The Big One!

Even though he loooks so young, my cute little hubby's time has come To turn the big 3-0 and what do you know, Lynn had a milestone too!

Bob planned a BIG to-do. Dinner and a limo? Who knew!

Not Blake and Lynn, because all their family and friends were gathered for the surprise party he threw!We ate and drank a ton. Had crabcakes and turtle soup for fun! And did a little toasting and story telling too.
But being old doesn't mean you can't have fun. And the guys decided they just weren't done. Michael said "TABC who?"And made a few Tom Collins for the crew.

We closed out the tab and ended the night with the mandatory Whataburger taquito grab. Happy Birthday my favorite hubby, thirty looks good on you!

Leaving on a jet plane, but we came right back

Emmy and I didn't let a little thing like another ear infection (GROAN), cough, steroids, and snot keep us down. We hopped a commuter jet to Corpus for a LONG overdue visit with the greatgrandparents! I figured this would be an excellent first trip on a plane since the total flight time on the way down was a whopping 29 minutes. Awesomeness!

Another little bit of awesomess was that the plane was about half empty. So we had plenty of room to spread out and play with the airplane stickers that Gigi bought. The ride was pretty much uneventful! She ran back and forth between us and played with all her toys. The pressure didn't even bother her. I don't think she got that she was "On" an airplane, but she dutifully signed airplane when we asked her about it.

We spent a lot of quality time hanging out with the great-grandparents, coordinating around four (ok mine is included) nap schedules, and eating. Sounds like a nice weekend, huh =) We started out by visiting the new aquarium at the mall. Emmy got five adults to play "Tag" with her in the middle of the mall. That's right, she had us jumping up and down and running around while she ran after us and "tagged" us. Unfortunately a lot of her tags are crotch-level. A little inapprorpiate, yes, but fun none-the-less! You just gotta be careful when you're tagged =)

We had some good quality paw Paw time after that. Emmy hasn't really been around Paw Paw since she's been a "big girl", but she took to him instantly. She pretty much wouldn't leave him alone and learned how to say his name in one day. If that's not bonding, I don't know what is!

Emmy is obsessed with birds and ducks right now since they just completed that unit at her school, so we decided to take her to the duck park. Since it was Corpus, it turned out that the seagulls had taken over. We fed the bread and dodged the poop. These guys are pretty agressive.

The next day we went to the new awesome park that Corpus has right on the ocean. Since Emmy had an ear infection and we were trying to avoid the CRAZY wind, Mom rigged up this awesome contraption made up of a headband and hat to keep her ears covered.

Emmy had a great time running up and down the stairs and swinging.

I am in love with this picture. The combo of the tie-dye, sideways hat, and what looks like hightops. It looks like it needs a warning "Caution: May Breakdance at any moment"

We said bye to Paw Paw, Maw Maw, and Aunt Jane and headed back to the airport to finish up our quick trip. Emmy was an old pro this time... she got her boarding pass....
Pointed out her plane, and we got on board.
Only to have to sit there for over 30 minutes before we could take off... This in effect doubled the trip time. After a little while we were all going BONKERS!!!! But we made it! Succesful first plane ride! Thanks Maw Maw, Paw Paw, and Jane for a great trip!

No Cupcakes: 15 months

At 15 months Emmy:

