San Antonio Girls Trip 2009

After a very successful trip last summer to San Antonio, mom and I were excited to take Meredith back and to add Jillian to our girls trip (I should stop calling it that - we are hoping to convince Katie and Landon to come on the next one...) We hit some of Meredith's favorites from last year, including Sea World, the Riverwalk, and the market (complete with a bus ride to get us there and home which she loved again this year!)- but this year we also hit the San Antonio zoo!

Look at my big girl riding in an umbrella stroller! She did great in this and it was essential with all the steps on the riverwalk. The best part was that everyone that passed us could see my sweet baby's face and hair! I have never had so many people tell me how cute she was or how much they loved her hair. I was starting to get an ego about how great my genes are! :)

She fell in love with this hat - we could hardly take it off of her the whole trip and when she would put it on, she would exclaim, "I am Cowgirl Mermiff!"

We opted for a River Taxi ride instead of a tour like we took last year - I thought it would be shorter, unfortunatley we got on it later than we should have and then ended up being on it FOREVER to get back to somewhere we recognized. Luckily everyone was loving the views

The next day we hit Sea World, Jillian was a great sport in the tremendous heat and such a cutie in her hat.
Meredith must have been in a hat phase this weekend because she told us before we got to Sea World she wanted a dolphin hat. We didn't find one of those, but we luckily happened upon this Penguin one.

As we headed in for a second trip through the penguin exhibit, we saw this guy - Meredith refused to say hello, but halfway through seeing the real penguins, she insisted we go back to give him a hug. I think this picture really shows how she felt about him up close!
Later, we saw him again with his dolphin friend - she was much braver this time!

Our last day, we headed to the San Antonio zoo - it is smaller than our zoo, but it had some great exhibits and had some fun kid-friendly activities including a toddler area that Meredith loved!
The zoo has a beautiful butterfly house that Meredith and I walked through - here are she and Jillian showing a few of the life stages of a butterfly.
Meredith planned to send this goat to timeout since he stole the food we bought for him from the hole of the machine before I had time to get it. Luckily I had another quarter and had learned my lesson so we did finally get to feed them ourselves.
Even at a new zoo, Meredith performed her favorite zoo activity of feeding the fish.

Meredith and Gigi also took a train ride while Jillian and I stayed behind in the A/C - Meredith waited all day to ride and was so excited - and then fell asleep almost immediately.

Such a sweet sound!

Last night, while changing Jillian's diaper, she was so happy. She always loves looking up at the flower mobile above her changing table, so she was already grinning so much - so of course, I couldn't resist a little tickle time and then lots of raspberries on her belly. Pretty soon I heard her sweet little laugh for the first time! She has been doing lots of coos and other "talky" noises, but this was a full on laugh! I was so excited and called Neal in and he helped me get a few more from her. I tried to capture it, but of course she didn't want to cooperate for the camera, but I know there are lots more where those came from!

Jillian's First Day of Sunday School

This morning we took Jillian to her "Sunday School" class for the first time. She has come with us for a few weeks now to our class because we were waiting for her shots to send her to the nursery, so today was the day! She did great and I think the nursery workers enjoyed loving on her!

All dressed up for church!

I was excited to let my girls match for church today and even more excited when Meredith offered herself up for this photoshoot!

4th of July Parade and Party

After our fun family evening, we woke up on the 4th and headed to the Arlington 4th of July Parade. Meredith loved the horses and would drum on her belly every time a high school band would pass by. She decided that she needed Santa to bring her a tiny 18-wheel truck that one boy rode past in. I guess I didn't react as positively as she hoped, so she followed up the request for herself with "Baby Jillian would love that truck." Smart girl, huh?

Meredith loved waving at the floats that went by - and would get so excited when they would wave back!

Neal tried to teach her the Arlington Colts hand sign so she could get ready for high school.

After the parade, Gigi and Papa opened up their house for a Sunday School party. The kids of course loved both pools, the hot dogs, and some great desserts!