Photo a Day

A friend of mine has been participating in a photo a day blog for several months now, so in an effort to blog more often, I'm going to try to keep up for the month of June! Below are the categories. Wish me luck!

Easter

We had a busy Easter weekend with Mimi, Pop, Nana, Pop Pop, Aunt Kim and Cousin Luke all coming to town to visit us! We planned a weekend full of activities that started with Grace's first trip to the Fort Worth Zoo on Good Friday. She loved every minute of our time at the zoo, and even though we spent four hours in the park, I think we could have spent even more time if the zoo hadn't closed! One of my favorite parts was hearing the lion roar. Gracie froze and stared at the lion, before roaring right back at him! It was pretty funny. She also really loved seeing the elephants and monkeys (even though most of them were taking their afternoon nap). Hopefully next time we visit, they will be more active!

Saturday we had a late breakfast with Trinity's family before heading over to the Dallas Arboretum for Dallas Blooms. I have to say I was a little disappointed that the tulips had already died, but we did find a few pretty blooms to snap some pictures of Grace. Luke and Gracie loved exploring the grounds, and Grace enjoyed the petting zoo. Luke wasn't so sure about touching any of the animals, which I can't blame him... they looked pretty dirty!

Sunday morning Gracie woke up to her Easter basket at her door. She was excited to see all the Sesame Street toys, tablewear and books. We have read those three Elmo books countless times in the last two weeks! She was also excited to find Play-Do in her pastic eggs! After opening her eggs and starting the cooking for Easter lunch, we got all dressed up for church.

Once we got home from church, we finished cooking Easter lunch and welcomed Trinity's family, Aunt Megan and Uncle Steven, and Erin into our home for a wonderful lunch. Our menu included deviled eggs, pimento cheese and celery, baked goat cheese salad, cheesy potato casserole, green beans, ham and rolls. And Erin brought a yummy lemon pie for dessert. I was pretty proud of our spread! Unfortunately, it rained during church and lunch-time, so we had to temporarily cancel the kid's Easter egg hunt. Since they are still young, I don't think they noticed anything missing, but when it cleared up and dried out, Trinity ran outside to hide the eggs before letting Luke and Gracie search for them. I was really surprised that Grace got the hang of the hunt so quickly, and she found quite a few on her own! Luke found most of the well-hidden eggs, but he was really good about helping Grace find some for her basket as well.



It was so great to see the two cousins playing together, and we are so thankful for all of the family for making the trip from Midland to share in the weekend festivities!

18 Months

We had Grace's 18 month check-up last week, and our little girl is still well above her age in physical and mental development! She weighed in at 30 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 34 inches tall, both of which were over the 95th percentile.

Before the appointment, they had us fill out a developmental questionnaire, and Grace passed with flying colors. She scored higher than average in every category, and we are very proud of her development so far! Grace is starting to speak short sentences and has a vocabulary of over 60 words. She is quite the talker, and her teachers are constantly commenting on how talkative and happy she is at school. We are so thankful that she is a happy, go lucky girl!

Some of Grace's favorite things right now are reading books, going outside, playing in the water, brushing her teeth, singing and dancing. Oh, and don't let me forget eating! We love that she loves music and reading as much as we do!

Over the past month, Gracie seems to have developed some separation anxiety. She sometimes cries when we drop her off at daycare, or when we leave her room at bedtime. Thankfully it's not all the time, and she's usually distracted quickly enough that she doesn't cry for long at school.

Grace often brings up her daycare friends when we're home on the weekends. I don't know if she misses them or just wants to tell us something about them, but I wish we knew more about what she's thinking! Lots of her words are either gibberish or we can't understand them, but every day she seems to clearly pronounce a new word. Gracie loves to repeat words and phrases too! I'm sure she will continue to surprise us over the next few months!

Raiderland

We took Gracie to Lubbock a few weekends ago for her first trip to Raiderland! We had a great time catching up with Dan, Jeremy, Thomas, Jessica, and Addison. The girls were so cute together! They played so well together, and Grace loved playing in Addison's kitchen.
We loved showing Grace where her parents went to college. While we were on campus taking some picture, we stopped by the brand new College of Business. I was so jealous! It was SO nice and beautifully designed, especially compared to the old, ugly building we had back in the day!We also did some shopping for new Texas Tech gear, and I hit the jackpot with a huge sale at Red Raider Outfitters. We got three new outfits for Grace, and I found myself another shirt as well. So now we're all set for the football season and hopeful that the Red Raiders will step up their game this year! We're planning to attend a home football game this year, as well as the TCU game here in Fort Worth. I think our little girl is ready to cheer on the Raiders to victory!

Driving Miss Gracie

Trinity finally talked me off the ledge of being an overprotective mom, and Grace is much happier because of it! She is finally facing forward in the car like a big girl.

This weekend we went to Lubbock, and we couldn't install Grace's carseat rear-facing in our friend Dan's car. So, we went with forward-facing, as it's not against the law now that she is one and well over 20 pounds. She loved her new view, so I decided that we could keep her forward facing once we got back home to our car.

Trinity has been trying to get me to give up the rear-facing chair since her first birthday, but I was a little nervous about it now that the suggested age is 2 years (and our doctor recommended keeping her that way as long as possible).

I had one happy (despite being sleepy from our fun weekend) girl in the car this morning!

St. Patty's Day

Every year, Dallas holds a St. Patrick's Day parade and street party on Greenville Avenue. It is a pretty wild and crazy parade generally followed with lots of green beer. I have made it down to the parade off and on over the years we've lived in Dallas and always have a great time. It's funny how the years have changed though...

This year, we headed to our friends' home close to the street party to hang out in the beautiful weather. Thankfully they just had a little baby boy two months ago, so their parties have become kid-friendly! We brought Grace along and also met MA, Ryan and Margot. The girls had fun playing in the front yard and were both very happy all afternoon.

My New Sister

This past weekend by little brother got married... FINALLY! I am sure he was tired of hearing that word by the end of the weekend because it seemed that almost everyone used it in their toasts! But it was about time that he made Megan an honest woman and officially welcomed her into our family. I am so blessed to have such an amazing SIL, and Gracie is so spoiled to have such a fun aunt! Congrats to Megan and Steven!!! We love you!