• Weights about 25 pounds (90%) is 31.5 inches long (75-90%). The head has finally leveled off! 46 cm. That's still 97th percentile, but we'll take it =)
• Is talking up a storm! Mama, Dada, Gigi, Pops, Boppa (we're working on Lannie) dog, ball, no, yea!, bubble, fish, panda bear, oh no!
• Finally started babbling randomly after her tubes. She pretty much talks all day unless she's being "shy". Screaming and squealing also happens quite a lot.
• Is learning new signs at school every week: butterfly, airplane, bird, duck, all done, more, please, milk, dog, cat, bear
• She also knows that a car says "beep beep", a train says "choochoo", a truck says "honk honk", and a boat says "toot toot" We learned these at the doctor's office from the stickers on the wall. That's how often we're there =(
• Can "sing" two songs : Old Macdonal had a farm (she says Eieio) and Bringing Home My Baby Bumblebee (she says babybumblebee and makes hand motions and bops up and down)
• Says "ooooooooooooo" witha very damatic face when she sees something she wants or when she's trying to be dramatic (I'll have to get this on tape)
• Dance, dance, dance, dance.. to anything, music, banging, singing, talking... it's always something to dance to. She's trying to learn how to "march" and "hop". It's pretty funny!
• Knows EXACTLY when she's doing something wrong. She looks at me, wags her finger and says, "no, no, no". then usually does it anyway. We're about to start time outs!
• Can make lots of animal sounds. Cat, dog, horse, lamb (her favorite), cow. Her favorite toys are animals that we made run around the room.
• Will respond by nodding her head with yes and no to questions and will follow verbal commands
• The wonderful sleeping got shorter after tubes. She goes to bed around 7:30 and wakes up at 6:30 (booooooo)
• Finally figured out how to "ride" her riding toys and loves to climb anything. She hasn't quite mastered ladders yet.
• She's suddenly turned picky eater. Mac and Cheese is ALWAYS acceptable, but besides that it's hit or miss. My little broccoli eater is long gone.
• we have Six teeth now! Four in the front and two top molars (that we think came in around the 11th)
• Would be outside all day if at all possible. She loves to just sit in the grass and spot birds and cars and pick weeds. We will use this skill later in life ;)
• Has started "pretending" talking on the phone, cleaning the floor with her blanket, changing the tv channel with the remote (that one makes me feel REALLY good!) and making her butterfly "fly" in the air
• Has created her own game of "tag" where she runs and "gets" you

She is just a little nut and total ham! She loves being the center of attention and defiently knows how to put on a show. We're in trouble!

Celebrating 3 years of the Abinator

Continuing the Month of Birthday, Abs turned three two weekends ago! Over the past few months she's really turned into a kid! She's growing up so fast!
She had a big birthday party at a bouncy place and as usual I think Daddy and Uncle Keith has a liiiiiiitle more fun that the kiddos. We had a whole room to ourselves with 20 kids (and two grown men) running and bouncing everywhere. It was KIND of crazy! Keith did a massive flip off the top of the slide that couldn't have been any kind of good for his back =) We're lucky we didn't get kicked out of the party... crazy boys! Emmy did manage to get Boppa to take her down the slide a couple (ok like 25) times! it was more like going to the gym than going to a party for Boppa. Walking up that slide with a 25 pound weight isn't so easy when you have to do it in socks with kids zooming past you.

Then we let her go by herself (yep all the way down that giant slide) and that was a BIG hit! She's a little bit of a daredevil. After an hour of running around nutso we stopped for pizza and cake and for Abs to open her gifts.
It was a great time with fam and friends and we're so glad to celebrate another year of the Abs!

Taking Back the Playground

Since it was so nice out side (take that groundhog) Emmy and I trekked down the street to the rather lame "park" in our neighboorhood. I had another one of those " oh god, I'm turning into a mom (and not in a positive way)" moment.

I naively thought that playgrounds were for kids... turns out they're for high school (or junior high kids) to have really public really loud fights with their boyfriends on the cell phone and make out (I'm just going to call it making out because I don't want to think about what else they were doing.) This was at 4 o'clock in the afternoon!!! For God's sake, can't you wait until it's dark!!! (See, I told you... I'm getting old)

Well I decided that this was MY park and being that I'm old I can tell these kids what to do... yeah right! I didn't tell them to leave, but I did sic my baby on them. The lovebirds were nuzzled up in front of Emmy's favorite slide and she didn't take too kindly to that. She would climb up the stairs and stare at them. And I just let her =) After about ten to fifteen minutes of me and Emmy climbing up and down the stairs and singing if you're happy and you know it....the lovebirds gave up. Not exacltly conducive to " the mood"....

Yes, i DID snap a picture of them as they were leaving... VICTORY!!!!!!! and somewhere right now this girl is telling on of her friends how this old lady and her dumb baby ruined her romantic afternoon with her boyfriend... sigh.. At least they didn't tell me Sorry Ma'am as they were leaving. I probably would've just cried and gone home.

After Emmy and I high-fived our passive agressive victory over teenagers we took our sweet time climbing all over OUR park.. That and Emmy ate an awful lot of mulch....We may be de-worming soon...


