Change

(Okay y'all, as a warning, I'm in a really sentimental mood right now - this post isn't lighthearted and funny:))


I've always been resistant to change. I like to stay where I'm comfortable, and when the things in my life get shifted around and messy, it makes me uncomfortable. Right now God is doing a lot of shifting in my life, and as always, it's making me a little uncomfortable. I know He knows me perfectly and is trying to grow me and teach me. I know I should cling to Him, especially right now, but I for sure have days where that is a struggle. It's so much easier to just have a big pity party, right?


Many friends of ours are moving away or have moved away or are considering changes in their family that will take them away from the place where we are often together. I have always cherished my friendships. God has richly blessed me with many beautiful women who I can call on for different things, and as I've grown older I've been even more blessed with families that He's provided to invest in and pray for my family. I know that people flow in and out of your life leaving pieces of themselves as they go. I only wish some of them could've stayed just a little longer than they did.


Our good friends, the Velascos, left for California last weekend. They are not coming back. (Okay that seemed totally morbid, they're not dead or anything, just moved:)). I am so sad now that they're gone. I wish I would've taken more advantage of the time we had with them while they were here in Dallas with us, but I will carry with me the many lessons they taught me. I've learned so much from Bernie and Kat. So much about the Lord and how He loves me and made me perfectly. I will miss hearing their wisdom on a weekly basis, but know they are sending me prayers from the west coast.

Everyone, go love on your family or neighbors or friends today, and be thankful that God has brought them into your life! I know I am.

See you soon Bernie and Kat (before we get to heaven). We love y'all!

Engineer or Rock Star?

Hunter LOVES to figure out how things fit together. I mean the kid's favorite part of playing with bubbles is taking the lid off and putting it back on. So everyday when I put my make up on he is fascinated. He darts over to me and quickly begins pulling out my tweezers or moisturizer or foundation or any other piece he can get his hands on.

His particular favorite is my eyeliner (again, it's the lid that draws him to it). Yesterday I caught him with it and quickly grabbed it from him. After taking it out of his hands, I looked up at him and saw this...Apparently, I need to improve on how "quickly" I take things away from him. That or pay better attention.

Weirdo

When I was in college, we used to play little get to know each other better games during work week. My favorite one, tell us one of your weird habits, I loved so much because it made me feel so...normal. I mean there are some serious weirdos out there:)

I remember thinking everyone, even the most beautiful, seemingly perfect girl, is the same as me. We all have some little insecurity or idiosyncracy that, if witnessed by a stranger, would make them run far, far away...well maybe that's a little extreme, but writing in hyperbole does make the post more interesting, right? Right.

Well the past couple of weeks Hunter has started doing 2 things that he could answer the "weird habits" question with. I've been trying to catch them on video and finally did yesterday.

In the first video, he finds his favorite book and pulls out the baby chick (which he often carries around the house with him) and smells it. Yep. Told you. Weird.

This next one is Hunter's favorite new game. It wouldn't be that weird, except that he does it ALL THE TIME and would probably continue at it for hours if I didn't pull him away.

Bye Bye Begonias

Remember this post?

Well. That will be the last of the gardening posts on this blog. If you're interested in learning how to make your flower beds beautiful, don't call me. But if you want to know how to kill not only one, but two sets of flowers you've planted in your front beds, you know who to contact.

All of those beautiful begonias have now turned into this...

Notice how the back flower beds still look great. Yeah. Didn't have anything to do with that. All of the credit goes to James. So as a way of showing my gratitude and deep appreciation of his green thumb, I let him take care of planting that sod all by himself.

Right Now

Hi Readers. Guess what? Um, right now little H is sleeping soundly in his crib for his afternoon nap. I guess he must be so tired from all of that walking he's been doing this afternoon.

Oh yes he has! (Insert cheers of joy and applause here)

To those of you who told me to calm down because my kid wasn't going to crawl into his kindergarten class on the first day of school, thank you. And to those of you who listened on the other end of the phone as I endlessly obsessed and analyzed my kid's gross motor preferences, you are my angels. (There are a couple of you to whom I owe HOURS of listening time. You know who you are. Call me up anytime - my ears are ready.)

