More of our little people

As promised, here are some more pictures from the last couple of weeks. These were taken yesterday when we got home from Houston. Maddie is getting really good at sitting up on her own, and I think this is how she prefers to be! She's not such a big fan of lying on her back or belly anymore. She wants to be sitting up and watching all the action around her.

This smile just kills me!













On St. Patty's Day, I was trying to get good pictures of the kids together and it was so not working out for me. I think my constant attempts of getting a good picture of them together are going to start haunting me. I may have to leave it up to the professionals.

Doesn't it look like they are looking at each other saying "Why is she doing this to us again?"





I love this one b/c it only takes one look from Jacob to light up Maddie's face



And for fun, Daddy is still great at making Maddie laugh any time of day

So much to say...

...and so little time to write! So I will write in captions, once again.

First of all, please take a look at this picture. If you don't laugh out loud then without a doubt, you are not human.



This was taken today while it was super windy outside. Every time there was a big gust of wind, Maddie made this face and then would break out into a huge smile. Her personality is so incredibly cute. It doesn't take much to light up her face.

On a whim, we went to Houston this past weekend to see Duke play in the NCAA tournament. Grandpa managed to get 4 tickets (Thanks Dad!) so myself, Mark, Frank and John all got to go. Outside of the fact that they did not serve any sort of alcohol at the Reliant Stadium (what are they thinking?!), we had an awesome time. Take a look:





Thank goodness we won because I really didn't want to go home with a grumpy husband!

The weekend before was my girls weekend in Galveston. I had been looking forward to that trip for months and it did not disappoint! I think my favorite part of the whole weekend was just hanging out at the house drinking wine and watching "The Hangover" with my favorite ladies (minus Rach, sniff, sniff). Would you believe I only took 1 stinking picture the whole time we were there? And it was a forced one on our last day at breakfast.



Ahhh, I miss the girls already. Can't wait to start planning the next trip!

When I got back from Galveston, Mark and I jumped in the car and headed down to Dallas for a night's stay at Turtle Mansion. This was given to us by his team members for Christmas and I can't tell you what a wonderful gift it was. We celebrated our 4 year anniversary that night. I always tease him and tell him that the last 4 years have felt like 20 (which isn't necessarily untrue -- ha) but they've been the best years ever. Considering the fact that we've moved 3 times and had 2 kids, and we still like each other, I think that says a lot. :) Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that night, but it was a great one!

I've got lots more pics to post of the kids, but will do so when I'm not falling asleep at the computer. Stay tuned!!

There is nothing better than...

...watching someone else clean your house. Seriously. This is the first time we've ever had someone in to clean (other than a deep cleaning when we are trying to sell a house) and I am amazed at what they are doing. They cleaned the top of the family room fan 30 feet up in the air! They are batting at our artificial trees and ridding them of dust. They are scrubbing our microwave! These are things I always think about doing, but honestly, never, ever do (well, I do clean the microwave, but not like this. They are getting every tiny bit of splatter out of there.) After having Maddie and gaining a 4,000 square foot house, the cleaning has overwhelmed me. I think we might have them come once a month and in my opinion, it is worth every. single. penny!!

Yay for much needed HELP!

On a different note, I finally figured out what Jacob was saying in the video I posted a while back! Of course, I had to have Jacob say it for Mark and Mark figured it out right away. Jacob was saying "Spanish". He wanted to me to say the colors in Spanish! He can say most of them as well and I'm not sure if he's learning this from school or Dora. Either way, I'll take it. I love that he wants to learn words in Spanish.

His eagerness to read lately is really starting to show. When we're reading books, he follows along with the words as you read them and he'll point out the letters. I love that he knows what sounds all the letters make and if you say a word and ask what it starts with, he'll tell you by just recognizing what the first letter says! For example, if you say "What letter does the word 'ball' start with." He'll think about it and say "B"! Or vice versa, if you say "What word starts with the letter 'P'?" He'll think about it and try to come up with a word that starts with that letter. This is a bit more difficult for him, but he's getting better at it everyday! I really love watching the way he thinks...and his love of learning. It's the best!

Project Wall Letters - Done!

My Mom's League has a craft club that meets every month and at each meeting, they learn to make something super nifty. Unfortunately, I haven't made it to one of these meetings yet because a) they are always filled up before I have a chance to RSVP and b) I feel too guilty leaving Mark alone to put the kids to bed! For those of us who can't make it, the Mom's League publishes how to make that month's craft in the monthly newsletter. When I read about how to make your own wall letters, I was psyched because we had yet to put Maddie's name on her wall in her room and we had been meaning to do so since she was born.

Well, as goes any crafty project I undertake, it was laborious. Not because it was a difficult project, but somehow I managed to make it difficult...me and my non-crafty self. After 4 trips to Hobby Lobby and JoAnns Fabrics (yes I said four), I finally completed Maddie's letters. It didn't come out as spectacular as I had wished, but considering the blood, sweat and tears that went into it, those darn letters were going up on that wall no matter how ridiculous they looked.

Weekend Fun

I don't know when it happened, but it did. Maybe it was January 30, 2007, the day Jacob was born. All of a sudden, our lives weren't our lives anymore. Case in point: Our entire weekend has revolved around toddler activities. And here's the best part...this is the most excitement we've had in a long time and I love it!

