Paint, paint and more paint

Place your bets...which color won?  Revere Pewter, Stone, Mineral, Thunder, Clay Beige, Conservative Gray, Storm, Wish, Horizon, Carrington Beige, or Natural?????   I am done putting colors on the wall and tomorrow, Wes will help me narrow it down.  I have my favorites picked, wonder if he will pick the same ones?  Then on Friday, I have a color consultation with a designer (fancy!!) to make the final decision.   I just want to be REALLY sure about this color since it will cover such a large area with super high ceilings.  No re-painting this room for me.   My Saturday involves moving on to green and gray paints for the master, laundry and kids rooms.



AAARGH - my picture app isn't working so I can't export any pictures.  Tomorrow!!

SOOOOOOOOOOO busy!!!!

I've been so bad about posting.   Here's the short version.  Longer version to come.  First, I had a great time in Vegas.  Just what I needed - sleep, pool time, more sleep, a great show, a few naps, great food, even more sleep and a 2-hour run at a buffet. The day after returning home, we closed on our house (hip-hip-hurray!!!!) and I've been painting ever since.  I've got 10 sample colors on the wall, adding 3 more tomorrow and I hope that will be it...for the living room.  Then I move on to the other rooms!!  Wes is out of town all week so we are definitely missing him.  Reese had a rough night last night - I didn't get her to sleep until 12:30 AM - then I couldn't sleep well because I kept waiting for her to wake up again.  Luckily, she slept until 8 AM but Drake was up at 6:00 so not much sleep for me.  Tomorrow, I have a sitter all day so I can pick out a fan for the upstairs room and finish my painting project in the living room.  I have tons of picture of the house and of course, the kiddos.  Maybe tomorrow night.

Happy b-day Julie!!

Some videos

Some cute videos of the kids.

Kissing the phone.

Reese entertaining Drake.

Reese counting to 5.

This is a long one.  Stella is always running laps around the house.  Reese likes to play follow the leader and copy everything she does.  I'm pretty sure Stella has no idea she is being followed but Reese has fun doing it.

Where's daddy???

Wes has been out of town this week and Reese is constantly going to the bottom of the staircase to call out, "Wes, Wes, da-da, da-da!!"  Guess she misses him a little bit.

Reese starts talking the minute she wakes up.  Seriously, the minute she wakes up.  I hear her naming things in her crib:  book, tiger, RARRRR (what a tiger says).  This morning I walked in and she popped up and pointed to her chin.  "Chin!"  Yes, that's your chin.  "Teef!"  Yep, teeth.  We named all our body parts before heading downstairs.

Here are some pics of my beautiful Stella.  She has amazing eyes, just like her Daddy.

Here's a funny one of Stella.  She cannot keep her legs inside her high chair.  One of them always wiggles out and remains there for the rest of the meal.  

Here is another shot of Drake's black (yellow) eye.  And his fat cheeks!

Signing off.

The weekend is over

Sigh.  They go by fast.  Saturday, we all went to an outdoor mall and walked around.  The kids love being pushed around in their strollers so we enjoyed window shopping and lunch before heading home.  Here is a pic of all my cuties.

On the drive home, Wes noticed Reese was holding Drake's hand while he was sleeping.  They really adore each other.

Today we went to bible study.  Drake was an angel.  He was the only one.  Stella spent half the meeting in the kitchen...usually we can bribe her with snack and stickers but nothing was working.  And Reese decided she wanted to talk and make animal noises most of the hour.  Fun!!!   To top it off, no one wanted a nap when we got home.  They all cried in their crib for an hour before we gave up.

Here is a video of the girls playing monsters with daddy.  I feel sorry for the people who live below us.

So happy I got this video of Stella.  I just love her laugh.  She loves her videos (as you know) and cracks up at a certain part where a dog puppet is turning around looking for something.  She laughs at it every time.

I tried to get a picture of Drake's black eye.  It's really not that bad, but you can see it has turned a bit yellow underneath.

What a monkey

We have a video monitor in Stella's room since she started climbing out of her crib.  We were able to lower her mattress all the way to the floor, which we hoped would solve the problem.  Here is what I've seen on the monitor tonight.

She looks at the camera to make sure we are watching her.

Still looking at the camera to make sure we can see her monkey moves.

