Friends!

We got together with friends the other night (thanks again, Criders!) and it was so fun to see Whitney, David, Mylie and Coley who were in town from Dallas. It was also fun to be with Fran and Guy - even though Fran cheated and got off bedrest to come. We couldn't help but laugh as what used to be calm, lingering dinners has turned into "no, you have to eat your vegetables" and "don't throw that on the floor, please" and "please share that toy with so-and-so" all night long. How quickly times change! Below is a photo of all the kiddos (minus Livvy, who had already gone to bed.) Any day now Grayson Guy Mays will be joining the crew!

From the left: Mylie and Coley, Kaylynn and John David, Avery and Lincoln. We were lucky to get one photo of them before they all squirmed off the couch!

Playing around the house

One thing I adore about Lincoln is his grin - he is such a happy little guy. He makes us smile all the time and is such a blessing. Now that he's starting to walk more (still only about 6-8 steps at once, but progress nonetheless, he likes to be outside and if we aren't careful, he has the door open to the backyard in a flash. Here are some recent photos of him cracking us up when we were just hanging around the house.

Halloween and the Pumpkin Patch, and FCCC Fall Festival

These pictures are from the fall festival at church - each grade in the youth group is in chare of a booth, and "our kids" ... (the 12th graders) had a great one. They did "whack a mole" and it was pretty funny to see them pop up and down like a life-size version of the arcade game. Here are a few of them.

Berkely, Amy, and Ben...wearing the appropriate "brown" for a fashionable mole...

Jake is WAY excited about whack a mole . . .

Anna...

Hillary...


And, Bryan and Brice, and Lincoln and Andrew. On this particular evening, Lincoln refused to wear his costume. But, Lincoln was supposed to be a dragon for Halloween...but in reality it was more like the body of a dragon since he detested wearing the hood portion of his costume. (And, it was 80 degrees here for the fall festivals, so who can blame him?) I think this is the only picture we have of him in the full costume where he's not crying. This was taken at his school Halloween parade.

We took Lincoln to a pumpkin patch and farm this past weekend; he enjoyed the pumpkins but did not enjoy feeding the goats! Even though it was 82 degrees, being around the pumpkins sort-of made it feel like fall...

Hurricane - induced Road Trip

Well, it has been too long since I've posted, but we have been busy! Since we were without power for about a week following the hurricane, we decided to take a little road trip to Dallas, Oklahoma, and Amarillo. We had a great time!

First, the three of us headed off to Dallas to spend the wekend with Michael and Karri.
Lincoln LOVED these fur pillows that they had in their living room

On Saturday afternoon we met up with our dear friends Shane and Abbie Melton, and sweet little Macie Melton (who is 4 months older than Lincoln.) It was so fun to catch up, and to get the kiddos together - I think Lincoln was a little smitten with Macie (what guy wouldn't love a girl in a pink Tony Romo jersey?) but he especially liked playing with Macie's toys, which are apparently MUCH cooler than the toys he owns. Who knows, maybe if they go to ACU they'll be friends one day. And actually, we'd be totally fine with going ahead and arranging a marriage...)

And now for the birthday celebration...sortof. So much for all of my planning for a big 1st party and an outdoor brunch. (Which was to occur the day of the hurricane...in our wreck of a backyard, with no fence. Needless to say, it was canceled. Sadly, I didn't get to try and make one of those 3-D basketball cakes (which, if you know me, I was really excited about; I had already read the directions like 20 times) and unfortunately, our plans of celebrating with all of the grandparents, and great-grandparents, and friends also didn't happen. Lots of flights had to be canceled and plans were changed at the last minute--which turned out to be the smart move.) So, maybe for his second birthday. It was fun to celebrate with "Uncle" Mikey and "Aunt" Karri (because 2nd-cousin Michael doesn't really have a good ring to it) a week later. Perhaps I can save the sports-themed party favors for next year...will a ridiculous amount of brunch food last that long?? We have enough muffin mix to last a year. Anyway, I digress...here is the chronicle of Linc's first cupcake experience.

READY...SET....

GO!

"Hmm...what do I do with this?? It's squishy!"

"Wait...I can EAT IT!"

" Look at me, they said I looked like a smurf--wait, what'a smurf? Is that one of those OLD cartoons my mom and dad watched? So passe'...everyone knows Baby Einstein the thing these days..."

