Friday, June 22, 2012

The beach...according to my iPhone!




I got some good pics with my real camera, but I was busy taking pictures with my phone, too, because we had to make sure Daddy knew all we were up to while we were gone, so here is some of what he saw while we were gone!
Posing on our balcony

Before bed and during some of the rainy times, we played lots of games - Meredith loved Slap Jack the most!

I brought along Jillian's favorite toys, Mousies that she would have been thrilled to play with the whole time we were there!
On Tuesday night, we did a little shopping on the Strand
My girlies and me on the beach
The girls LOVED swimming as much as they could! Especially when they got to swim with their friends they met on the beach
Check out the Seaweed invasion!  Jillian is showing it didn't affect her fun!
Silly beach girls!

Beach time!

We just got back from a great time in Galveston!  We planned our annual Gigi trip this year back to the condo Neal and I took the girls last summer.  They were both so excited to go to the beach!
 Meredith got right to work building a sand castle
 Jillian took a bit longer to warm up to it all...
 But we started off with a pretty fun castle
 Then, if you look really hard, you can see my handy work at a sand hippo....
 ...and a sand turtle!
 The girls loved playing hide and seek with the big sand dune.
 Day 2 was a little overcast and then eventually rained, but it was really windy, so perfect kite weather!
 Look how high we got that thing!
 Jillian got to fly hers, too!  It eventually flew away and just stayed high above the condos for a long time - then later in the morning, a nice guy brought it back to us after rescuing it off the roof!
 We met two sweet girls that were just about the girls ages and we had a blast playing with them for the rest of the trip - they even convinced Jillian to get a little dirty and also coaxed Meredith out into the waves....for a bit!  She eventually got splashed in the mouth and didn't really want to go back unless I held her.  Jillian had fun going with me to jump in the waves and then race them back to shore.  My goal for my next beach trip with the girls is to get them really excited about the ocean so I can do what I love to do when I am there!
 On Wednesday, we went on this Dolphin Boat tour!
 Jillian was a little nervous about the boat itself, but once she saw a few dolphins, she was all smiles!
 There is a happier girl!
 Just two of the tons of dolphins we got to see!  The girls never got tired of spotting new ones!

Posing, post-tour!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

NYC

Ahhhh....a little girl time to celebrate my most favorite bride-to-be, Laura!  Since Vic is living in NYC, they decided to have her bachelorette party there, so Katie and I jumped at the chance to get to go celebrate with her!

But while I was there, I couldn't miss the chance to go see Joyce and her boys - so on Friday night, Katie and I went to a few of their favorite parks, toured the Columbia campus, and had a nice home cooked dinner!  Somehow I did not take a single picture of me with Joyce, but I thought I would add a few I took of the boys as entertainment while I played with them! :)

They loved my hairbrush and suitcase and Austin loved that he got to talk me into brushing his teeth with Jonathan's "fruity" toothpaste - which I later learned they no longer used with him. Ha, he found a sucker!


A bit grainy, but those boys sure are cute!  I really had a blast spending time with them when I didn't have to be taking care of my own kids!  They loved showing me around and teaching me about the construction around their apartment and I treasured the time I got to spend with their Mama and Daddy!

After a yummy breakfast and a quick trip to the park to play, I left the Pierces and headed to spend time with the bachelorette!  We first hit up a french place for a very yummy brunch!

Laura's date for the evening!
After brunch, we event on a Sex and the City bus tour and even though I have seen maybe 30 minutes of the show ever, it was still fun to see so many places around town! Here I am with Laura and Katie for the end-of-tour cosmos.  After the tour, we had a nice italian dinner and then went out on the town for lots of fun - including Laura riding a bull! The whole trip was a whirl-wind but oh so much fun! :)

Friday, June 8, 2012

When Mama's away...

...the girls and their daddy will play!  As I headed out of town to Laura's bachelorette party, Neal decided to take the girls on a tour of the Ballpark! Landon was staying with my mom, so the three cousins all got to have a fun day together!





The next day, Neal invited Gigi and Landon to go with he and the girls again -this time to North Park mall to see David Chicken. He is a kid's singer we saw a couple of years ago at the Levitt Pavillion and he was coming back to play there again this year. To say Meredith was excited to see him again was an understatement! Sadly, he got rained out when we could go see him, to try to cheer Meredith up, I found out when else he was playing nearby, and luckily, Daddy was agreeable to this fun outing!


The three kids got to watch clowns as they waited for David Chicken
Meredith got called up to be a helper, and luckily, no one threw her little sister off the stage when she crashed the party!  I haven't stopped hearing about David Chicken since the concert, so I am so glad that Daddy braved a mall on the weekend (a personal rule of his is to avoid malls especially on weekends at all costs) to make his little girls so happy!

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Room for friends

Jillian has been sleeping in a toddler bed for a year or so now and has done well in it except that she has so many friends (namely, hippos) that need a place to sleep, too, she was a tiny bit crowded!  Luckily for her (and her hippos), her bestie, Caleb is expecting a new baby sister this fall.  His sister's room housed a twin bed that she is not going to need for a bit, so they needed a place to store it.  So we oh-so-kindly offered to store it! :) This was a win-win - they get to keep the bed in a place close enough to get it back with they need it and we can wait a little longer to buy new furniture for Jillian!  

I wasn't too sure how she would feel about her new bed, but she took to it really quickly (she did fall out the first night before we added rails to it, but she wasn't too traumatized!) And she seriously loves all the room for each of her hippos, for her doll Maddie, and for anyone else that might happen to make it in with her! Plus, it gives me room to cuddle her and talk about our favorite parts of the day together before going to sleep (or well, before she says she is going to sleep, but ends up playing with all these friends for who knows how long!)


I promise there is a twin sized bed under there. And Jillian is also in this bed if you look past the mound of hippos!