Project Life Week 2

This week I failed to use my camera for all of my pictures. Two of them are phone pictures and one is from the iPad. I didn't realize until I transferred the pictures from the iPad to my computer that the case is partially blocking the camera so I had to try and crop a black spot out of them.


But, I did get a picture every day this week!




 Week 2 - January 8 - 14

Sunday - Olivia was enjoying a ride in the laundry basket on top of clean sheets. 

  

Monday - My Mom sent me this picture from her phone. Tea parties at Grandma's house are one of her favorite things!

 

Tuesday - The girls tore the feathers off of Grace's boa and had a good time playing with them. I threw a handful up in the air and Grace tried to catch them as they floated down.

Wednesday - Dustin took my camera to work so I grabbed the iPad to snap this picture of Olivia playing with Grace's balloon. This balloon has been floating around our house since the first Saturday in December.

Thursday - Olivia loves her Uncle Deuce. And she likes to play with his cowboy hat!

Friday - We visited Papa Bill to wish him a happy 78th birthday. Grace shared a snack of blueberries and strawberries with him.

Saturday - Olivia enjoyed a ride on Grandpa's new toy - his Razor!

I haven't got around to starting my scrapbook layouts yet. I am hoping I will have some time to play catch up while I am in Germany next month!

Mud Pies and Tea Parties

No, I am not blogging about the mud pies that are in our back yard.
And I am not blogging about the tea parties that Grace loves to have.

I want to tell you about the new blog my Mom just started - Mud Pies and Tea Parties... and other GRAND Adventures. She will be blogging about all the fun things she does with her 3 grandkids - Grace, Brilyn, and Olivia.

Yesterday she blogged about Grace's THIRD Birthday. And I am sure there will be many more fun things to coming soon!

Go check it out!! http://mudpiesandteaparties.blogspot.com/

Project Life Week 1

Scrapbooking is something that I love but have not had time for since having children. During 2011, I watched Daily Dwelling document their life through her digital scrapbooking. This has inspired me to  work harder to capture the little moments of each and every day and to document them.

This year I am going to join Project Life Tuesday over at The Mom Creative. Every Tuesday I will be posting pictures from the previous week (Sunday through Saturday). I am also going to give digital scrapbooking a try and I will post the pages I make here too.

Now on to week 1:

Week 1 - January 1-7

Sunday - We spent the morning in downtown San Antonio. We visited the Alamo and then strolled the riverwalk.

Monday - We spent the morning taking down Christmas decorations. Grace was a big help!

Tuesday - Grace found a candy cane and somehow Olivia took it from her. We had to get a new one for Grace.

Wednesday - We took advantage of the nice weather and spent the afternoon outside. Grace & Olivia had fun in their pink cars :)

Thursday - We put up Grace's Dora tent and they had such a good time playing in it! What a joy it is to hear the laughter of my sweet girls.

Friday - Grace was getting ready for her 3 year pictures. My Mom put her hair in hot rollers (and she was chewing some gum she got from Grandpa's stash!)

Saturday - Grace loves to dress up! She tried to go to the commissary wearing this same "outfit" early this week but I talked her into leaving it in the car so it wouldn't get lost or dirty.

New Year, New Blog

That's right, I decided it was time to switch to a new blog.

We have been back from Okinawa for just over a year now. When I started the blog it was to keep our families up-to-date on all of our adventures. Now it is more of a scrapbook of our life.

I have some new things for the blog this year. Check back tomorrow to see how I plan to document our life this year :)

New Years Weekend

We ended the year by traveling again. A friend of ours was getting married near Houston on the 30th and Dustin was asked to be a Saber Bearer. The groom went to school with Dustin (they lived across the hall from each other for 3 years) and the couple made the drive down for our wedding so we were excited to (finally) attend theirs. We had planned to take the girls but after finding out that it would be a semi-long ceremony followed by a sit down dinner, we asked my Mom to go with us and keep the girls during the wedding and reception. When I left the hotel the girls were in the outdoor pool having the time of their life. They got to have a picnic and roast marshmallows in the fire pit.

The next day (New Years Eve), we got up and checked out of the hotel and hit the road. We made the 3 1/2 hour drive to San Antonio to spend the afternoon at Sea World.

 We made it to the park shortly after they opened for the day and stayed until closing. 

They still had all their Christmas decorations up!!!

 After we got our tickets and went through security we headed to the dolphin cove. Grace decided to wanted to feed the dolphins so we bought a few little fish.

 My Mom took pictures from the other side so watch for them on her blog.

After feeding dolphins, we were just in time to watch them feed some of the fish.