"I really don't see the big deal - it's just icing. Why do mom and dad insist on pictures of EVERYTHING??"

"No, I don't need a bath!!"

What I didn't think about is that the blue dye in the icing stained everything. It left stains on the floor, his skin, his nails, his hair, ...even after exfoliating his sweet baby skin with bath and body works exfoliator, his little knee caps were a tinge of light blue for about a week. Sorry about the mess, Karri and Mikey.

Seriously, mom, exfoliation is totally unnecessary...blue is totally in right now."

Then came a few presents. "A toy that makes animal noises! My favorite thing!" This birthday thing is all right.."

After Dallas, Andrew had to fly to Miami for work (poor him :) so Lincoln and I drove to Ardmore, OK to visit my grandparents for the afternoon. Lincoln enjoyed hanging out on their front porch, and I know my Nonny and Papa loved spending some time with him. (It was funny to see how much Linc enjoyed playing on the porch and swinging on the swing; my brother and I used to do that for hours when we were little and would visit my grandparents.)

After our quick trip to Oklahoma, we continued driving to my parent's house. They had a great time hanging out and playing with Lincoln. We "re-celebrated" his birthday and took Linc to the Amarillo zoo. My mom, in true former-preschool teacher and preschool minister fashion, has the BEST toys...which Lincoln loved playing with all week. He also loved trying to snuggle with their dog, Yukon (who I think Lincoln equated with one of his stuffed animals. Thankfully, Yukon was okay with it.)

Our afternoon at the zoo was great. Because the zoo is TINY, the fences are very close-up, letting you get VERY close to the animals, like the Lion (below.) But the funniest part was that Linc, as he was looking at the lion, pointed to him and confidently said "DOG." Then, he also declared that the longhorn, donkey, and bear were also all "dogs"...this shows me that we may need to work on his animal recognition skills. But at least he didn't call them "mom."

And, to top off our trip, we got to hang out with my dear friend Leann and precious Jaida Grace (who is 4 months older than Lincoln. As I type this, I realize that Lincoln met lots of little ladies on this roadtrip!) It is so much fun that Lea and I got to have children at about the same time - a very cool blessing. While we were hanging out we kept laughing, as our conversation now centers on "mommy things" like"developmental milestones" and "how to balance a career and motherhood" - topics we never expected to get to discuss with each other! Watching Jaida made me excited for all of the neat things Linc may start doing over the coming months...but also made me realize life is about to get much busier!

Hurricane Ike

As I post this, we are still without power at our house. Thankfully, though, we only suffered some tree damage, lost part of our fence, and lost the spark arrestor off of our chimney. If this was only a Category 2, that made it all the way to Sugar Land, I'd hate to see a Category 4.

The bigger issue with our neighborhood is that a tornado went down Lexington Blvd, though between Williams Trace and Dulles. Here are some photos of it's aftermath that we took on our way over to my brother's house. Not sure how long the power will be down, as some of the poles on Lexington were snapped in half.

Trying to learn to walk

Linc is getting pretty close to walking. He stands up, sometimes takes a step, then decides it's much more efficient to just crawl. He was our entertainment the other night while waiting for Hurricane Ike to strike Sugar Land.

Disney World

Andrew had a conference in Orlando last week, so Linc and I joined him for a long weekend. We went to the Magic Kingdom one day. We took the obligatory picture in front of the castle and just abandoned all pretense of coolness, and had a great time! (Regardless of the liability issues that might ensue, Disney allows one year olds to ride on a parent's lap for almost all of the rides at the Magic Kingdom - flying Dumbo elephants and all. And, they made it really easy for strollers. Disney has this baby thing down; I'm glad we picked that particular park to visit.) Linc seemed like he enjoyed it - he smiled and laughed at everything, although he'll have no memory of ever being there :) He especially liked the play area in Mickey's "toon town" where he crawled up the slide, and then slid down (He would turn around and slide on his stomach almost before we could catch him...we are realizing he is becoming quite the little dare devil. We're going to have our hands full pretty soon!) He also liked chewing on the 3-D glasses used in one show...but didn't exactly enjoy wearing them. He giggled through the Haunted Mansion and loved the Jungle Cruise ride. The only ride he didn't like was the "Snow White and the 7 Dwarves Adventure" ... apparently, the Dwarves scared the crud out of him. There was a ton of screaming....the poor folks behind us.