June 28, 2012: Austin, Florida, and DADDY!

I have been MIA on the blog, because for about a week this month I was MIA!  First, our friends Liz and Drew flew into town and then drove with us to Austin for our mutual friend, Kate's wedding.  Here I am flanked by Bryn (which means "Hill") Elizabeth and Elizabeth Hill :)  So yes, Liz refers to her as baby Hill...

 Drew and Liz were Liam's first babysitters when he was just a few months old...guess he didn't scar them too much since they are still around almost 4 years later :)

Thanks to Mal/Dal, who kept the kids, we had a great weekend in Austin.  Friday night we hit up some bars and food trucks...

One of my favorite parts was canoeing in Town Lake on Saturday.  It was perfect weather and it's definitely a cool juxtaposition of city/nature...

 Saturday night at the wedding was a mini-LA reunion seeing Lindsey, Annie, Kevin, Kate, Drew and Liz...among other TX friends.

 We had so much fun!  Although we didn't make it very long on 6th street, I did get a Best-Wurst before ending the night :)

We drove back from Austin on Father's Day to be with the kids.  We had a nice afternoon and attempted to go the Rough Riders game with Mallie and Dallie...but as you can see it rained on us...the whole time...

The kids lasted about an hour and then we headed home...we were a little wet, but I'll take it over 100 degrees!

 The kids gave Nick his cards they colored...

And what did we get our amazing, wonderful Daddy??

 18,000 bees!  Well actually we REMOVED 18,00 (the estimate by our beekeeper) bees that had taken up residence in our tree...

 Yes he literally scooped up the huge mass of them in a USPS mailbox...

 Happy Father's Day Nicky!  We love you so much...more than all the honey...from all the bees...in all the yards :)

Towards the end of June, I had a first.  I went on a vacation...without the kids...and without Nick.  Just me and my best girls from high school (-Jess who couldn't make it).  I had 5 glorious days in Sea Grove, Florida on the Gulf shore.  We had an awesome beach front condo...

 Our view...

 Our beach for the week...I do miss Santa Monica, but not so much the actual beach or water.  LA's got  nothing on these beautiful white beaches with clear water....

It's so rare for us to all get together, and we had such a great time catching up.  Love that these are the girls who saw me through bad break-ups, bad choices (eyebrow ring??), and so many other fun memories.  Although this trip was pretty different from our Spring Break '99 to PCB, it was still fun...and much more relaxing...and no fake IDs necessary :)  15 years and still going strong....

Big thanks to Nick, Mallie, Meha, and Linds who all stepped up to help out with the kids while I was gone.  Liam was recovering from a sinus infection and Bryn had croup which turned into bronchitis (all thanks to our rainy baseball game) which seemed to peak while I was gone.  Even though they were a little under the weather and sleep-deprived, they did manage to have some fun...

It was a great vaca, but man was I excited to see them at the airport!!

I can't thank my family enough for taking such good care of the kids even though it wasn't under the easiest circumstances.  Now that Mommy is home, household is back in order, and kids are healthy, maybe I should mention that we decided to make this an annual girls trip?  :)

June 12, 2012: Movies, Bryn Pees, and Bumblebees

Haha, couldn't help myself :)  So this past Friday night, we went with some friends, Jackson and Addison and their fams, to see Monsters Inc. at the Rough Riders baseball park.  The event was so fun!  They had hundreds of free beach balls all over the field and glow sticks for the kids.  We sat in the outfield, and ate popcorn and ice cream.  We stayed up waaaay later than bedtime, but as you can see it was worth it...

We had a nice, low-key weekend with Grandma in town and Linds and JE hanging out.  Play date at the pool, family dinners, game nights.  And of course playing in the in the back yard...

We had a great brunch on Sunday with JE and Linds at Cindi's.

