Let the good times roll

Geoff and I love to laugh and have fun together.  

Photos are courtesy of a photo booth at my work Christmas party.

Giving thanks

We had a wonderful time a celebrating Thanksgiving with Geoff's family up in Granbury, Texas in their beautiful new home. Here are some of the highlights:

Quality time with family members

Olivia: "Ok, Mommy.  Here's the plan - You distract Avalon by taking her picture and I'll go for her grapes!"

Olivia:  "Success!"

Not so sure about the "quality" time spent together here!

Olivia: "Wow, Granddad's mustache is very interesting

Lots of play with cousins

Sweet Julie Bug

Cousinly love :) 

Parents trying to get the perfect picture of three little girls and instead getting pictures to be used someday as leverage

Attempt #1:

Attempt #2:

Attempt #3:

Attempt #4:

Attempt #5

We give up!

We have so much to be grateful for.  I am overwhelmed.

Rock 'n Roll San Antonio

A couple weeks ago, I ran my first half marathon at the San Antonio.  After watching plenty of Geoff's full and half-marathons for the sidelines and being the cheerleader, it was time for us to switch roles.  I had run a decent amount before I got pregnant.  I even ran some while pregnant until it got too hot and too uncomfortable to keep it up.  But I never did anything beyond 5-6 miles at one time.  So it was good for me to set a stretch goal of running 13 miles and then commit to training in order to achieve it.  The training wasn't easy.  The alarm clock went off on a lot of mornings between 5:00-5:30 am.  However, I really enjoyed the training.  The early morning runs allowed me some quiet time with thoughts to myself to focus on the day, pray or just reflect on how blessed I am.  I also got to see different neighborhoods around Houston by foot that I normally don't see and I was treated to some beautiful sunrises.

Other than it being super crowded, I thoroughly enjoyed the race in San Antonio.  It was fun to see 13.1 miles of the city and run by places such as the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  Plus, as the name suggests, there were bands about every mile blasting out music in their attempt to temporarily dull the pain in your legs by making your ears ring.  I set two goals for the race and I achieved both of them: 1) Finish in under 2 hours (I finished in 1:57) and 2) negative split (run the second half faster than the first half), so overall I was pleased.  Plus, it was encouraging and fun to see Geoff and Olivia on the course cheering me on.  I think I saw them a total of five times.  

Down there somewhere at the start

So happy to spot my cheerleaders

Almost to the finish!

With my biggest fan

Our little family of runners

Also special shout out to Geoff who was the overall winner of a 10-K race in The Woodlands the same weekend. Thanks to his win, we now have a $100 gift card to Jason's Deli...we're set!

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On a separate note, Olivia is almost 15 months!  She is doing so many new things these days I can hardly keep up.  We are having lots of fun with her right now as we never know what she's going to come up with.  Here is a list of some of the latest things she's up to:

• Says "Ba" when she sees balls.  She also says "Baaaat" when she sees water.  I guess she associates all water with her baths or something.
• Loves to make funny noises with her mouth, whether she is blowing with her mouth on her arm, strumming her lips or making indian pow-wow chants
• Waves bye-bye.  Sometimes she will pick up my purse, put it over her shoulder and wave bye as she heads towards the door.  Hilarious!
• All four of her first molars to come in have arrived.  She now has a total of 12 teeth.
• We can tell her to do certain things and she will do them.  For example, if we tell her to but something in the trash, she will go do.  If we tell her we are going to go upstairs or downstairs, she will head straight over to the stairs.  
• When asked where her bellybutton is, she pulls up her shirt and points to it.  When asked where Daddy's bellybutton is, she pulls up his shirt and points to it.
• When we say "Let's pray for our food", she folds her hands to thank Jesus.
• Loves to run, jump and climb on everything
• She is finally sleeping past 6:00-6:30 am.  Which is wonderful...especially on the weekends. Geoff and I now get to sleep in until 7:00 am! :)
• Goes down the stairs on her feet rather than her bottom with a little assistance from the railing and Mommy and Daddy.

No kids allowed

Beautiful beaches.  Rest and Relaxation.  Adults only.

No diapers.  Uninterrupted sleep.  Excellent food. 

Book reading.  Alone time.  No schedule. 

That sums up the trip Geoff and I took a few weeks back down to Cancun.  After 13+ months, we were ready to leave Olivia behind for a few days for a much needed trip with just the two of us.  Geoff's mom, also known as Mama Glory, was kind enough to come down from the Forth Worth area to watch Olivia along with our nanny, Romelia, while we took off for three nights.

Cancun was lovely.  We stayed in a super nice resort called the Le Blanc.  It was as an adults only, all-inclusive place which is definitely the way to go.  We never left the property once we arrived.  The restaurants on site were terrific.  The beach was gorgeous...the sand was so soft.  The weather wasn't the greatest while we were there.  It rained everyday and we had a hurricane scare (see more on that below).  However, it didn't rain all day long and there were chunks of times the weather was partly cloudy/sunny so we were able to enjoy the beach and pool then.  Unfortunately, because of the weather, we couldn't really play in the ocean as the waves were too big and the red warning flags were out.  The other bummer was that we had scheduled a romantic steak and lobster dinner on the beach one evening.  But again, because of the weather, we had to enjoy our steak and lobster indoors.  Not quite the same experience, but nice nevertheless.

View from our room

MASSIVE hot tub in the room

Our indoor romantic steak and lobster dinner.
Food and service were excellent.  My date was pretty good too :)

The trip wasn't without a little bit of drama.  Right before we left, there was a terrible out break of mosquitoes in Houston. They were swarming every time we went outside.  They were the worst I've ever seen them.  Several managed to get into our house and attack Olivia while she slept.  The morning we left, I went to get her out of her bed and her face was covered in big red bites.  She looked terrible.  Poor thing.  We briefly wondered if she had come down with chicken pox, but quickly decided not since the bites were only on her exposed skin.  So that left us trying to figure out what to do as we were trying to get ourselves out the door and to the airport.  Fortunately, Mama Glory and Romelia took very good care of Olivia, got her some Benadyl and by the time we arrived back home, she looked much, much better.

Also right before we left, we checked the weather and they were beginning to predict that a tropical storm was heading right to the Yucatan Peninsula while we were going to be there.  We continued to monitor the storm once we got to Cancun.  It had strengthened to a category 2 and they were now predicting it to make landfall the day before we were scheduled to go home.  I was a bit amazed how the approaching hurricane just didn't seem to be a big deal at the resort.  There didn't seem to be a sense of urgency or worry.  I guess they're used to dealing with these types of things and have plans in place or something.  While I was never worried about our safety if we were going to have to ride out a hurricane (we've ridden out two hurricanes in Houston...we're experts at that! :) ),  I was concerned that depending on what happened, the airport might be shutdown and we wouldn't be able to get out on our scheduled flight.  After three days, I really, really missed Olivia and was ready to get home.  Fortunately, the storm lost its strength, slowed down its course and got out of Cancun without any problems.

Approaching storm in the distance

I'm so thankful for the time Geoff and I had to just hang out together and rest.  It was wonderful to have a break from juggling some my roles - mommy, employee, housekeeper, cook - and just focus on being a wife for a few days.

 

Olivia @ 1 year

My!  How my baby has grown!  For Olivia's 1 year pictures, we once again called on our favorite photographers, Jonathan and Blakely Fletcher at framedbyfletcher, who also did Olivia's 3 months (here) and 6 months (here) photos.  They always do such a perfect job of capturing exactly who she is and her little personality. 

Here are some of my favorites: