Memorial Day Weekend

This past weekend we had the pleasure to meet three of our favorite couples for a long weekend in Fredericksburg. Trinity and I have been looking forward to this vacation for a LONG time, as it was our first vacation since last summer.

We headed out of town with Erin and Craig on Friday morning. I was curious to see how Grace did on the drive, as she hasn't been on a road trip since she was almost three months old at Christmas. I wasn't sure how it would go, especially since Erin and I were sitting in the back seat with her. Thankfully she did really well and either slept or happily sat in her car seat the entire trip!

Since the Reynolds and Keffers would not be joining us until Friday evening, we planned a detour through Blanco for a Real Ale Brewery tour. Trinity and I had attempted to do a tour when we were there last year for their annual anniversary party, but there were too many people already signed up. We lucked out this year and got to Blanco right at 3pm for the first of only two tours! It was a very informative tour, with a humorous and energetic tour guide. And of course we also got unlimited shotglass size tastings of six current Real Ale beers. I don't think the experience could have been any better, unless it hadn't been 100 degrees outside!

After the tour and tastings, we made it to Fredericksburg around 5:30 and checked out our four bedroom house while we waited for the Reynolds. We stayed at the Avery Haus, which I would highly recommend to anyone needing a large house to rent in Fredericksburg. It was a very old home but had lots of updates, including new kitchen and bathrooms. Once Thomas, Jess, and Addison arrived, we headed to Main Street for dinner. Then the guys went to the store while we put the kids to bed. That evening we just sipped wine and beer and waited for the Keffers to get to town.

Saturday was all about shopping along Main Street. It was very hot, so we stepped into almost every store and took several stops for food and drinks! While Erin and Craig shopped in the largest kitchen store on Main, we took the opportunity for some photos with the kids outside the candy store!

I love this picture of me and Grace because I have a picture of myself pregant with her in the same chair last year!
Grace did great all day, even though she got hot several times during the day. She even napped in her stroller twice! Thankfully all the stores are air conditioned, so we were able to cool her down by stopping at the shops throughout the day.


That evening we all sat on the patio at Silver Creek for several hours to eat and drink. We then headed home to enjoy a pie-off between two rival pie companies in Fredericksbury. There wasn't an obvious winner based on the voting, but I think everyone knows which pie company really won... :)

The girls took a bath together before going to bed on Saturday. Gracie absolutely loves playing in the tub, and I think she was excited to have a friend join her for the firs time! She and Addison splashed around together and took turns getting scrubbed.



Sunday morning everyone but the Reynolds and Trinity headed to the Nimitz Museum and National Museum of the Pacific War. They were both good museums, although they required a lot of reading! The girls were a little faster at going through the Pacific War museum, so we took some photos while we waited on the guys to finish!



Once Craig and Mike had emerged from the museum, we met the rest of our party for lunch before heading along Highway 290 for some winery tastings! We stopped at three of the 10+ wineries between Fredericksbury and Johnson City for tastings, and we even enjoyed the shade and some live music. The girls konked out on Thomas and Jess for a quick afternoon nap, which they both needed! Then it was back to house for pizza and pie!


Monday we took it easy and had lunch on Main Street one last time before hopping in the car for our drive home. We were sad to say goodbye to everyone and make the journey home. Apparently Gracie was very upset because she was pretty fussy on the ride. There was about a thirty or forty minute stretch where she cried non-stop. Even her bottle and food wouldn't calm her down. She finally gave in to drinking her bottle and fell asleep once it was almost gone. She slept the remainder of the drive home, much to Erin's and Craig's relief. We were sad to return to reality, but it's nice to be home and to get Gracie back on her schedule!

Eight Months

Along with starting to make the move towards crawling, Grace is continuing to grow every day!

Our girl loves, loves, loves to eat! We usually don't have any struggles with getting her to try new flavors of baby food, and we've started introducing the combination flavors as well. We also started giving her pinwheels and other corn-based solid foods to learn to self-feed. She actually threw a little fit last night when I put them up!

