Game Day-Birthday

Bradley's birthday was this past weekend.  We were suppose to go to the lake for his birthday but one of the dogs was sick and we just couldn't put her in the car for three hours.  We figured this out late Friday afternoon and I scrambled around and threw together a small surprise party for Bradley.  I think the biggest surprise might have been his birthday gift-a Big Green Egg.  I have been looking at these for him for a while and I thought his 30th birthday was a great time to get it!  As I am writing this we have owned the Egg for three days and he has cooked on it each day!  I have to say that I think it is pretty cool.  

Bradley cooked wings for his party while we watched football.  He has also cooked us some burgers and a whole chicken.  We are going to try pizza later in the week.  He told me that he is never going to use the other grill again!

 So the birthday party was on game day-the first game day of the year.  I have missed football so much!  I so enjoy our lazy Saturdays around the house, cooking great food and watching football.  I have to say that I don't know if Emma has bought into our game day routine yet.  She was playing in her room and I was picking up her play room so I turned on a game on the TV in the playroom.  I happened to leave the room and left the game on.  I little while later Emma came running to me and telling me the TV in the playroom was broken.  She said that she turned it on and off and on and off and football just kept coming on!  Guess she hasn't learned to love the game yet...however, I do make sure she looked presentable for game day. or at least I tried.  I put out these four choices for her to pick from and I am happy to report that she did pick the Ole Miss Megaphone dress-she calls it the screamer dress.  However, my guest will tell you that my daughter ran around in her swimsuit most of the day.  We had told her that she could go swimming but the pool was dirty and it just didn't get clean in time.

 The youngest member of the family did participate in the game day attire!  She has fewer choices for Saturdays and she can't speak up as to what she wants to wear yet so I guess whoever dresses her on Saturday gets to pick who she will cheer for.  Not as many choices because her mom has not bought her any UT stuff to wear!

More beach

Here are the beach pictures from our cameras.  Random pictures from different events but still some memories just the same.  The one thing about having a nice camera is that I didn't want to take it to the beach.  I could have gotten some great pictures at the water but you know how when you go to the beach every thing that goes gets covered in sand.  I knew no matter how hard I tried my camera would still get sand in it and I just want to be extra careful.

Emma and her dad had a lot of fun at Baytown.

The sunroom at the house quickly became the toy room

 I am pretty sure this was after the first day.  The first day in that we only spent about an hour at the beach.  There were many night when Emma asked if it was bedtime at like 4:30.  The beach wore her out!

 Boardwalk at Baytown

Anna Claire was already asleep in her carseat during these next two pictures.  Emma was being a trooper and taking some pictures but she was ready for bed too!

Anna Claire lately

Anna Claire is now 7 months old and she is everywhere!  She quickly became mobile and can pretty much get where she wants.  She would much rather furniture surf while standing to crawling.  In fact, she doesn't really crawl in the traditional way.  She has a half crawl half walk kinda thing going on.  It is so weird to watch but it gets her where she wants to go!  

We started eating baby foods and she loves them.  Really the only thing we have found that she doesn't like is green peas and I really can't blame her!  Still no teeth yet but I don't really mind because then I don't have to deal with the teething yet.  This past weekend we had someone bring a fruit tray over for the ballgames and I threw the leftover fruit in the food processor and she loved getting some other fruits-she got strawberries and watermelon that she has never had!

We have some babbling going on but no real words yet.  She says something that sounds like ma ma sometimes and also I have heard something that sounds like emma.  I think one of those two things will be her first words.  I going to put my money on emma-she loves her sister!  I see her crawling down the hall just trying to keep up with her all the time. 

Anna Claire has gotten to be a good sleeper lately.  We usually get between 11 and 12 hours a night.  That could have something to do with the oatmeal we give her before bed.  When we went on vacation she got way off on her sleep and was waking up in the middle of the night.  It took us about a week to get back on schedule but we are back now.  You just don't realize what getting up for just 45 minutes in the middle of the night does to you the next day.

Anna Claire is enjoying be back at school.  This fall she has about 8-10 kids in her class, compared to the 2 this summer.  I think she really likes all of the activity going on in her room.  Every morning when we put her down she crawls right to the kids sitting on the floor and usually tries to steal something from them.  I guess she is probably learning that from her sister.

No stats this month...we will go back to the doctor at 9 months.

Singing in the Rain

I am catching up with all of my pictures and making sure I get them on the blog.  These date back to the beginning of August.  I will say that August was a crazy month for us.  Emma was out of school the whole month so she had different babysitters every week.  I think she loved it.  She woke up everyday later than usual and then got to swim most days-what is not to love!  

I wish I could remember what she was singing during these pictures but I can't.  I am sure it was something loud and all of the neighbors would have been able to hear had they been home!

First Day at our New School

Emma started a new school this past Thursday.  She was super excited to go to her "big girl school".  We went and got new shoes-see below!  As you can imagine these shoes go with alot of our clothes-not!

There are 16 kids in her new room and her new teacher's name is Ms. Peggy.  They even have a class hamster named Jellybean.

Ready to go in on our first day!

The Beach...from the iPhone

If we are Facebook friends you have already seen these pictures.  However, my time is super limited this week and this might be my only chance to blog.  I wanted to go ahead and get some of our beach pictures up on here.  We just got back from spending a week in Destin had so much fun.  I will say that vacations have a whole new meaning with kids.  Gone are the days of sleeping till noon, sitting in a chair on the beach and eating a relaxing dinner.  Vacations with kids involve getting up early, building sandcastles and eating dinner at home some nights because the kids are so tired the fall asleep before you can get to dinner.
I wouldn't trade my new vacations for anything.  Emma has been so excited to go to the beach and she had a blast! Hearing her talk about all the fun she had made it all worthwhile.

 Emma has been using the camera on our phones and I guess she took this picture when we were in the car.

 No vacation is complete without a trip to Chick Fil A...and of course after that we went to Target!

 Shopping at the Outlets one day

 I had to go and get Anna Claire a second swim shirt because her other one was too small.  The only one I could find was a boy shirt.  People kept calling her a boy while she was wearing it.

I will tell you this little girl was super happy to get out of her carseat after that nine hour drive home!

and this is what our kitchen looked like when we unloaded the car.  It took a lot of stuff to take this family of four to the beach!!

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

This time we got a whole book read!