We decided it was time to check out a show. We just happened to run into a show with beluga whales, dolphins, and acrobats. It was perfect for Grace! Even Olivia loved the show and was clapping :)

After the show it was time for more fun. We were near the kids area so we let Grace ride a couple of rides. First she rode the Dolphin Dive.

 It went up, then dropped, went back up, and dropped again. She really enjoyed it. Next was the Shamu Express. It was a little roller coaster! I went to feed Olivia while she was waiting in line and got back just as she was getting off. She said it was a lot of fun!! 

After that it was about time for another show... this time it was Sesame Street!

Grace went right up to the front and got to touch several of the characters. She kept waving at them and reaching for them. She tried so hard to get their attention! Telly petted her head, which she talked about a lot the next day.

 After the show we walked around a little more. We ate dinner, checked out the penguin exhibit, went to a couple gift shops, and walked through the Christmas Market. Then it was time for the last show of the day. The Shamu Christmas.. Miracles. One of the staff told us to save that for last because it was better after dark. I think this was one of Grace's favorite parts of the day.

 

We ended the night with a great firework show over the lake.

It was a nice end to 2011.

We spent the first day of 2012 downtown San Antonio. We visited the Alamo and the River Walk. We decided to ride the boat down the river. Afterwards, we had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. We spent the entire afternoon/evening on the road and made it home that night.

Christmas 2011

Christmas is our favorite time of the year!

We try to pack a ton of things in the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
There was decorating. Grace had her very own tree this year that she got to decorate all by herself while we put up the big tree. Dustin spent a day putting lights on the house. Sometime between the time he started hanging them and the time he finished several areas went out so he had to put up new lights. We made butter crunch. Grace got to help for the first time! I have my Grandma's recipe memorized and I plan to pass it down to my girls. We drove around looking at Christmas lights. We visited Santa. The girls are not fond of him this year. Olivia did not like him at all. Grace said she couldn't sit in his lap because she didn't know him that well and you shouldn't sit in someones lap you don't know. But we did make cookies for Santa.

Grace got to make them herself!

And Olivia got to try one!

Last year we decided to open our gifts on Christmas Eve. It spaces things out a little and lets us have more time to enjoy Christmas.

The girls were being silly for the camera :)

They were very excited to open all of their presents. This year I tried to teach Grace about giving. I let her "earn" money by doing little chores (helping with dinner, laundry, picking up toys, or helping with her sister). She is good about doing these things when asked but I thought letting her earn money and then using it to buy gifts for people would be a good learning opportunity. She even gave one of her dollars to the bell ringer so a little girl or boy would be able to have a new toy for Christmas! She got Olivia a baby doll (that can go in the bathtub!) and a remote control 4-wheeler for her Daddy.

After opening their presents and playing for a while, we changed into pj's. We made sure to set out cookies for Santa!

Olivia helped herself to one of Santa's cookies.

We let Grace stay up after Olivia went to bed to watch a Christmas movie with hot chocolate and popcorn. I think this is going to become a family tradition!

And then Santa came!
Grace was so excited for Santa to come that she wanted to go to bed around 4:30 on Christmas Eve. We were tracking Santa and when he got to Canada we ran to bed so we would be asleep before he got to our house.

This is what our tree looked like on Christmas morning!

We were all very excited about the new toys!!!!

The girls loved opening their stockings. Grace told everyone that Santa brought her a dollhouse and soap (bubble bath).

And we had to see if Santa ate his cookies and drank the milk we left out.
He left some crumbs!!

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!!!

A Trip to the Dentist

On Tuesday, we made a 90 mile drive to take the girls to the dentist. Grace has been once before when she was only about 20 months old. But this was more like a first visit since the last visit was more of a class on how to care for you child's teeth and then they just painted them with a fluoride treatment. This time they started out by brushing her teeth and then they brushed them with some special fluoride paste. They showed her how the vacuum and the water sprayer worked and she got to try them out herself! Then they did x-rays of her teeth and she got to see the pictures on their computer. They had some time before the dentist came to check her teeth so they did a fluoride treatment. She got to pick the flavor of foam and she chose strawberry!

This was Olivia's first visit to the dentist and she really surprised me with how well she did. I figured she would just cry but she didn't at all. She has stranger anxiety and cries or gets super clingy if people try to touch her or hold her. She has one little tooth and she even got a fluoride treatment!

When we got in the car after the dentist Grace said she had a good day!
We go back in 6 months :)

And in case you are wondering why we drove 90 miles... this is the dentist I saw as a child and two of my brothers went to him too. We have never had any problems and he is super nice. The only pediatric around that I know of likes to drug kids and is mean. Oh, and there is a Toy's R Us, Target, and nice mall all near the dentist office :)