One leg out of the crib.  Just laying here and hanging out for a while.

And two legs out.  This position is a little harder to hold but I'll do it for a while.  

After all that, she doesn't even get out of the crib.  Just falls back in to do it again...and again and again.

Oh, and I snapped a picture of Drake doing something he rarely does - cry!!  He bumped his head today (actually gave him a bit of a black eye that I'll try and capture tomorrow) so I snapped a picture of him.  When he does cry, it's a lot like Reese - very dramatic!!

  

a few pictures

I love this picture I snapped of Reese and Stella.  They were watching a video (I promise we don't watch videos all day!!) and they were tangled up together.  So cute....you can really see the contrast in their skin color.

 

Here's a close up of their arms and legs.

 

And here's my happy boy, always smiling.

Part two

Here is the short version for our last two days of vacation.  Monday brought a tropical storm to the coast so the weather was overcast with some rain.  But we still had a great day.  We hung out at the restaurant for a good part of the day getting to know another couple, Sean and Sarah.  I managed to sneak in another massage (spoiled!!) and then the 4 of us went to dinner at Edith's, an awesome local restaurant.  Best shrimp ever!!  Tuesday morning, we awoke to gorgeous weather so we spent the morning by the pool before heading to the airport at 11:00.  All in all, it was an amazing and much needed vacation.  We got home around 5:30 and Reese was dancing when she saw us.  Then she realized our arrival meant Nana's departure and she started BAWLING!  Somebody loves their Nana.  Thanks, Lynda, for managing the circus in our absence!!!  We owe you:)

Drake is sitting up!!!    It makes me a little sad, going to get him out of his crib and he is sitting up.   My baby is growing up too fast.

Reese and Stella watching a movie together.  Can't believe they aren't fighting over who holds the ipod.  

Funny story about Reese and just how stubborn this girl is.  Every night at bedtime, she has a routine of turning on her fan (the humidifier) and her night-light.  If I try and do it for her, she gets upset.  Well, tonight she was taking her sweet time and I warned her that if she didn't hurry up, I was going to do it for her.  She kept stalling so I turned them both on and proceeded to pick her up and put her in the crib, where she began to cry.  And cry and cry and howl and howl.  I closed her door and headed downstairs.  20 minutes later, I realized she was still going strong so I went up there and felt pretty bad when I saw her sitting there, red faced and snotty from crying.  And she was still sobbing.  I said, "Reese, do you really have to turn them on yourself?"  She hopped up and said, "Yes.  Thank you, thank you, thank you."  I picked her up and put her on the ground.  She walked over and turned the fan off, then the night light off.  Then she walked back to where I was standing and acted like we had just entered the room at bedtime.  "Night night" she said and turned the fan back on and the light back on.  Then she raised up her arms and let me put her back in the crib, happy as a clam.  Woah!  That is one stubborn little mule.  

Here's a congratulatory shout-out to my mom, who got her halo off today after 3 long months.  So proud of your strength and purpose throughout this crazy ordeal!!  

Never a dull moment

So our trip started with a bit of excitement, and not the good kind.  We arrived at Austin airport, shuffled through a SLOW security line and sat down to eat a breakfast taco before boarding our flight.  As we were taking our first bite, the fire alarm sounded.   Flashing lights, loud sirens, metals doors on all the stores coming down and a mass exodus of confused and upset travelers.   Wes and I stood there looking at each other, this cannot be happening!   We decided to finish our breakfast before heading outside to enjoy the blazing sunshine.  Apparently, this has happened 4 times over the past month at this airport.   I guess it's a glitch in the system.  Kind of a big glitch, ya think??  30 minutes later, they opened the front doors and everyone STORMED the security line.  Luckily, we were pretty close to the front of the crowd.  And security moved much faster this time around.  Here is a really dark picture of the line behind us at security.

Our flight was only 20 minutes late taking off, and soon we were in paradise!!  Our resort (Capella Pedregal) was only accessible through a long tunnel carved through the center of a mountain.  A very dramatic entrance!!  Here is a shot from inside the hotel looking back towards the tunnel.

Our room was amazing.   Each room had a small, private pool right off the balcony.  

