Why I Will Not Have Fake Plants In My Own House

As many of you know we are currently living in a great house owned by some missionaries. They are in South Africa and are letting us live here until they come back in a year or two. I often dream of the day that we own our own house, not because I don't love living here, because I do, but because I want to paint rooms, plant my own flowers, see my own furniture (all their furniture is in the house), and not have silk foliage in the house. I am highly opposed to fake flowers and plants....I am not sure why, but I am. It is just one of those incredibly endearing things about me! :) Zoe does love to play in the fake moss in the fake trees. I am always afraid that she is going to eat some and today she pulled it all out and it stuck to her. Very messy and hard to find on the multicolored shag carpet!



These are from yesterday. ZS plays the close the door game in the hallway. She wants me to stand on the other side and gets excited when I open the door back up.





I am sure you can tell that Zoe has red spots on around her mouth. She has started getting really dry skin and it seems that no matter how much lotion we put on it doesn't go away. On the bright side, I hope this means she will have her daddy's very pretty, smooth, blemish free skin instead of my yucky, oily skin. It is the NUMBER ONE thing on my list of physical things I want for ZS. Dry skin and all....she is still the cutest baby ever!



Quick car update: The Nissan dealership in Waco did find the problem with my car so hopefully we will get it back this weekend.

30 Days Until......

........The new season of THE OFFICE!!!! I am so excited! If you have not been watching this show for the last 3 seasons, where have you been???? It is pure genius and I am now counting down the days until season 4 starts. I want Pam and Jim to get together so badly but I know that if they do it may spell the end of the show and I just can't have that! Needless to say, I will be glued to the tube on Thurs Sept 27 at 8:00 to see how Pam and Jim's first date goes!!!!

Today was actually a rather boring day. Normally I go to the office in the morning but because my car is still in Waco (no word yet on the diagnosis) I worked from home. While I do love not getting out of bed until 6:00 (normally it is 4:45) I am feeling a little bit of cabin fever. The baby was kinda moody this afternoon also....hope I didn't pass on my fever to her.

All of the things that normally live in my car for the baby are now piled in the dining room. The strollers, pack-n-play, car seat, sassy seat, and cart covers make a new and fun jungle gym for ZS. She dragged around her cart seat cover for most of the afternoon and once she finally got it unrolled it became a mat to lay down on so she could sing to herself. In case you don't know what a cart seat cover is, it is the cover I put on the grocery store carts so she has something to play with. It has toys that hang off of it and a pillow that fits behind her back to bolster her since she so small. My cousin Jennifer gave it to ZS for Christmas last year and it has definitely been one of the best gifts (in my opinion) that she has gotten.





These are just some randoms. My batteries on the camera died so there are not many pictures today....Sorry!



Also of note......My precious baby will be 11 months old on Sunday....how time flies!

Vacation.....Kinda

Happy Sunday! Once again it has been a week since my last post, however, I do have a good excuse this time...we were on vacation! Colin and I had our two year wedding anniversary on the 13th and so we went out of town this weekend to celebrate. Our plan was to leave on Wed morning and come back Sunday night (tonight). We did run into quite a snag....more on that later.

Here are some pictures from Wednesday. As I have stated before ZS has become exceptionally good at moving around and is now a wiz on the stairs. She loves to go up and down over and over but has yet to figure out that the best way to come back down is backwards. Instead she just plummets head first. Here are some shots of her going up the stairs in our house. I don't have any of her coming back down for the simple reason that someone has to control the plummet.



Now that she has discovered the freedom of stairs she spends lots of time playing in her room. One of her favorite activities is finding things to open with her teeth. She still just has the bottom two and can pry open lids with ease.


My aunt Cheryl, uncle Tommy, and cousin Mason gave ZS a manger scene which was supposed to be for Christmas this year but I just couldn't resist giving it to her to play with now. She loves to walk around with the little wise men and donkeys. She has become especially fond of the Asian wiseman.


In case you were wondering she is wearing one of my necklaces. Whenever I wear a necklace she is constantly wanting to chew on it and my neck and shirt always end up slobbery. One day I showed her how to wear one and she decided she liked it. She can pick it up and look at it whenever she wants and I don't have big drool spots on my shirt. I also thinks she walks with a little more confidence when she has on jewelry, as most girls do!


Please take a litte bit of extra time to enjoy this picture because it was so hard to get. It was about 5 min of having her show me her ball over and over again even though she wanted to move on to the next toy. I think though, that it was worth it. Her little face is so cute!