Here's some proof, just in case you wanted to see the cuteness and scream "hooray" at your computer because you can't contain the excitement...

And in case that wasn't enough, here's some more...at a different angle.

Signs that a toddler has invaded your house...

1.Your neatly folded laundry piles end up thrown all over the room or used as impromptu accessories.

As you can see in this picture, Hunter felt the need to accessorize with a scarf this morning. Should I be worried that he went for the pink pajama pants?

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2. The magnetic field drawing your child to the dishwasher is so strong, that you must keep your dishwasher locked at all times to prevent injury. And when you forget to lock it, he will know. And he will crawl over to it, pull it open and take out his dish of choice merely seconds after you leave the room.

3. Stains will begin to appear on all light colored furniture in the house. The origin of these stains being milk, regurgitated milk, drool, snot, ink, and the latest at my house...

lip liner. Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is lip liner on my couch. A piece of advice to future parents...if you want to avoid permanent stains, invest in microfiber!

4. Any bag or briefcase or purse left within said toddler's reach will be turned over and all of it's contents thrown all over the room.

Believe it or not, all of these things happened this morning while I was doing laundry. Except for the lip liner incident which happened in the wee small hours of the morning while I was actually supposed to be watching my child. Don't ever lie down on the couch and shut your eyes for "just a second". You may think that your toddler will sit nicely and watch the rest of My Friends Tigger and Pooh, but he won't. He will be doing dangerous, destructive things. I promise.

Note: no toddlers were harmed during the typing of this blog post. Due to his love of knives, I made sure mine was asleep in bed before I began typing.

New Braunfels

So my family takes these little vacations together every year, and this year we went to New Braunfels. Last year's trip worked great because I could just wear Hunter everywhere and he was really good about sleeping on demand. Since wearing a 25 pound toddler is out of the question, I knew this year would be a little more challenging.

We got off to a great start because Hunter was pretty good on the car ride there (and awesome on the way home!). We stopped at McDonald's on the way down, and Hunter got to play in his first fast food kiddie area (man I am racking up points with the nutritionists of the world). As you can tell, it wasn't the most exciting moment of his life.

Once we got there, James and I had to sit in the condo a lot while Hunter napped or slept, but it was good to get to relax...and I got to watch the finale of The Bachelorette because I'm hooked and can't miss it even if I am on vacation. Uh, I mean my kid was sleeping and I couldn't leave him. Yeah. That's it. That's definitely the reason I sat down and watched THREE STRAIGHT HOURS of tv while on vacation.

Despite our devout patronage to the American Broadcasting Company (or is it America's Broadcasting Company?), we found the time to work in many other activities - while Hunter was actually awake...

We went swimming at the resort's pool...

The rest of my family played tennis and went bike riding and hiking, but like I said I had tv - I mean a baby - to watch.

We also went to Schlitterbaun for the day, which in my opinion is pretty lame for America's number 1 swim park, but whatever...As you can see, Hunter agrees.

It rained while we were there, so we ran into this little castle until it passed. Hunter had so much fun hiding from the rain under my sun hat.

After the rain stopped, we took the little tram to the other part of the park, which is DOWN THE STREET (I mean there's seriously like an entire town in between the two sections).
I liked this side a lot better. Hunter on the other hand, was still not impressed...
Hunter had so much fun playing with my hat at the water park, that when we got home that night, he put Aunt Katie's hat on and started crawling all around the room, which is amazing to me because he couldn't see a thing and he didn't run into the wall, not.even.once. And when you consider the genes this kid is made up of, you will see the miracle that this actually is. Of course, by the time I got the camera, he found his way to the table and stood up...
If you asked Hunter, I'm sure he'd tell you his favorite part of the trip was probably all of the different food he got to eat, especially the chocolate ice cream.
That boy loves him some sweets. He obviously gets it from his dad. I'm soo the health nut in this family. Can't you tell?