Baby's First Easter

Ellie's First Easter weekend was spent with her mama, daddy, Pop, Grandma, Nona, and PawPaw!  We had a great time at the church carnival on Saturday:

Then a wonderful Easter Sunday was spent at Trinity Lutheran Church followed by Easter dinner at Grammie and Pop's.  Ellie had a beautiful dress on.  A very beautiful dress.  Then of course she had a blowout RIGHT before picture taking time and we had to change her.  That was the first fail of the day.  I was literally in tears over this.  As a mom it is MY job to make sure all the firsts are documented and now we have ZERO pictures of her in her first Easter dress.  :(   BUT - Casey's mom, AKA Grammie, came to the rescue with an adorable outfit for Ellie.  We put her in it and got Chad from next door to take pictures with Casey's dad's fancy camera.  Luckily I also asked Casey's dad to take pictures of the three of us because low and behold - fail #2 - the pictures Chad was taking weren't really taken.  I guess he didn't hold the button down far enough.  :(

Even though there isn't a ton of pictures from the day, we still had a wonderful time at church (what an AMAZING service Trinity had) and a nice Easter dinner with the family.

Happy Elle-ntine's Day!

I'll go ahead and admit it. I used to hate Valentine's Day. Now that I'm a wife and mother of a little girl - I am kind of obsessed.

Hearts? Pink and Red? I love it all!

Ellie's first Valentine's Day consisted of us getting up and putting on our VDay outfits. A monkey 1st Valentine's outfit for Elle and a red sweater and pink shoes for mommy. Casey came home for lunch and surprised me with Saltgrass! Because of being pregnant I had not been able to eat a medium rare steak in 10 months so needless to say I was SUPER excited. It was so nice to have Casey home for lunch because he doesn't really get to see how fun Ellie can be during the middle of the day. We had lunch and before Casey left he asked a super strange question: "How would you and Eleanor like to have a matching outfit for Valentine's?". This pretty much blew my mind and I started playing a movie in my head where every outfit I owned, Ellie had a smaller one (similar to the scene on the movie Big Daddy when they come out of Brooks Brothers with matching suits. Remember that?). I am SO excited about this possibility.

After C leaves Ellie and I ventured up to the mall and then back home for a short Valentine's day photo shoot. I am LOVING our Canon Rebel! Here are a few of Ellie's V-Day pics!

Labor Day Weekend

This weekend Aunt Lorie and Uncle Ed came in from New York and my dad came down from Longview and we.....

1. Went golfing...


Well actually my dad and I only went to the driving range, but everyone else played 18 holes. We sat this one out because the heat makes it really difficult for my dad to breathe. If you didn't know this, my sweet Daddy had one of his lungs removed in 2005 due to lung cancer. He has now been cancer free for 6 years, but the effects of only having half of the breathing capacity that you and I have remain. Instead of golfing, Daddy and I hit up Ikea for a shelfing unit for the baby's room. Pictures of that to come. :)

2. We went to an Astros game....

The Astros lost, but we still had a good time. That is unless you count my "Nacho Meltdown" (see 24 week update coming soon).

3. We ate at our favorite local Mexican restaurant Hacienda Isabel...

Casey's dad and my dad goofing around after dinner

C & me after dinner. That is both a real baby AND a food baby. :)

4. We had a good ol' fashioned backyard barbeque on Labor Day....

My in-laws dog Evo. She's almost 16 years old!

Our Zac hanging out on the porch. I love those sweet eyes!

Casey and his dad hanging out

C & I enjoying the beautiful weather

THANK GOD for the beautiful weather this weekend. It has cooled off quite a bit here in Houston and this weekend it didn't really get above 95 which was AMAZING compared to the 110 degrees we've been used to. It was a nice taste of fall weather and we're hoping that it sticks around.

4th of July & Pancakes

Happy Independence Day!!

Yesterday was Independence Day and I woke up with one thing and one thing only on my mind. Not America, not my freedom... no.... that one thing was.....Pancakes. I had to have them. I never want pancakes, but yesterday morning I could not stop thinking about them. I got up and looked in the pantry and *GASP* there was no Bisquik. This is probably because I make pancakes about once a year. Luckily the internet is my BFF and I quickly found an easy recipe and my first time pancakes from scratch turned out wonderfully! The batter made way to much so I made the dogs some extras and made one "MEGA pancake" for Casey to use as a frisbee for the dogs.

Behold MEGA PANCAKE!!!!

BOW to MEGA PANCAKE!!

After "Pancake Mania" we rearranged the guest rooms to consolidate into one room so we will have room in the nursery.

Yesterday afternoon we headed to Chris & Jessica's for their 4th of July block party. Normally we have a 4th of July party at our house, but this year it was nice to have a break. Here is a pic of Casey, myself, and the bump. :)

I Sprung Forward

I must have sprung forward and forgot about my blog! Okay a quick recap...