After checking out our room, we headed to the pool and made some new friends.  We hung by the pool from about 3:30 - 7:30 before heading up to our room.  I was exhausted (Stella was randomly awake the night before for 2 hours) so I ordered room service and Wes walked into town.  I had the most glorious night of sleep I've had in a long time.   Slept until 8:30 and it FELT SO GOOD!!!!!  After breakfast, we spent an hour by the pool before heading to our massage appointments.  I didn't think this vacation could get any better until I walked into this spa.  I have never, ever had anything close to this spa experience.  After being welcomed with a cold blueberry tea, we were taken to a changing room.  After getting into our robes, we moved to a special room for foot treatments.  They scrubbed our feet with basil and mint and a salt scrub.  It felt SO good!!!!  After a few minutes of that, we headed to our private rooms for an hour massage.   Both of us had an incredible masseuse but the experience didn't end there!!!  After your massage, you headed to the locker room where a "grotto rotation" awaited you.  First, you sat in a dry sauna for ten minutes while drinking chlorophyll water.  Then you entered a steam sauna where you rubbed giant pieces of aloe all over your skin.  Glorious!!   Wes coined the next room "the snowcone room."  Crushed ice was falling from the ceiling into a bowl in the center of the room.  A bowl of grapefruits was in the middle of the ice.   My masseuse had told me earlier to rub the grapefruits over my skin, just as I did with the aloe.  Wes and I had a good laugh later when he told me he ate the grapefruit and was curious why some pieces in the bowl were squished.  After chilling out in the cold room, you headed to a jacuzzi to finish the experience.  It was the most relaxed I have ever been in my entire life.  AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.   Then we headed back to the pool and hung out there until 7:00.  We had 8 pm reservations at El Farallon, the hotel restaurant.   Seafood soup, ceviche, calamari, fresh salad, scallops, yellowtail, parrotfish, yellowfin tuna and clams. And the meal wasn't the best part....the view was breathtaking.  We were on a cliff with waves breaking on the rocks beneath us.  Close enough to have a light mist from the waves....so beautiful.

This last picture was taken by our new friends, Sean and Sarah from San Antonio.  So glad they snapped this picture since we are so bad about asking people to take our picture.

That's all for now.  I'll post tomorrow with part 2 of our vacation.

Getting ready for vacation!

We are excited for our upcoming vacation!!  Both of us look forward to uninterrupted sleep, sleeping in late, laying by the pool and eating some good food.  The hotel we are staying at is supposed to have an amazing restaurant and we also have reservations at Edith's, another local restaurant that Wes has eaten at before.

Tomorrow, we will get inside our new house for a few hours.  We have some measuring to do and we are also meeting with a designer to help us decide on converting the upstairs playroom to a bedroom.  We've decided to do that before we move in but don't want to slap a wall up without taking the aesthetics into account.  Need to decide where the closet and the door to enter the room will go.  If time permits, I will try and take some more pictures to share.

Wes's mom arrives tomorrow and Reese is super excited that she is coming.   She wants to have her nails painted and I'm sure she will enjoy trying on Nana's bracelets.  I know I will miss the kids while we are gone but am glad for the chance to re-charge.  Wes and I are both running on empty!

Reese story - Wes gets the girls out of their cribs in the morning but once in a while, I do.  Lately, every time I go in first, Reese immediately looks over my shoulder and starts screaming "Wes, Wes!  Where'd he go?"  Apparently, I am not worthy of picking her up and taking her downstairs.  But she definitely is my Mini-Me.  She LOVES to clean - here are a couple of videos of her scrubbing away with a wet wipe.  (I'm uploading these two videos without HD to see if they will play on my iphone and not just the laptop.  The quality might not be as great.)

And here is Drake, being cute:)

Busy weekend

Since it was 106 degrees on Saturday, we decided to head to the mall with the crew.  Here are some pics of Reese and Stella on the rides.  Reese was really scared when the rides started moving and making loud noises so she would only ride the horse with Daddy.

 

Then we had lunch at Chik Fil A.

On another note, remember my last post where I thought Stella was saying "all done" after reading a book?  She definitely is saying that!!  Here are two more videos I took of her saying the same thing each time she finishes the book. 

 Here's a video I took of Reese.  She is such a character!!  Her new "thing" is this fake laugh and talk, cracks me up every time.  

And here are the 3 amigos.  Drake follows the girls around constantly - he is thrilled he can finally get in on the action.