Grace now notices different textures. I've taken her in my closet a few times to let her run her hands through my clothes, and she loves it! She also enjoys the books that have different textures. Mimi bought her one for Easter that she really enjoyed while we were in Midland.

Grace and I went outside last Saturday to sit under the shade of our tree in the front yard, and she kept rubbing her legs and feet along the grass and making a funny face. She wasn't sure what to think about it, but I guess she finally decided it was ok because she eventually stopped and enjoyed letting the breeze hit her face.

Gracie also started feeling her own hair the other day! It's finally starting to grow around the sides and back of her head. As she was nursing yesterday morning, she reached back and started stroking the back of her head and grabbing at her hairs with her fingers. It was too cute! I wonder if she will be a hair-twirler like her mother?

Her favorite toys these days seem to be anything that make music or noise. Gracie can stand up at her music table and play with the different switches and buttons. She likes the violin and banjo buttons best! She invented a new game last weekend where she'll stand at her music table and then let go so that Trinity or I has to catch her. She thought it was just hilarious! Of course it makes me a little nervous for the first time she does it when we are not there, but I guess she'll learn the hard way...hopefully without a major bump to the head.

This weekend we're taking our first true vacation with Grace. We're going to Fredericksburg for a four day weekend. We are super excited about relaxing with friends and enjoying a little bit of German culture! We'll post pictures and stories when we get back.

Ready to Crawl?!?

I think we will have a crawler very soon!

First Mother's Day

I was so blessed to celebrate my first mother's day with my daughter, my mother, and my grandma. We headed to Midland for Addison's third birthday party, so I was pleasantly surprised when I realized it was also mother's day weekend!

We couldn't have asked for better weather! Saturday morning we got Gracie lathered in sunscreen and played by the pool. The water was a little cold, but she enjoyed splashing her feet and taking a ride on Sammy the Seal.

Addison's party was that afternoon, so we headed to Ronnie and Vicki's house for the Ice Cream Social. The ice cream and company were fantastic, and Trinity even joined in on the crafts and made us an ice cream magnet!

We spent the rest of the evening at Tebo and Sandra's house for a fish fry. Gracie enjoyed being the center of attention and riding in cousin Luke's wagon.

Sunday morning we enjoyed the wonderful weather by the pool again, and my mom cooked a great mother's day lunch. We tried to get a four generation picture, but Gracie wasn't interested in smiling for the camera.

After visiting with my mom and grandma for a few hours, we headed to Trinity's parent's house for an early dinner before we flew home. Kim, Abel, and Luke joined us too, and we had a great time celebrating some more.

Show Me Those Pearly Whites

Our sweet girl cut two teeth like a champ last week! I honestly would not have even known they were arriving if she hadn't constantly knawed on our fingers last week. Mimi was the first to feel the teeth making their arrival, and now Gracie has two bottom, middle teeth. I'm not sure whether Grace realizes that she has them, but this week she learned that she can bite down on the spoon to keep it in her mouth. It's made feeding her just a little more interesting.

Speaking of feeding, Grace has now eaten, and for the most part enjoyed, an array of fruits and veggies: peas, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, applesauce, bananas, and peaches. Peas are clearly her least favorite, but she doesn't refuse them at this point. I assume that once she learns to enjoy certain flavors, the peas will be history. Fine by me and Trinity!

I'll try to get a good picture to show off Gracie's teeth. So far, you can't really see them in pictures, even when she's smiling big time. And she's still doing plenty of that!

Say Cheese!