March - Honeymoon... awesome... still working on blog entry.

April - Wowza.. what a month! Here are the highlights...

April 1 - I played a really funny/mean April Fool's joke on my class. Okay I know what you're thinking "Why on Earth would she play a mean joke on Kindergartners???" In all fairness, my little friends were pulling pranks on me all day so they totally deserved it! So here's what I did.. I sat them down and told them that today was my last day as their teacher because Mr. Casey (that's what my kiddos call him) had been transferred and we had to move. They all started looking really sad so I yelled "APRIL FOOLS!!" They cracked up and started going "AHHHH YOU GOT US!!", "MRS. PAGE!! THAT WAS A BAD JOKE!!!", and of course the few saying "I KNEW YOU WERE JOKING, I KNEW IT WASN'T A FOR REAL JOKE!"

April 2 - 1st Annual Willbern Elementary Carnival! Casey and I volunteered to help at the Chick Fil A booth (gotta be near the yummy food!) and I loved getting to see all my kiddos from last year and their parents. What a fun day! I even rode a ride with my former student and HUGS buddy Raven! Here is a pic of me and my sweet Raven:


April 8 - Casey had an interview for the supervisor training program and got it! He will be possibly interviewing for jobs in Houston, Austin, Denver, Salt Lake City, Tennessee, and Seattle so keep him in your prayers.

Amy and I also went to Opening Day at Minute Maid to see the Astros play the Mariners. Amy is such a sweet friend and is my favorite friend to watch baseball with because she's so knowledgeable. Here are some pictures!




April 9 - Melissa and Zach came through town so we had dinner at Pappasito's with them and then hung out for a while at our house. I always love hanging out with Melissa because we have so much in common. We've been great friends since high school and I love that she found such a wonderful guy to call her husband.


April 10 - Megan's Bridal Shower! I co-hosted a bridal shower for my beautiful friend Megan! She wanted a Garden Party theme so I tried to give them best garden party shower I could. It turned out sooooooooo cute and we had a blast.


April 16 - Marathon Woman! I ran my first half marathon in Bastrop, Texas. What an amazing experience. Originally I was supposed to run it with my friend Jennifer, but she had to cancel at the last minute. I was really really scared to do this by myself, but I just made a goal of finishing in 3 hours 30 minutes (the max) so that I could say "YES I HAVE finished a half marathon!" instead of "One time I attempted a half marathon.. it was awful". Well boy did I surprise myself! I didn't train nearly as much as I wanted to, so when I got to the race I had really only ran 5 miles straight.. no more. When the race started I just went! I RAN the first 10 miles! No walking! I was so proud of myself! The last 3.1 were a different story. I hurt SO bad! I walked most of the last 3 which is why my time wasn't as good as it could have been. I finished in 2h49m which is almost an hour faster that I had hoped for - whoo hoo! Here are my results if you want to see.. and here is a picture!
I would definitely recommend doing the Zooma race to any women especially if you want to have a fun girls' weekend! I can't wait to do it next year!

April 19 - HAIRCUT! I have been waiting 5 years to cut my hair short and I finally did it! Here is my new look...


April 22 - Riley's Birthday & Megan and Todd get married! For those of you who don't know, April 22nd is our beloved Riley's birthday and he turned 6 this year! Oh how time flies.. I miss our sweet little baby puppy, but he is such a great dog and always makes us laugh. On Saturday my dad, Casey, and I took Riley & Zac to Petsmart so Riley could pick out some toys and see the "hammies" (hamsters, fish, guinea pigs, birds.. anything in a small cage or tank). He is obsessed...


Friday evening Adriane and I went to our beautiful former coworker Megan's wedding. It was the sweetest little country wedding with a few personalized touches during the ceremony. It was great to see Meg so happy. Here are some pics.




April 24th - Easter! My dad came in town to spend Easter weekend with us and it was a very nice relaxing weekend.

We dyed eggs ...


Went to church....


and hung out with the family...

We also got some fun surprises from the "Easter bunny", but more on that later. Hopefully I won't forget about my little blog anymore!

Americana

This weekend was our 3rd annual 4th of July party and I'm just going to go ahead and say it - it was by far our best for many reasons.

Reason 1: I actually bought cute tableware and set everything up beforehand so I wasn't super stressed out the day of the party:





Reason 2: I really liked the outfits I wore this weekend. Yes both of them included Chambray, but I really can't get enough of that stuff right now.



Reason 3: We had a slip and slide...




Reason 4: Our friends brought a TON of a fireworks...




Reason 5: My cupcakes turned out great..




and the final reason....

My neighbor busted out a huge blow up water slide about 2 hours into our party (he rents blow up bounce house things) and almost everyone at the party changed back into their bathing suits and played on that thing for hours...




And that my friends... was a 4th of July party to be remembered.

Happy Independence Day everyone!