Easter

I'm playing catch-up after being a bad blogger this week. It's been a crazy week trying to take care of the final planning for Kathryn's 1st birthday party as well as anticipating the arrival of my parents and brother all while balancing working during the day.

So I just put a mish-mash of Easter photos together below.

Easter morning wake-up!

The wreath outside of Kathryn's door (so the Easter Bunny would know where to come)

1st Easter basket! No, all that candy is not for her, just as a treat for us filler! You can't see most of the stuff, but it was filled with infant appropriate gifts, too :)

Forget the infant friendly crap

I WANT CHOCOLATE! (naturally, this was the first thing she went for)

This girl loves animals

Even the stuffed kind. She went right in for a kiss.

We did let her have a tiny piece of a Peep

It looks like somebody wouldn't mind having Peeps for breakfast everyday...

After a much more nutritious breakfast...

...it was time to get into her brand new Easter outfit from nana.

Cute

We headed over to Easter lunch and had a Easter egg hunt. I didn't think Kathryn would think much of it at 11 months, but as it turns out, this girl was born to hunt Easter eggs.

After E. J. showed her that she needed to put the egg in the bag, she was picking the eggs up, throwing them in the bag and was ready for the rest!

Easter weather in Texas

We had a great Easter and hope you did as well!

Now on to some more cleaning. T minus 4ish hours until my family arrives. YAY!

Preparing

"Preparing" is the theme around here.

Between Easter, my parents and brother visiting, and Kathryn's 1st birthday all within a week, that means lots to get done around here.

We took advantage of both of us having Good Friday off and ran some errands in town today (although after we got home, I immediately starting writing another grocery list).

I did a little bit of Easter baking tonight. Even Kathryn could tell there were goodies in the oven.


Just ask "do you want to flip" and this is what you get...


Oddly enough, just like Kathryn, our house has been turned upsidedown as well.

It's amazing how easy it is to go from a clean house to a complete dump.

So now it's time to head to bed and get to more preparing bright and early.

There's nothing like the motivation of visitors to really get you to do some serious cleaning...especially when those visitors are your parents...even more so when it's your mom, whose floors are probably cleaner than my counter tops.

P.S. This is my first post done completely from my phone. Curious how it turned out?!

Weekend Recap

We had a fairly uneventful weekend. Thankfully, E. J. didn't work (that much) this weekend, so we took a trip into town.

First, we stopped at a neighborhood park in town and Kathryn tried out a swing for the first time. Eh, she wasn't the biggest fan of it. Maybe in a few months she'll appreciate it some more.

While in town, we took advantage of a gift certificate to a tasty Mexican restaurant. You don't have to ask me twice if I want Mexican food!

Attempting to draw...although at this age, she found it more fun

to throw the crayons on the floor, but she did make some markings on the paper

Like mother like daughter - loves her beans!

We made a quick run to the grocery store after dinner. Kathryn checked out some merchandise. (She loves shaking pill bottles and dancing to the noises they make)

(Random sighting) Only in Texas can you find a child's bike license plate with this name on it:

Sunday was all about getting things done around the house, while this little girl played...

(I die over her cowgirl boots and this skirt)

and relaxed. She's just like me, loves her back scratched!

And just like that it's already Monday again. We're still hoping for rain. Only 2 counties in Texas have not been affected by the fires, leaving 252 counties affected in some way. The Texas Governor, Rick Perry, requested a Major Disaster Declaration for the State due to the extreme dry and windy conditions, along with many fires. Fingers crossed we have lots of steady rain soon!

Bright and early - ready to start her week full of playing, eating, and naps. Ah, that's the life :)

Fires

On our way home from work today, there was that extra excitment within each of us since it was FRIDAY!! Do the lyrics "everybody's workin' for the weekend" ring a bell? Um, yes!

As we were getting closer to home, there was a distinct haze in the air, almost eerie. It looked a bit like smog, but seeing as we're not in a big city, that didn't make sense. We didn't see billowing smoke from a fire, either.

As it turns out, the strong winds were blowing in smoke from the tragic West Texas fires (500 miles away from us), which you may have heard about on the news.

All of Texas is dealing with a severe drought. The combination of drought conditions along with fierce winds has proved to be quite devistating for people living in West Texas.

When we got home we went outside to check it out some more. Needless to say, we're very lucky that we haven't had to deal with any dangerous fires ourself.

The camera doesn't do it complete justice, but there was definitely a yellow-ish depressing haze, along with a smokey scent, almost like a pipe...

And then on to some shots of the little one.

The signature move that she inherited from my side of the family. A few of us, including myself do this nose-to-lip thing.

Going in for a big kiss

Love this face

In the meantime, hoping for rain soon over all of Texas...

Around here

It's amazing how much more you appreciate the little moments once you have a child. We are no exception.

E. J. usually gives me a call during the day to see how I'm doing. Saying that we have a "conversation" may be a bit of an overstatement if he's driving around due to the interruptions on the police radio in the background as police officers and dispatch call out codes and calls.

Talking to him with the radio in the background is an art form, well at least for me. C'mon, you have to admit that it's kinda neat and distracting at the same time to hear the crazy things that are happening right as we're speaking.

But between the noise of the radio and catching up on the news of the day, one of us inevitably asks one another, "what do you think Bug is doing right now?". That's when the other will say something like "smiling", "dancing", "playing", or "just being simply sweet".

That same conversation normally happens on our way home too. We almost always carpool now-a-days and when we get close to home we start up again: "I can't wait to see Bug". We then always go into talking about how cute, special, sweet, and every other descriptive word we can think of her. What can I say, we love our little girl!

After a long day of work, I would really love to just throw off my heels, take a shower, put my sweats on and have well-balanced delicious dinner magically appear on the table.

Since my budget spreadsheet doesn't seem to allow room for a live-in maid and chef, I'm not banking on that happening anytime soon. But what I do love is feeding and watching Kathryn eat her dinner or any meal as we eat ours.

4/9/11 Ready to eat breakfast

4/9/11 fresh strawberries :)

Last night after finishing a messy dinner, she ate some Multi grain Cheerios for dessert

I love hearing her make "crunching" noises now that she has some front teeth!

Kicking back after a big dinner

And lastly, feeding herself a bottle before bed while cuddling up with dad.

Around here, things may be busy, but everything is just right.

Chompers

With Kathryn getting new teeth left and right, it's now time to make sure those new pearly whites stay that way.

And as it turns out, our little girl loves dental hygiene.

The tools

E. J. brushing K's teeth for the first time a few weeks ago.

And yet another milestone made it's way into our house..

Sigh.

Whoop!

The Texas A&M women's basketball team won the NCAA Championship on Tuesday evening, deeming them the national champions...for the first time ever! Needless to say, it's a pretty big deal around these parts :).

In celebration, Kathryn wore her "Texas A&M Cutie" dress yesterday.

Mischievous little Aggie

No, we don't normally use a pack of diapers and the vacuum cleaner as decorative pieces...

More mischief