She can pretty much do the entire "park" by herself now! (this is another tilt your head to the left video..yes I have a problem)


She's also been working on lots of animal noises and signs... She was doing the sign for Bird like crazy but I couldn't get it on tape. Enjoy the horse, cat, cow, and sheep!

Girl Time!

It's been almost three years since these girls and I headed off to Mexico. That was four baby girls and what feels like a lifetime ago. We decided that it had been WAY too long since we got away and headed for a quick trip.

We went all out on our hotel and stayed at The Driskill on 6th Street. I am getting WAY too used to living the high life on vacation. We had out own personal valet and stayed in one of the nicest rooms at the hotel on the "penthouse" floor. We dropped our bags with the valet and headed out for lunch before we picked up Lauren at her conference. It was feeling pretty nice outside so we headed to Shady Grove for a bite outside. In about ten minutes we realized it was WAAAAY colder than we thought, unfortunately we had already ordered our margaritas.... so we sat and shivered and drank frozen drinks. You should always drink a margarita with mittens on =)

We then picked up Lauren and headed to the nearest nail shop to officially kick off the weekend. It doesn't really start until the pedicures happen =)

We did some light shopping but quickly realized we were all WAY to tired to do much of anything. We had dinner at Hula Hut and were in bed by 10:30.... and were all insanely excited about it.... times have CHANGED.

We slept late (well all of us except Betsy who couldn't turn off the 7:30 alarm in her head)which was pretty much just as awesome as going to bed at 10:30. Then we had breakfast at the Bakery at the Driskill. Can you say yum! Michelle's pancakes were so good that Betsy and I had them again the next morning. The sad thing is that this wasn't even all of our food!

After gorging ourselves we headed over to The Domain, which was this really cool outdoor shopping center in Austin. We asked a lady to take a picture in front of the cute landscaping and she decided that the front door of Borders was better. Whatever, I guess.

Ok, so this is a whooping crane, but we pretended it was a stork. I mean, it was a gigantic white bird so it works. There is a place at The Domain called the Steeping Room, which is basically like Starbucks for tea. I had something called a Moteato and it was AWESOME! It tasted exactly like a mojito. It was ALMOST as expensive as one with alchohol, but oh well. Where else could I get a Moteato. I had to.

After all that shopping we were starving and in need of refreshments. We managed to find a Happy Hour at Kona Grill and proceeded to eat two orders of avocado eggrolls, potstickers, and THREE orders of edamame in about an hour. We had a major craving for beans. And we ate them, and ate them, and ate them... until we didn't want to see any more beans, or anything green or shaped like a bean.

I'm so lucky that after twenty, yes twenty years, I can still call these girlies my best friends. It's amazing that through different colleges, different towns, and different lives we've managed to keep up. We are so blessed to have each other, and I hope that Emmy, Caroline, Kate, and little Richard can keep it up for us! They really don't have a choice =)

Happy Birthday Pops!

I can't believe that it's already that time of year again.. the birthday month of March! We kicked off today by celebrating Pops! We started off with an Italian feast at a little local place called Christopher's. Mom had just talked and talked about the bread and well, it was REALLY good, but I just had to take a picture of what was left in the bread basket after we finished eating. Can we say LOW CAL!

We chowed down and Emmy roamed around the party room snagging bread from anyone who would give it to her.

We headed back to the house for gifts and desert (as if anyone needed it after the 8 baskets of bread we ate!) Here's Emmy with the Birthday Pops!

Laura brought Emmy a Macedonian Barbie! She's a little hippier and she has much larger lips and different eyes. It's so funny. I never thought that they would look different, but of course they do! (We're glad Loo is back!)

Mom has tried over and over again to buy bubbles for Emmy and they're all been duds. They wouldn't make a bubble for anything. So she went crazy and bought the Bubblemaker2000 (or something like that) that basically takes any work out of making bubbles. You just shoot the gun and it does it all for you. Emmy loved it! So did the rest of us =) We all took turns shooting each other and running around. I'm going to get mine tomorrow =) We kept trying to take "bubble" family pictures, but the wind kept changing and we all ended up with a face full of bubble soap and sticky hair. Happy Birthday Pops!