Oh geez... Valentine's?

Wow.  I forgot to blog about my 2nd favorite holiday of the year.  I loooooove Valentine's Day, but really have only celebrated it since Ellie was born. 

All week long Ellie would Valentine's themed outfits and looked sooooooo cute. For her Valentine's Party at school I got her a custom shirt made by Two Posh Tots (check her shop out on Facebook) that was sooooo cute.  I am totes obsessed with chevron right now, but who isn't - amirite?  On the big party day, I dropped her off in the morning and snapped a couple of pics.  Don't you love adorable Jonah photobombing?  Jonah is definitely Ellie's favorite friend since she's not with her buddy Riley anymore (Riley is still in the infant room waiting to be moved up to the Toddler room).

I used my lunch break to come visit my bug and enjoyed doing "Circle Time" with her.  She was kind of sad to see me go - can you tell? 

I went ALL out on Ellie's valentines this year and made a treat sack for all of her friends.  Inside was: a pair of Sesame Street socks, a red rubber ducky, Goldfish Vanilla Cupcake Grahams (yummmm), and bubbles.  I made little valentine tags to go on the top of the treat bags and they turned out so cute.  I was kind of impressed with myself... can you tell?  Haha.

After we got home I took my Elle-entine for a stroll through the neighborhood and to the park.  She was wearing white tights with red hearts so of course the first thing she does when we get to the park is throw herself down into the dirt and start laughing.  Stains on the knees now but it was worth it to see her running around being silly.  Remind me how it's possible that she's already a toddler?   A bit of time on the swings and then we went home to meet Daddy.  All in all a LOVELY Valentine's Day. 

Day at the Museum

Last Saturday we took the whole family down to the museum district to go to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  My dad was in town and Casey's parents came too! Originally we were considering going to the Kid's museum, but we decided that there would be plenty for Ellie to see at the big girl museum plus we would also enjoy it. 

First we stopped at the Butterfly Garden and Insect exhibit.  Eleanor LOOOOOVES little things (like mother, like daughter) so she loved seeing all of the tiny insects and arachnids.  She also loved all of the lights and sounds of some of the displays. 

After the exhibits, we went into the actual butterfly garden.  I could not believe that the butterflies were just floating around so close to everyone.  Ellie seemed interested a few times, but mainly she just people watched (her fave, and mommy's too).

Here's our little ham giving a presentation on butterflies to the masses.  There was a projector that projected butterflies flying all over a wall at the end of the exhibit and Elle took it upon herself to grab one of the butterfly pamphlets and go up in front of everyone and babble allllll about butterflies.  It was HI-LARIOUS.  Maybe we have a future Entomology  (<--- totally spelled that from memory) professor on our hands?

After we got done with the bugs, we headed in to the Chemistry/Physical Science area and Ellie had a blast running around and touching everything.  Here we are with a double helix. 

All in all the trip was a blast.  Ellie loooved seeing everything and we got her an adorable shirt with a pterodactyl  (<--- totally spelled that from memory too #spelling/science nerd). opening his wings that says "My Daddy Loves Me This Much!".  Classic. 

We are hoping to check out the Houston Children's Museum sometime this summer - I am loving that Ellie is at the curious/mobile age. 

Go Texan Day!

I just looooove that Houston has a day designated to get everyone in the spirit for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Seeing everyone dressed up in their jeans and boots is just fab to me. Here is our little cowgirl all dressed up (minus the boots because I couldn't justify spending $45 on boots she would wear once or twice).





Yee Haw!!

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99.9% Perfect Day!

Story of my life - you write out an awesome blog entry and then poof!  You forget to post it.  Ever done that?  I've done that.  A lot.  I mean like I have a good 5-10 blogs STILL sitting in my drafts folder that I am too embarrassed to post now because they happened anywhere between 2 months and 2 years ago.  Oops.  Anyway - on to the perfect day!

Yesterday we had what I am now referring to as a 99.9% perfect day.  The weather?  Perfect.  Our activities?  Awesome.  Feeling of accomplishment?  Totes.