Ok, so here is the story of our weekend. We had plans to leave Wednesday morning and drive to Lake Travis in Austin and spend time at my grandparent's lakehouse. We were then going to drop ZS at Mimi and Pop's (Colin's parents) house and spend the night in Fort Worth on Sundance Square, which was our anniversary gift from Sue and Geoff. Sounds like fun right? Here is what really happened. Colin has started working at a new studio in Grapevine called Lifesong and the owner called him at the last minute and said that she had booked 8 lessons for him on Wednesday so we didn't get to leave until very late Wed night. Poor Zoe Scout did not like being removed from her crib after she had fallen asleep for the night and put into a car for a 4 hour road trip at 9 pm. She screamed for the first 3 hours of the trip and then slept intermittently for the last hour. We got to Austin around midnight and promptly went to sleep. Thursday and Friday were great days! We went out on the boat, swam in the pool, and my grandparents had a great time seeing and playing with the baby. Granma and Papa have a very sweet Chihuahua named Rosie. ZS loved Rosie and even though the feeling was not mutual Rosie did her best to not shake too much when the baby teetered over to her. I showed Scout how to pet Rosie with just one finger and that was a much less intimidating prospect to the dog then a whole baby hand. Rosie did however, enjoy standing under ZS's sassy seat as she ate. ZS would drop little treats on the floor for Rosie and then let her lick any remaining goodies off her fingers. On Friday night Colin and I drove into downtown Austin and had dinner at a restaurant called Carmello's. We had been there about 3 years ago to celebrate a "monthiversary" when we were dating. On the way back to the lake we drove past the house in Round Rock that I lived in for the first 3 years of my life. It was pretty dark but I could still see some of the things I remembered about the house and it was really neat to see it again.

Saturday morning we woke up and started to get our stuff together so we could head back to town. We made it to Waco and stopped to eat lunch and feed to baby around 11:30. When we went back out to the car it was totally dead. We called the insurance company who called someone to jump the car. We were able to get back on I-35 but not 2 miles down the highway the car died. Colin was able to get the car off the highway and then he had to push it into a gas station while I steered. Who knew the wheel was so hard to turn when the power steering is off! The insurance company towed our car to a Pep Boys and we waited and waited and waited. We waited for about 4 hours at the Pep Boys and of course ZS had to stay in her stroller that whole time because the floor was filthy and she would pull everything off the shelves. Colin and I had to take turns pushing her up and down the isles to keep her from crying. Pep Boys ended up finding nothing wrong with our car and so we got back on the highway only to have the car die again only after a few more exits. Once again we were able to safely get off the highway and into a Pizza Hut parking lot right by Baylor campus. By this time it was too late for anybody to work on the car and so the insurance company had the car towed to an impound and it is going to deliver it to a Nissan dealership in Waco tomorrow morning. We are hoping that they will be able to figure out what is wrong with it. Thankfully my dad was able to drive down to Waco to bring us home. We finally arrived home about 10:45 which means our trip from Austin to Denton, which should only take 4 hours, took us 12 hours. Needless to say we had to cancel our reservations in Fort Worth. The worst thing about yesterday though was how bad we felt for Scout. She was in a car seat or a stroller for 12 hours. When I carried her up to her crib last night and set her down she rolled over, grabbed her bunny, snuggled it under her head, and went back to sleep. I have never seen her so happy to be in her own house as she was today.

This is the only good pic I took over the whole weekend. This is my grandfather (my dad's dad) holding Zoe Scout. Papa and Granma were so loving and patient especially when they babysat on Friday night!


Even with all the craziness the first part of our weekend was a blast. We love spending time with my grandparents and now that the lake bug has bitten Colin I am sure we will be frequenting Austin.

Talent Times Two

I would like to start off by apologizing for not blogging in more then a week. Things at our house have been pretty crazy however I know that is not a good enough excuse.

Let me start this post off with this super cute picture of Zoe. She does love stuffed animals and the bigger the better (within reason of course). One of her favorite things to do is hug them under her chin with a big smile on her face. Check out those eyelashes!


Here is the first part of the "talent" spoken of in the title.