This past weekend we took Gracie for her first photo shoot. I found a great deal on Living Social that gave us a photo shoot and 5 photo sheets at The Picture People for only $18. I'd heard good things about them, so I figured it was worth the money, even if the pictures didn't turn out great. Gracie has had a bad case of allergies the last few weeks, so she hasn't been quite her normal self. She's still been relatively happy, but her eyes and nose have been goopy. So, I was a little worried about the photo session. We got to the mall right at our appointment time on Sunday, but the place was packed so we waited about 10 minutes. I had two outfits for Grace to wear. During the first wardrobe, we got a few cute shots of her, but then the shoot went south when we put her on her stomoach for some pictures. She is NOT a fan of being on her stomach unless she has lots of toys or other babies to distract her. After about two pictures, she started to get fussy. And it just got worse...and worse...and worse. Trinity wanted to take her for a short break outside the photo room, but the photographer warned us that we were only supposed to have 20 minutes. She was nice enough to offer for us to schedule a make-up session during the week, but we were concerned about making out to Frisco on a weeknight. We decided to cut our losses and left.

I was very disappointed because the second outfit was the one I wanted the most. I still don't know why I didn't start with that one to begin with! Oh well, I guess I learned my lesson on that one! I just kept thinking about it on Monday and decided that I'd call to see what availability they had that evening. I was in luck! They had a 7pm, which gave me plenty of time to pick Grace up, stop by the house to feed the dogs, drive to Frisco, and nurse Gracie beforehand. I think nursing her right before her pictures was the best idea because she did GREAT! She was all smiles for the camera and chatted away with everyone in the place! Whew! And our photographer was wonderful. She had all kinds of great ideas. All of the pictures were so fantastic that it was really hard to choose, but my $18 steal only allowed one pose. Of course I absolutely loved two poses, so I paid another $18 to get another sheet of the second pose.

Totally worth every penny! Look at her cute grin!!! She loved playing with those pearls. Watch out, Daddy... this girl's got sophisticated taste!

6 Months

I have to admit that I get a little teary-eyed when I think that half of Grace's first year of life has come and gone. Sometimes I feel like just yesterday we were telling our friends and family that we were starting a family. Trinity and I have both transitioned into the roles of mom and dad so easily, and we've molded our "old life" into a wonderful family life with very few bumps or confrontations! I hope that Gracie senses the love and partnership that we have in our home.

At Grace's checkup this month, she weighed in at 20 pounds, 4 ounces, and she is 28.25 inches long. So, she remains in the greater than 95th percentile for her height and weight! We're still in 6-9 month clothes, but I suspect she'll be in 12 month clothes in the next month. Thankfully all the clothes we get from Gymboree (thank you Aunt Megan) are 6-12 month size, so those should still fit her for a while!

Gracie can now sit up unassisted, and she's so good at it that I feel comfortable leaving the room while she's sitting up. She can maintain her balance while she plays or picks up toys, and she's even able to reach for toys out of her grasp without falling over. When she's on her tummy, she can scoot herself in a complete circle in no time at all! She especially loves to turn to watch the dogs run across the room. I've also noticed Gracie make crawling movement with her legs and arms. I can't believe she'll be mobile in a few months! Definitely time to start the baby-proofing!

Just this week, she's started crying when I leave the room after playing with her. I am hoping this was just frustration at me leaving her to play on her own... I dread the day she cries when I drop her off at daycare. That might just make me cry all over again! But for now, she's as happy as can be to see her teachers and play with her friends. So far she doesn't show signs of stranger anxiety, but she also doesn't get to see many strangers in her little world. So far, anyone with a smile is a friend in her eyes! Just yesterday she was chatting away with the CVS employee who was admiring her blue eyes.

We started feeding Gracie veggies this week. Daycare has a monthly menu, and peas were this week, so we started with them on Sunday night. Of course she made some funny faces throughout the feeding, but at least she ate them. She apparently refused them at daycare one day, but she's happily eaten them the rest of the week. She definitely loves her oatmeal. We can't feed it to her fast enough!

The last two weeks Gracie has had a stuffy nose, cough, and swollen, goopy eyes. Poor little girl is so sick of us cleaning out her nose and wiping her crusty face. Now that she's six months old, we can give her some baby Zyrtec that should help. Hopefully it will work very quickly!

I'll leave you with a video of Gracie's new dance moves. Enjoy!