Thanks, Michelle

I wanted to thank my friend Michelle for tagging me on her blog as a blog she loves. She was one of the people who inspired me to start this blog! She is an amazing scrapbooker -- if you enjoy that kinda stuff you have to check out her blog! She currently has a page up that she just did of us in high school! I think it is great -- we are dressed up for 60's day! Thanks Michelle for nominating me and reading my silly little blog!

However with this accolade came some rules:

(1) The winner can put the "I "heart" your blog" logo on their blog.

(2) Link the person you received your award from.

(3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs.

(4) Put links of those on yours.

(5) Leave a message on the blogs of the girls or boys you’ve nominated.

I don't read 7 other blogs, but I will happily pass this on to my favorites that I do read!

First, Amy, who also inspired me to start a blog and is now on a personal crusade to make the world a better place for her and her family by going as green as possible! You go girl!

Second, My Aunt Karen, who apparently was inspired by me to start a blog documenting her life and all the memories she is making with her 4 wonderful grandchildren!

Next, Kelli who has 2 blogs. One detailing her family's life in Tennessee and the other documenting her journey to find a new place to call home.

And last, but not least, Stephanie in San Francisco. She is an amazing actress, writer and director and a great friend.

Maybe we can inspire some of you out there to start blogging too! :)

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On a separate note, I wanted to give a huge Congratulations to my wonderful friends Erin and Scott on the birth of their second son, Sam Matthew, on Wednesday evening! I know you occasionally read this blog Erin -- we love and miss you guys and wish you all the best!

Words at 20 Months

This blog serves many purposes for me. One, it is a nice way to keep you, my friends and family, up to date on our lives here in Texas (since I am terrible at phone calls and e-mail -- but can manage to blog nearly daily!). I also have plans to have it bound and published in a year. That way I will have a book to remember our first year in Texas and all Lily's milestones (since I have fallen SO far behind in my scrapbooking). So this entry is a little more personal for me -- I wanted to make sure to document Lily's words now that she is 20 months old. Some of the words she has been saying for some time now. But I swear every single day she busts out a new word. It is amazing. I don't think she was really talking too much a few months ago, but then all of a sudden the words just kept coming and coming. I never know what is going to come out of her mouth next. So here is what she can say so far (in no particular order):

Dada & Kitty Cat were her first words. She was saying those by the time she turned one.
Hi and bye came next
Mama - it took a while for her to say mama. Maybe because I am always right here.
Elmo, of course
Song
Cheerios, Cracker, Cookie, Apple, Nana (banana), Wawa (water), toast, mama ca (coffee), Nug (chicken nugget)
Eyes, Nose, Mouth, Toes, Hair, Head, Cheek, Arm, Leg, Ear, Hand, Tum (tummy) --she loves to point out these features on people, toys and animals
Ga (grandma) & Pa (grandpa)
hat
ball
pig, cow, dog, bear, mon (monkey), mou (mouse, specifically Mickey Mouse), Bun (bunny), Bird, bug
car
keys
crayon, color
Down (more of a command, as in "sit down", "I want to sit down", or "I want to go downstairs" and even used for upstairs -- we're working on correcting that)
Mote (remote)
Night Night
Shoes, Clothes
Bed, Pill (pillow)
Ba (bottle)
Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, Tel (Telly), Cookie (monster)
Phone
No
Pee Pee
baby
bubble
pie (play)
light
on
but (button)
bib
side (outside)
pool
Hot
Done
again (another command, as in read that book again or play that song again)
What's that?
Oh!
Wow!
Office
towel

Bath

Barrette

I am sure there are more that I am forgetting . . . but at least I got this much documented for now! I haven't attempted to take her 20 month pictures yet today. But here are some pictures from last night. After her nap we went back outside to finish pulling weeds. I was so sore this morning from all my weed pulling yesterday!!

The bag full of weeds is bigger than her!

Helping pull weeds -- or whatever plant life she could get her hands on.

Walking in the flower beds like this is how we got dirty earlier.

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And some pictures from Gymboree this morning.

