Memorial Day Weekend

This past weekend we headed up to Oklahoma to visit Jacob's Mammaw and Papaw. We didn't leave for the trip until after Jacob got off work on Friday, so we didn't arrive at his grandparents house until 3 a.m. that night. Lots of coffee, red bull, and sour skittles and we were golden!

On saturday morning we got up and all went to eat a yummy breakfast at the local Golden Corral. We ate lots of food and Jacob even won Jayda a cute little teddy bear in the claw machine. After breakfast we went over to the Relay for Life garage sale at the bank. Surprisingly enough I found 4 pairs of super cute sandals. They just needed a little cleaning up and wahlaaa, good as new! I was so excited because I was really needing some new dress shoes. We then headed over to the store where Mammaw works at to get a few things. Jayda rode on the penny horse over and over and LOVED it. It's so funny to see her riding it because Jacob said his Papaw used to bring him there when he was a kid and fill his pockets up with pennies and he'd just ride and ride while his Papaw helped Granny get her groceries. It was really sweet! They were even giving away ice cream samples at the store, so guess who wanted some?? After all the excitement we took Jayda home to take a nap. The boys stayed with her (and napped too) and the girls headed out to find Mammaw a new chair for her sunroom. We looked around at several different furniture stores and found the perfect one at our last stop. It is super comfy and really pretty! The boys had to come meet us to pick it up and then they headed to the casino. That afternoon it started raining so Jayda decided it would be fun to go out and play in the "splash park". I guess it is kinda like the splash park since there is water going everywhere. She had so much fun playing out there jumping in puddles, running around like crazy, and playing with the little girl next door. Who needs water parks when you can just play in the rain (or I suppose a sprinkler would do the trick too)?!

On sunday we hung out most of the day then had a bbq that night. Jacob grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and Mammaw's sister and brother in law came over to enjoy the good food. We had a delicious dinner and fun time hanging out with everyone. After Jayda went to sleep we decided to play Russian Rumy (not sure if that's the right spelling, it's a card game). We didn't really think about how long it would take to play the game and started around 9:30 p.m. Well, we only played 1 game and didn't even finish it until 2 a.m.!! Whew! It was a really fun game to play, but next time we'll have to start playing a little earlier!

Monday morning came way to soon and we drug ourself out of bed around 9 a.m. We got all of our stuff ready and loaded the cars down and headed out around noon. We drove to Huntsville to pick up the pups at my parents house, eat dinner, and bathe Jayda, then continued on to our house. We finally got home last night at 11:30 p.m., thank goodness! We had a great weekend and so much fun spending time with our family!! Thanks Oma and Oupa for taking care of our other 2 babies while we were gone!!

Riding the "Yee-haw".


Jayda enjoying her free sample, yummy!


Jayda sitting with Mammaw in her new glider.


"Splash Park!!!!!"


Playin' in the rain.

Wordless Wednesday...

Just another day at the zoo, so fun!

My almost 2 year old!!

This past weekend we had the pleasure of getting to play with my cousin Ronnie's little baby Andrew. They came in to Houston for the weekend and on saturday the 3 of us went over to visit with him. He was soooo sweet and cute and it was so fun getting to play with a little one! Jayda had fun with Andrew too and she kept wanting to "hold, hold!" him. It was so cute!

Me and Jayda with little Andrew.


Well Jayda isn't quite 2 yet, she is actually still 21 months old and will turn 22 months old on May 24th, but I wanted to go ahead and do a post about how little miss is doing since so many things have changed over the past few months. I really cannot believe that she is almost 2! Two years old sounds so old! I feel like she should still be a baby! It really is crazy how fast time flies. Everyone always says "they grow up so fast", but it doesn't really sink in until you have one of your own and then you realize, oh yeah, they really do grow up SO fast! Jayda is so fun at this age and we have been doing all kinds of fun stuff, adventures, trips and new things.

Around 20 months she started putting 2 words together. She also started picking up different sounds that she hadn't said before like "i", "e", "g", "k". Funny enough one of her first combination of words was "mama eyebrow". Not sure where that came from, really I have no idea! One day I was changing her and she looked up at me and pointed to my eyebrow and said it. I was so excited for her, which made her all excited so she kept saying it over and over. Then she moved on to "dada eyebrow". Some of the other words she liked to put together were "Jayda's car", "Jayda's house", "Dada's truck" etc. She now has been putting several words together and will copy what you say. The other day at dinner she even said a complete sentence on her own without any prompting. We were so happy for her we started clapping at the table and she knew she had really done something. Now that she can tell us what she wants or doesn't she isn't having as many temper tantrums, hallelujah!

She is such a ham and loves to get attention.

Jayda is miss In-de-pen-dent!! She has to do everything on her own and does not want help from mommy or daddy. Eventually after trying something for a while without success she may say "mama help". Her latest thing is putting on her own shoes. Often she'll put them on the wrong foot and I'll have to help her switch them around, it's pretty funny.

We have been able to start reasoning (some) with her. Like, "If you don't get in your car seat, you won't get to watch Nemo", or "If you don't put your hat on we can't go to the park". I guess this also could be called bribery, but whatever it is it is finally working! Before if you would tell her these things it wouldn't matter and she'd pay no attention. Now, she understands what we're saying and it helps us get things done around here, thank goodness!!

She still sleeps in her pack n play (whatever works right?), wears a size 5 diaper and 24 months - 2T clothes.

Potty training is still that...in training mode, we're working on it.

She LOVES the water! She loves to play in the water, swim in it, drink it, whatever it is, she can not get enough of water time. I'm so excited for this summer so that we can go to the pool all the time and then mommy can have lots of quiet time while missy takes lonnnnng naps, woo hoo!