On Friday, my playgroup went to the Children's Museum in Fort Worth. Jacob and I used to go to the San Jose Children's Museum back in California and this one was very similar, except for one thing. At this one, there was a huge area where you could build wooden train tracks and run the trains along them. Jacob was in train heaven.

How cool are these train tables? They have holes in the middle so you can crawl underneath and pop up in a hole and play with the trains all around you. We need one of these at home! Jacob's friend Hudson is in the other hole (and coincidentally, Hudson gave Jacob that very cute polo sweater he's wearing for his birthday)





Look at the big dinosaur!



This totally cracked me up. We were in the "hospital" with the "babies" and Jacob immediately picked up the bulb syringe and proceeded to suck the mucus out of the baby's nose. We must do this a lot to Maddie.



The grocery store was a hit. Here he is ringing up the other little boy's groceries.



Maddie fell asleep in the Bjorn while we were playing grocery store.



On Saturday, Mark took Jacob down to Blue Sky, a sports center in Keller so that he could register him for "First Kicks", a soccer league for 3-4 year olds! I can't tell you how excited we are for this. Jacob will be on a real team with a coach and will play every Saturday morning. It starts in May and runs for about 8 weeks. I think he is going to love, love, love it!

Saturday afternoon was our friend Kyle's 3rd birthday party at ASI Gymnastics in Keller. We've been there once before and by far Jacob's favorite part is swinging from the rope and landing in the foam block pit. Seriously, I wanted to swing from the rope and land in the foam block pit. This place is super fun! They also have individual trampolines that you can jump on which is always a big hit with the little ones.







Today (Sunday) was an event we've been anticipating for a long, long time: A Day Out With Thomas! Believe it or not, last year I was bummed when we moved here and found out that we had just missed Thomas. I was certainly NOT going to miss it this year. Thomas comes to Grapevine and takes the kids on a train ride along with tons of other activities including a Thomas jumpy house, petting zoo, and lots and lots of wooden trains to play with. Good thing we got oodles of practice at the Children's Museum!

My new hobby

A couple of weeks ago I announced to Mark that I was buying myself an anniversary gift -- a new lens for our Nikon! Unfortunately he wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I was, but hopefully he comes around and likes it as much as I do. I am obsessed with taking pictures of the kids lately and read that this particular lens was great for portrait purposes, especially in low light. It came in the mail yesterday and while I need to play around with it some more to really learn about its potential, I'm liking what I see already. Hopefully you will too. :)

Everyday, I am amazed at how beautiful this little girl's eyes are. They just blow me away.





We've been going on lots of walks lately while Jacob rides his bike. Of course he has to be silly for the camera.





These are full of crazy shadows, but I still love them







This last picture is very grainy because I was playing with the aperture setting, but I still love it because it captures so much of Jacob's personality. He was cracking up in this picture and I'm thrilled I got him smack dab in the middle of the throw-your-head back laughing pose.

The Perfect End to a Perfect Day

So, I was writing yesterday about how great our Tuesday morning had gone. Both kids slept for over 2 hours at the same time which is just absolutely unheard of. That 2 hour break energized me and once they both woke up, we loaded up the sand toys and headed straight for the park. It was 65 degrees without a cloud in the sky so it was the most picture perfect day we've had since we moved here. I was excited to get Maddie on the baby swing because I just knew she would love it. Jacob and I had a long conversation about his sand toys before we went into the park. He really wanted to bring them in but I made it very clear that if we brought them in, we were going to have to share them with all the other kids in the sandbox. This has been a major issue for us in the past so I had completely stopped bringing toys to the park at all. But, it was a new year -- and a beautiful day and I thought "we have to try again someday".

It's a good thing Jacob loves to swing. He always has. There were 2 baby swings right next to each other so Jacob hopped in one (although I think his baby swing days are limited. He looked ridiculous in that thing!) and I put Maddie in the other. The smile that broke out on Maddie's face was absolutely priceless. That baby girl literally grinned from ear to ear for the entire 45 minutes she was in there. She was giggling and screeching with joy. It makes me want to get a baby swing for our backyard!

The sandbox was next to the baby swings so when Jacob had had enough swinging, he said he wanted to play in the sand. I reminded him once more that the toys were for everyone to share. The next thing that happened was unbelievable. He went over to the plastic bag where the toys were, carried them in to the sandbox, dumped them all out in the sand and yelled "Hi everybody! Do you want to play with my sand toys?!" I nearly fell to the ground. I'm not joking. I think I may have cried tears of joy and shouted excitedly to the heavens. You really don't understand what a huge step this was. We've left countless parks in the past because he would throw fits in the sandbox when he couldn't have the toy he wanted because someone else was playing with it. Even if it wasn't a toy that we brought, he'd still be upset. The fact that they were our toys AND he was giving them freely to other kids was one of my prouder moments. I showered him with "good job" and "I am so proud of you" over and over again. So, I stood by and swung my grinning, giggling baby girl in the swing while watching Jacob play happily with his toys and the other kids in the most beautiful weather spring weather we've seen yet.

To end a perfect day, we met Daddy at "Fat Daddy's" for some yummy dinner on his way home from work. Man, I wish everyday could be like yesterday.

Do you think Maddie liked the swing? See pics and videos below!