She is getting really good and climbing up and down the little stairs. She is also becoming a master and getting on and off the couch. I think I will have to start letting her try on the stairs at home . . . it makes me nervous, but she has to learn sometime! I think most kids her age can already go up and down the stairs, but we've never rushed her into this. I figured if we had a single story house she wouldn't have learned by now!! Even though she has never lived in a single story place since even out apt had stairs!

Taking Advantage of the Nice Weather

The weather has been so nice the last two days thanks to the outer band of Hurricane Gustav!! It has been windy, but not so much that there is any damage. I doubt even a branch came off a tree. And it has been cool and cloudy, but no rain. I was actually kinda bummed that we didn't get any rain -- it all stayed to the East of us. I took these pictures last night of the clouds from Gustav. It in a weird way it is kinda cool to think that these clouds came all the way from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!
I took these pictures on the way to Paula and Frank's new house! Paula has worked for my Dad for a good 16+ years and she and her husband followed us here to Texas to continue to work for us at the course. They got a house on the other side of town from us and arrived from CA after the long drive (with 4 dogs!) last night. The truck full of their stuff (and some of my Dad's stuff) is due tomorrow and my Dad flew in today to help unload the truck. I think he is only staying a day or two -- I am not even sure! :)
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This morning Lily and I took advantage of the cooler weather and took a 45 minute walk around the neighborhood. We were just going to go to the park, but I decided instead to just keep walking. I needed some exercise and she was content in her stroller. So it was nice to get out. She was enjoying the wind in her face. Initially, it took us 15 minutes to get out the door because a baby lizard, about only an inch and a half long, kept running in the house. I have a fondness for lizards because growing up my grandma's backyard was always full of lizards and I always think of that whenever I see one. Plus they eat the yucky bugs, so in my book that makes lizards great! That being said I did not really want one living in the house and I also did not want the cats to get it and kill it. So I captured it in a cup and freed it about 10 feet from the front door. The little turd, ran right back in the house and I had to catch and free him all over again!

After our walk, I decided to finally attempt to get some weeds pulled in the front. This has been on our to-do list for some time now, so you can imagine how bad it has gotten. I was even more motivated to clean up the front yard after a mom in my playgroup yesterday referred to our house as the one with all the nice landscaping. I was like, it used to be the one with the nice landscaping; now it is the one with the weed farm in the front! Why did we have to get the house on the block with the most intricate landscaping?? That sucks. So Lily and I went out to pick weeds. I was a little apprehensive about how she would act once we got outside. The yard is on a slope, so she can't really play in the grass and I didn't want to keep chasing her up and down the sidewalk. First I brought her out in her stroller and she just sat and watched me for 10 minutes or so while I weeded the bottom half of the yard. Then she started to get a little fussy, so I let her out and she just stood there on the walkway like a good girl. She even started to help! She would "pull weeds" or leaves off bushes (close enough) and put them in the bag for me. Here in Texas you have to have special brown bags for yard waste. You get them at Lowes or Home Depot and then set them out with the trash and they pick them up -- not sure why we just don't have a third trash can for yard waste (like in CA)? Anyway, she was so cute helping me out and having fun too! And I actually got most of the front yard done! But we had to come in once Lily, who got a little too adventurous, tried to walk through the flower bed and slipped. She got dirt on her hand and knee and freaked out!!

She hates being dirty!

I nearly filled a whole bag! Of course, sometimes I am not sure what are weeds and what was planted on purpose -- so I may have pulled some plants as well. Oops!

So that has been our busy morning!

