Steak and Potato kind of Girl

Last night for dinner Dustin grilled steak and I baked some potatoes to go with it (along with some corn-on-the-cob). Let's just say we have a very good little eater! Grace ate almost as much steak as I did!!! Hers must be coated in Jack Daniels barbecue sauce though. She also ate a huge slice of watermelon, several pieces of broccoli, and about 1/4 of a baked potato. And she had just ate 2 bananas (she always wants another one!) only about 1 1/2 hours beforehand.

Where does she put all this food???

Oh, and we did make it to the commissary this morning and bought a dozen bananas. They should last about a week, maybe!

Back to just the 3 of us

We took my mom to the airport yesterday and she is now back home. Grace was pretty upset to see her Grandma leave. She is being extra clingy and wants to know where I am at all times. She was not happy when I left her in the nursery at Bible study today and she normally is great and all of the ladies there are so nice. They had to bring her to me because she was so upset (I guess they didn't HAVE to but they knew I would want them to). But we will be visiting probably in March! So now we are getting back into our normal day-to-day routine. Or, rather trying to find a new one since while my mom was here Grace went from taking 2 naps a day to 1 nap and she is now walking and climbing and cannot sit still.

I think the rest of this week and this weekend we will focus on getting our Christmas candy and cookies made for the neighbors and friends. After Christmas I am planning on pulling out our suitcases so I can go ahead and start getting things packed for our cruise. We are less than 5 weeks away!!! And we NEED to go buy bananas SOON... Grace ate the last 2 for an afternoon snack today.

Comprehensive Park

Today we decided to go to a park. There is a huge sports complex that is just a short drive from our house called Comprehensive Park. There are several jogging routes, playgrounds, a pond with peddle boats, a small water park, and fields for almost any sport imaginable. It is a beautiful place! The first stop was the playground where Grace had quite a bit of fun. Then we checked out the fish in the pond. They are huge and they all gather around hoping you will give them food. We saw a few turtles and some ducks too! What a great way to spend an afternoon. With the weather as nice as it is now we are planning on going back soon :-)

Slowing down

We have been a little too busy lately. So today we decided to stay home until after Grace's nap and then we were back home for dinner! We will probably do the same tomorrow. Grace has been getting up early and has been having some late nights (due to cutting a new tooth, 5 shots on Friday, she just got over a cold, and last night we went to the ferris wheel and didn't make it home until about 30 min after bedtime) so tonight we stayed home and I put her to bed early! Hopefully she will catch up on the sleep she has been losing lately.

So today during our little outing we went to see Daddy at work (he has staff duty) and then we went to the craft store to pick up the pagoda I made a few weeks ago. I was very pleased with how well my pagoda turned out. I think tomorrow I may try to find a light to put in it! And then we walked to the BX. We were shopping and Grace just wanted to get down and play. She took off walking all over the clothing department and playing peek-a-boo around the racks of clothes. She is just too cute!

This next week we will be heading to the airport twice. My mom is flying back home and we have friends going on vacation. It looks like we will be spending this Christmas just the 3 of us since all of our friends are going to be gone.

I will leave you with some pictures (in reverse order!) from our busy Saturday.

{underwater castle}

{hard to get a good picture with 2 girls who just want to run and play!}

{Go Army, Beat Navy!!}

{sporting her Army shirt I made}

{ready for the game}

And here are 2 videos from our ferris wheel ride. This was what Grace did about 13 out of the 15 minutes!

Little Monkey

We have a little monkey on our hands!! Not only does Grace eat a ton of bananas, she has also started to climb. Yesterday I left her playing at her toy table to walk in the kitchen and put her fridge phonics toy up and about a minute later my Mom walked into the living room and found her standing on the sofa. There was nothing in front of the sofa other than her toy puppy so we are thinking she must have carried it over and used it as a step stool (that was the toy she was playing with when I left).

Today was a busy day for her! We went to the Army Navy football game here (Army won!!!!!) and then afterwards we went to dinner with our friends. We went to a neat little pizza restaurant that had a beautiful ocean view. After dinner we went for a nice little walk and explored an underwater castle. Well, at dinner Grace was trying to climb onto the table. Then she was trying to climb the steps of the castle. She is too brave!!!

We decided to top of the night by visiting the Ferris Wheel at American Village. There is this huge ferris wheel that sits on top of a 3-story building and at night it is lit up with pretty lights. Grace LOVES looking at the ferris wheel so we decided to ride it. It was a 15 min. ride and it went really, really high. We were a little nervous that she would get too fidgety sitting there but she didn't at all until about the last 2 minutes. She really LOVED the ride!! I think we may have to go back again sometime :-)

More pictures and some videos!!!

I just posted some of the pictures from Grace's birthday and studio pictures.

You can either scroll down or click HERE to find that post.

You do not want to miss the cute pictures we got from Amanda's studio

And now for more pictures (and some videos!)...

These are the pictures from Grace's little party at home on her actual birthday. I think she had a very wonderful day!

{she loves her baby}

{she learned how to climb up on the sofa... today she didn't even have the boxes and somehow managed to get up there}

{we had hidden something up there and she really wanted it!}

to see more pictures from her party at home click HERE

{she loved the card that Grandma Phyllis sent! She would open it, close it, open it again and then dance to the music. I pulled out the camera after she had been playing with it for about 5 min. but I was too late to get it on tape but I thought this was pretty cute anyways}

{we got her a baby doll for her birthday. She loves it! She was feeding her baby and then sharing the bottle with herself}

{Here she is with her 3rd birthday cake}

Birthday Pictures

As promised here are some pictures from Grace's birthday. I will have more of her birthday evening (opening presents and playing with new toys) later. Since my Mom has been here I have barely even touched our camera. I just take what she has and copy them to our computer!

First stop of the day was Amanda's house to use her studio so we could get pictures of Grace. We did 1 year, cake smashing, and Christmas pictures. I am going to wait until closer to Christmas to put the Christmas pictures on here and just focus on her birthday for today.

We started off with balloons!!

{she loves to take her bows off!}

{I think she looks so grown up in this one}

{sneaky, sneaky!}

Then we took a few in her Christmas dress then moved on to the cake smashing pictures!!

{hmmm.... what is this?}

{ooooh, yummy!}

After we were finished with pictures (and the icing was cleaned up) we headed to lunch. We stopped by Dustin's office and then walked next door to Chili's. Grace told us she wanted pizza (she said it twice so that is what she got!).

{cheesing with her pizza}

After she finished her pizza and broccoli we asked them to sing happy birthday to her.

And they brought her a special dessert - chocolate shake with whip cream and sprinkles!

{it was very yummy!}

{all gone...}

Then it was time to head back home so she could get rest up for more fun!!

{so tired I think I could fall asleep in the car}

My Mom has put a few albums of Grace on her Myspace page. You can click on the following links to view them:

Cake Smashing Pictures

1 Year Photos

Play Time Pictures

Christmas Pictures

And I have a few cute videos I want to put on here but for some reason I cannot get them to upload right now.