 Love/hate this picture...LOVE JE's expression and Bryn's too-cool 'tude as she inches away from him...HATE that she has a pipe (paci) in her mouth...during the day...in public :(  We were doing so good with the pipe just at night time and this past week Bryn started cutting her 7th tooth, a right upper molar.  She's up every night crying, getting Tylenol and Motrin around the clock, but just miserable.  She literally walks around holding her cheek :(  So I pulled the the paci back out.  My original "she's never going to take a paci past the age of one" and then "we'll just use it at night for another week or two" has turned into "let's just save up for orthodontia and put her out of her misery" :)

 But just when I thought the pipe might make her regress, she goes and does the exact opposite...she peed on the potty yesterday!!!  4 times!!!  Since we are about to be traveling and have the busiest 2 weeks coming up, this was so unplanned.  Bryn has been sitting on the potty a couple times a day for the past few months or so, but she always just has a 'good try'.  Yesterday, when she woke up from her 3 hour nap, she was dry.  I asked if she wanted to go potty and she said yes as usual.  Only this time after a minute of sitting there, she went!  Liam and I jumped and cheered for her and her smile was HUGE! We went over to Mallie's house where she did it again, then another 2 times at our house.  She got stickers and ice cream sandwiches for going potty (in retrospect ice cream sandwiches was probably a little much, but she can't have the usual m&ms because we are still about 10 teeth short for that!).  Anyway I feel bad for not just completely going for it, but we'll have to just hold off for a few weeks till we've got a good 4-5 days in a row.  I was so proud though and so was Bryn as you can see in this video...

And even though it was just an afternoon, I put her in Minnie Mouse underwear :)  It was a great trial run, and gives me lots of hope that diaper-free days are near!

 Today as we were pulling in, I pointed out to Liam that I noticed a large swarm of bees next to our shrubs.  I called Nick to tell him there were probably 50 or so bees in the bushes.  When he went outside to check them out, he noticed something in one of our trees...

It's not a nest or hive...it's bees...thousands and thousands of bees upon bees!!!

Thanks to our reseach we learned that they can move in and swarm like this overnight...and that they also usually move out within a day or two.   We are praying this happens here, but have also contacted some bee keepers to see if we can 'donate' our new pets :)  For now we on lockdown until our yard is clear. Thanks to Nick for bravely going out with my camera to document this!

June 5, 2012: Smarty Pants (with working video!)

We started our weekly story time again this week with friends.  Bryn loves the songs and Liam sits front and center to hear all the stories and shout out the answers to questions.  When they review colors and the teacher holds up something green he always yells "it's green my favorite color" all in one breath :)  After story time, we had a little picnic next to the pond and then fed some ducks...

Liam and Addison...pretty cute pair :)

After storytime, Liam helped me make banana bread and we learned about measurements...

That same afternoon, Liam also started his reading lessons with his tutor (aka Aunt Meha).  He's working on his letters, phonics, sight words and such...

He checked out a level 1 reader that we've been working on before bedtime.  He's tricky because he tends to memorize books that we read a lot and he's very good at context clues...sometimes his instinct is to guess the word without trying to sound it out.  Meha says those context clue skills will come in handy later...tutor knows best :)  We just continue to be so proud of him and his love of learning.

Liam's also very into telling time recently...our car rides go something like this  "Mom, it's 4:32....now it's 4:33...what's going to come next?....oh it's 4:34!".  When I tell him to wait five minutes for something, he will ask "How much time is in 5 minutes?"  I say 300 seconds and then hear "1, 2, 3....".  I love how his mind works...one day when he had just changed into Batman he looked at me in the kitchen and asked "Do you always change back to Diana (Wonder Woman's alter ego) when you cook?"  Yes, I confirmed, I save my super powers for after dinner :)  Liam also ran into my room today and said "Mom, am I in trouble yet?"  He was playing in the other room with Bryn...hmmm, I didn't hear any crying so I asked why would he be in trouble.  To which he said "So I'm not in trouble?"  Well, did you do anything to be in trouble I asked again.  "Umm, I don't think I'm in trouble" he replied and ran off.  Bryn didn't tattle on him (this time) so I guess he got away with something :)

And speaking of smarty pants...guess who can COUNT??  So Bryn started counting to 10 about 2 weeks ago.  It is so precious and I have been meaning to post a video of it.  Before I could though she started counting to 20 this week!!  Now she doesn't hit all the numbers, but she does pretty darn good for 19 months old (tomorrow!).  Here she is and in case you don't speak Brynnie in this video she counts 1-5, repeats 5, counts 6-13, then skips to 16-20...then she asks to go brush her teeth :)

Not only does she have the brains, but also the beauty...

 Here's my big girl...one day she counts to 20, the next day she's walking off into the world...sigh, it's just going too fast...

We are so proud of Bryn and I love seeing how confident she is getting in herself.  So blessed with these two little smarties...hope we can keep up!