breeze! I'm still suffering from a bit of PTSD though, and I can promise you that I won't be hopping on a plane with Brady again anytime in the immediate future. ;) 

Now prepare yourself for an onslaught of photos! :) We spent the first day of our trip at Derek's sister's new house. The cousins had so much fun playing together!








There was lots of fun to be had at Grammy & Grampy's house! Shelby's two favorite activities to do at their house on this trip were playing the piano {she brought some of her music from home with her, but she also had a lot of fun playing an old recital piece of Auntie Em's} and playing Solitaire & FreeCell after Grampy taught her how to play on the cmputer..you can tell Hadley & Brady had fun doing whatever Big Sister was doing!



{massages from Grammy after bath...life is good at Grammy & Grampy's house!!!} 



We had a Chick-fil-a playdate with my high school bestie/college roommate and her sweet kiddos one day while we were home. We have SEVEN kids between us now, but here are the 4 big girls. :)



{visiting Grampy at work} 

{oohing and ahhing over Baby Logan--this was the girls' first time to meet their new cousin} 


 


One of the best parts of this trip was that it fell over my mom's birthday and Logan's! We got to go out for a big family birthday dinner to Taco Mac to celebrate my mom on her special day and then we got to celebrate this sweet baby turning ONE with a little party at his house.



We spent our last evening in GA visiting Derek's dad's house in Stone Mountain. This is somehow the only picture I took, but I love it so much! Granddad with all three kiddos squeezing in to look at old pictures of Dada & Aunt Maleah when they were little--you can tell our kiddos were totally engrossed with this! The girls also got to take their dogs for a walk around the neighborhood, and they're still talking about that!


And here are the plethora of sleeping Brady photos I snapped on this trip. ;)






And here are two pictures of Brady from the plane ride back to SA--a smiling selfie with Mommy & a sleeping angel. Remember how I said he screamed, tantrumed, and hit me for 40 minutes straight prior to the flight taking off?! He's lucky he's so cute. ;)




Home sweet home!! We had an early morning flight back to SA after our busy week in GA, so after lunch Shelby & Brady went down for naps while this girl put together her new puzzle from Grandma & Granddad!



We had to drag Shelby out of her bed from her nap otherwise I'm pretty sure she would have slept all day. Then the girls got their new 2019 calendars all set up for the new year and we made our first trip to the library of the new year. Felt so good to be back home and getting back into the swing of things!



Until next time, Georgia!