Now that ZS has started eating LOTS of solid food I have discovered that store-bought baby food is expensive. It is about 75 cents a jar and she eats somewhere between 6 and 8 jars a day. That figures out to about $5.25 a day and about $150 a month. Colin, understandably, also has reservations about how much sugar is in store-bought baby food. I decided that I could find a cheaper and healthier way to feed my baby. I didn't have any instructions so I thought the most logical thing to do was steam the veggies and then puree them in the Cuisinart. It turned out to be a pretty messy process but well worth it. After cooking and pureeing the food I poured it into ice cube trays and stuck them in the freezer. Now whenever it is time to eat I just pop the food out and heat it up. It works great!

This is the very first batch I made. Carrots on the left, apricots in the middle, and squash on the right. I also made corn on the first day. I am so proud of myself!


Here is Scout trying out my homemade baby food for the first time. After getting over the difference in texture she decided it was pretty good and especially liked the corn. Colin even had a hard time resisting the corn and sneaked bites between Zoe's.


That's it for my talent.....now on to my baby's!

Colin and I have decided that amongst other things our baby it becoming a musical genius. She discovered that she could reach the piano keys this week and wants to play multiple times a day now. Colin says that he thinks she grasps the concept of the high and low notes and where they are on the piano. I am already having visions of Colin and ZS jamming together when she gets older.




Some other points of interest from this week:

1. Monday August 13th was our 2-year wedding anniversary! It seems like just yesterday we were walking down the isle after being pronounced man and wife. We are constantly amazed how much our lives have changed in the last two years.

2. Zoe Scout has become quite adept at climbing the stairs. She now loves to go up the stairs and play in her room with the plastic kitchen (so my daughter). It does however mean that the 5-second walk to the kitchen from the living room just to put something up can no longer be done. She can move as fast as lightening over to the stairs and be up 3 before you get back to the room.

Fun With Daddy

You can always tell when a boy falls in love with a girl because he does things that he would have never done before. I have witnessed this very event. Colin is crazy about his precious little girl, so crazy in fact that he put diapers on his head just to make her happy today and then let me take pictures of it. Of course after he did this she could not get enough. Every little girl wants to do what her daddy does even if it is wearing diapers in the wrong places. She was crawling and walking all over the place with a diaper on her head and if it fell off she wanted daddy to put it right back on. I am not sure how all this playing with diapers started but it seems to be the game of choice now.

Aren't they so cute together? They are so "Perfectly Parr"! ;)

Little Swimmer

This is a couple of days worth of pictures.

This is Friday.
You can always tell when Colin dresses ZS for the day. This Beatles t-shirt is his very favorite outfit. I do have to admit that she is so cute in it but I think the shirt's days are numbered as it is becoming very tight around her belly. I guess we will have to find some bigger Beatles wear!


Here are Colin and ZS sitting together. She can hardly resist laughing when dad is doing the tickling!



The rest of the pictures are from Saturday.

Saturday we celebrated my mom's birthday with her friends at Kiln' Time. It is a really fun place were you can paint pottery and then they fire and glaze it for you. Here is mom opening her presents. She got this new apron and one of her friends told us that the new hip thing to do is wear your cute aprons over leggings or jeans as a fashion statement! Interesting.

Here are all my mom's friends that came and one adoring daughter. Zoe Scout was not able to come to the party but she was able to spend time with her other grandparents, Mimi and Pop!


Here is ZS wearing her party skirt. Colin's aunt Barb and her family sent her this skirt and it was the first time she was able to fit into it!


Later on in the day we went to a going away party for our friends Angela and Ben Scarborough. Angela and I have been friends for about 10 years and they are our favorite couple friends. I have to admit that I woke up a couple of times last night really sad that they are leaving this week for Indiana. It is one of those situations were you are excited for the next chapter in your loved ones lives but you mourn the loss of nearby friends. We are hoping that the move is not permanent. They are also expecting a baby in March so selfishly I want to see little baby Scarborough grow up.

Here is ZS in a floaty in the pool at the party.



Ben and Angela were nice enough to swim with Zoe Scout since Colin and I forgot our suits. I even forgot Zoe Scout's swimsuit so she got to swim with just a swim diaper.



Here is Colin (all you can see is his hand) showing Scout how to splash water on the side of the pool.



Angela used to be a lifeguard so she was all about getting Scout swimming. ZS has been in pools before but I think she enjoyed this time the best.



The little girl in the red bikini behind Zoe was her favorite playmate for the day. Her name is Madeline and she is just a month younger then ZS. They had a great time talking to each other and reading a book together with ladybugs on it.



After she finally got out of the pool she was exhausted but had enough energy for one more smile for daddy.