A new playgroup

We had our neighborhood playgroup today. It was really nice to meet some of the people in our subdivision. It is amazing how many kids there are around Lily's age! Apparently they have 3 playgroups to accommodate everyone! Where have all these kids been hiding all summer? Probably at the pool. I never made it to the pool! Anyway, of course most of them recently moved here from CA (I am so not kidding -- the host was from Valencia and the family that lives 5 houses down from us came from Fremont). I think they should just start referring to Texas as East California!! Of course another mom was from Indiana and I actually did meet someone from Texas -- so real Texans do exist! Lily was scared at first because they had a golden retriever who was not happy being in his crate. Every time the poor dog barked Lily's grip around my neck got tighter and tighter!
Caren, the lady who hosted playgroup this morning, has a daughter who is 12 days older than Lily (and half the size -- she is tiny). They just started taking the Mommy and Me gymnastic classes at WOGA (where the Olympic gymnastics train) and is trying to get me to sign up too. I am totally interested, but don't want to do both gymnastics AND Gymboree, so I think we may do Gymboree for a few more months and then look into switching. Lily is slowly making strides at Gymboree and I don't want to mess with that. Plus we made a friend there and have plans to hang out next week! I also made tentative plans to hang out with Caren and her daughter, so the kids can get to know each other one on one. Her daughter is kinda shy also. Lily's social calendar is keeping me busy!!

Chip did actually take the morning off -- he had a doctor's appointment and then got to relax and play XBox while Lily and I were at playgroup. I am pretty sure it was the first time he has ever been home alone in our new house. . . but come to think of it, I have never been alone here either since I am never without Lily. But (just as I thought would happen) he had to run into work "for just a couple hours". Famous last words. I doubt the course will be too busy today since it is windy. Super windy. The outskirts of Hurricane Gustav are here and while we haven't gotten any rain yet, it has been really windy all morning.

Ok, I have to get back to work . . . here are a zillion pictures just for you Linda of Lily playing in the backyard last night! :)

Where's your belly button?

Trying to soak me with water. She did a good job too!

Happy Labor Day!

You're probably thinking that since there was no blog entry yesterday we've been out having a busy and fun Labor Day weekend. Sorry to disappoint -- there was no entry yesterday because we haven't been doing anything exciting and I had nothing to blog about! :) It seemed like we were busy all last week, so Friday I just wanted to stay home and relax. That always sounds nice in theory, but it is never relaxing since it is so hard to keep Lily entertained at home all day. She gets so bored, I mean I don't blame her -- she only has about 1/2 million toys! Saturday we stayed home in the morning, but then ran a few errands after her nap to keep her entertained. And yesterday we went to the market in the morning and Chip came home from work "early" (5pm after working a 10 hour day). We always get so excited when Chip comes home "early." Lily wouldn't leave him alone -- she so wanted to play with daddy. But poor Chip was so exhausted, he could barely move. He played for awhile and then crashed on the couch the rest of the evening. He swears he is going to take the day off tomorrow (can't recall the last time he took a day off -- it has been over a month), but we'll see how that goes. I knew he was going to try to come home early last night, so I bought some of his favorite foods to make for dinner. I was trying to be nice since he has been working so hard lately and is so stressed out -- so I made him a coffee cake, his favorite!! It was so yummy, Lily even ate a lot of it. (note to Mom, she also ate and liked your famous breaded turkey!) So that was kinda nice -- I don't often get to make dinner since he gets home so late. And while cooking is so not my favorite thing to do, it is fun every once in awhile! Especially now that I actually have counter top space! Makes things much easier!

Before dinner Lily and I went to play outside since she was dying to get out and daddy needed some time to relax. It was the perfect evening -- I didn't want to come inside. There was a nice breeze and the temperature had to be in the low to mid 70s. I just wanted to lounge with a book outside and take a nap. It was so nice!! So here are some photos of Lily playing in the water. I am sure you are thinking to yourself, 'Vicki, you need to learn to edit your photos'. Let me tell you -- I did edit!! I took literally hundreds of photos, and these were among my favorite!! :)

She was having a blast filling the cup with water and throwing it on Mommy. I didn't complain, it was fun!

Lily loves to splash!




She also really enjoys drinking the water and sucking on her wet hands. It is kinda gross since even though I rinse out the table before each use, it is so not clean. I try to get her to stop, but the only way to really get her to stop is to go inside. She is a very stubborn kid.

It looks like she is playing Peek-A-Boo, but she is really just wiping her wet hands all over her face. She really likes the water. She screams when it is time to get out of the bath.

Throwing more water at mommy

More splashing