We started the day by waking up early (but not too early, thanks Ellie!) and watching the sun rise over our backyard through our master bedroom windows.  We made our way downstairs with the babe and had breakfast and hung out.  I took this picture of one of the blooms from the beautiful tulip plan that one of my sweet students, "K" got me for Valentine's Day.  He has been having a difficult time lately so it was a HUGE deal for him to be able to bring me flowers.  What a doll!  Anyway, I couldn't help but be in awe of how the light was shining on the bloom at that early hour.  It was a total Instagram moment.  :) 


We then got ready and headed to church where I got to see my friend Amy and her cute little baby bump named Grant!  Amy and I met at church because we both always sat in the back with our girls when they were little and noticed they were the same age.  Then, as fate would have it, we ended up out at Robert Fleming park taking bluebonnet pictures the same day and I offered to take a family photo of them together.  Then as summer approached she invited me and Ellie to join her playgroup and the rest is history!  (I ended up meeting a wonderful group of mommies and babies through her including the adorable Meredith over here at More than Faith (check her out!)

After church we went to McAlisters (nom) and had lunch with Casey's parents and sister & bro in law.  I love, love, love my in laws in case you didn't know that (as if I didn't brag about their awesomeness all the time on here) and I'm so glad we get to spend as much time together as we do.   After lunch we shopped around a little at Kohls and Old Navy and got some SERIOUS deals.  We spent $50 at Kohls and somehow saved $137 according to our receipt.  We got a small rug for our front entry way for $20 which was originally $90 and another rug for $6 that was originally $40 and a few other items.  Cha-ching!  Then we hit another jackpot at Old Navy when they accidentally had a TON of adorable items marked incorrectly with vague signage and the manager agreed that it was their mistake so we got about $250 worth of clothing for $100.  Schwing! 

We noticed that Ellie's cheeks were really flushed so we brought her home and took her temp - 100.8  BOO!!  That's what constitutes the .1 deduction from the perfect day.  I hate when E is sick!  She was not acting at all sick though so we just went about our day.  We watched a little bit of Kourtney and Kim Take Miami (I can't help it, I LOVE the Kardashians) in the playroom and as we were building a Lego house - a beautiful, melody came from outside on the street.  It was the ice cream truck!  Score!  Ellie and I ran downstairs and out the door just in time to catch him for a fudgesicle to share.  I decided it was too pretty to watch the Kardashians so I got a picnic blanket, some books, and snack for Elle and headed out to our front lawn.  We hung out for about an hour just enjoying the weather and sunshine and of course our ice cream.   Perfection. 

We ended the day by cleaning up around the house and baking cookies.  Ellie went to bed with no Mommy Milk (side note- I randomly decided to stop breastfeeding her on Friday night and she is doing AMAZINGLY.  She was down to once a day and I was only nursing her for 10 minutes at night right before bed.  She doesn't even miss it and goes to sleep better than she ever has).  This now concludes my rambling about an awesome day in Houston, Texas.  That is all.

Girl Next Door

Don't we just look like your typical American family here? All we're missing is me gardening (ha!) and we'd be a Normal Rockwell painting.


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Jackie's Last Night Out

This weekend I went to my sweet friend Jackie's bachelorette party in Austin. It was mostly girls from work so I was a little worried about things getting wild and me embarrassing myself, but luckily Buckwild Sarah didn't make an appearance.

We arrived on Saturday and hung out at the hotel for a while. We stayed at the Omni and it was awesome! I would totally stay there again.

We went to dinner at 219West which was a pretty cool spot. The Southern Belle cocktail was AMAZE-BALLS. (Yeah I just said that).

After dinner we opened had a little lingerie shower for Jack, drank some champagne, and headed out to 6th. We ended up at Pete's Dueling Piano bar and stayed there most of the night. Then back to the hotel to pass out. Good times were had by all, but MAN was I sore the next day. The hill country doesn't play around and wearing heels was an idiotic move on my part. Yowza! As always- Pics!

























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Super Bowl 47

Our evening started like this...



And ended like this...


We made it to half time, but after that it was lights out for Ellie, and the Superdome apparently. Hey-oh!! Sigh. In my other life I would have been a comedian. Happy Sunday everyone!

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