Jayda loves the movie Finding Nemo. I have never seen her sit and watch an entire movie (or almost), but she does with Nemo. She absolutely loves it! I think her b-day party this year will be all Nemo!

She loves spending time with her daddy. On the weekends Jayda and daddy do everything together because she is SO excited to see him. It is so sweet and they have a lot of fun together. On the weekends she always wakes up and calls for "daddddyyy" over and over.

Jayda loves to play with the big kids. Whenever we go anywhere where there is kids she doesn't want to play with the kids her age, she wants to play with the big kids. She already thinks she's a big girl!

She has started saying the prayer at dinner ("God is good...) and can almost say it on her own! It is the cutest thing ever!!

She loves to play with stickers.

She is a sweethart and will always give you hugs and kisses and say "Wuv youuuu". What a sweet girl!

Jayda LOVES to be outside! She hates coming in when we've been outside.

She loves popsicles and ice cream and would probably eat them for every single meal if I let her. What can I say, she got her mama's sweet tooth!

She rides her big wheel all over the house ALL the time. Whenever she wakes up from her nap the first thing she says is "bike?" because she wants to know where it's at so she can go and climb on. She really thinks it's funny to run into mommy with it. We've really had to work on going "around mommy". Whew, she drives me crazy with that thing sometimes!

Jayda loves to hide under blankets. Just give her a blanket and she'll be entertained for hours. She gets underneath the sleeping bag, blanket, mommy's comforter etc. and then wants you to come and find her. She will do this forever if you keep playing the game! She always says "kak, kak, kak??" for "dark" whenever she wants to play this game, she's crazy!

I'm sure there's more, so I'll probably keep adding onto this list...

She loves to run......everywhere! Pretty much everywhere she goes she has to run to it. Like to put her shoes on, to the bath tub, at the park, to the table to eat, all over the house, outside on the sidewalk, to the car, and you get the point. This girl runs everywhere! So, you can imagine how fun that is for mommy when we're in a parking lot, in a store, restaraunt etc., fun times for sure!

She calls the dogs "ha-nina" for Harley and Nina.

Wordless Wednesday...

Mother's Day Fun + A 5K

This past weekend was filled with lots of fun, flowers, presents, getting up early and running a 5k. It started when we left our house friday night around 8 p.m. to head to huntsville for the weekend. We arrived later on that night at Jacob's parents house and Jayda was sooooo excited to get to Nanna and Pawpaw's house. So, of course she started running around like a wild indian. After I put Jayda to sleep I decided that I too should go ahead and go to sleep since I had to wake up the next morning at 4 a.m.! The next morning I got up super duper early and met my mom so that we could drive to Tyler for the Race for the Cure. It was an early morning and a long drive, but we finally made it to Tyler around 7:40. We got out of the car, ran over to the porta pottys (since we both had to pee extremely bad), ran up the hill to the starting line, said "see ya at the finish", and the gun went off to start the race. Whew, we barely made it! The course was beautiful! It went through an old neighborhood with big, gorgeous houses and a red brick road. Despite the 100% humidity and all of the hills throughout the course, I managed to finish
1st in my age group! Woo hoo, I was so excited! I think it may of been the fastest 5k that I've ever run (22:33), and if it wasn't it was sure close. I definitely surprised myself and it was nice to know that I can still "move it, move it" as Jayda would say. I was also so proud of my mom. She got 1st place Master Surivor + 2nd place overall survivor. She did so great! After the race we looked around for a while, got some free stuff and food and then headed to the most awesome restaurant called the Potpouri House. On a side note if you ever go to Tyler, TX, you HAVE to stop and eat at this place! I can't say enough about how amazing their food is! My mom and I got the soup, salad and potatoe bar so we got to try a little bit of everything and it was all so good! The atmosphere is so nice with lighted trees all around you. Then, the gift shop at this place is amazing. You can find something for everyone in there! We spent quite a long time looking around and finally decided we better leave before we bought out the whole store! So, we headed back to huntsville. It was so nice to get back home and see miss Jayda! I had been missing her so much, but I knew that she was having fun with her Daddy and Nanna. As soon as I got home Jayda wanted to wear my medal from the race. She was walking around cheesing with it on! After we got home Jayda left to go get Finding Nemo (her favorite movie ever that we have been renting from the library for the past month) with Nanna and Daddy and I got all ready and went to get a pedicure. It was sooo nice to have some time to myself. Peace and quiet, oh how nice! Thanks so much to Daddy and Nanna for giving me this time to go and have fun and enjoy myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it! On saturday night we went ahead and did a Mother's Day celebration with Jacob's mom since they had Rockets tickets for Mother's Day afternoon. Jacob's dad grilled some delicious steak and chicken and we had a big feast, opened presents, and celebrated with brownies and ice cream, yum!! Later that night we went over to my parents house so that we could celebrate mothers day with my mom on sunday. On sunday morning my mom and I went running together (that was a bit rough seeing that every muscle in my legs was very sore!) and then came back to get the rest of the gang. We all then went up to the duck pond to feed the ducks and play (now a mother's day tradition since we did the same thing last mothers day). Jayda LOVED feeding the ducks! She thought it was so funny to throw the crackers out at the ducks. We played around the park for a while then went to get drinks at sonic since it was so hot! Later that afternoon my mom and I opened our Mother's Day gifts and enjoyed a nice meal prepared by Oupa. Thanks for dinner dad, it was great! I had a WONDERFUL Mother's Day weekend! I am so blessed to have an amazing mom & mom-in-law, and to be a mommy, especially miss Jayda Michelle's mommy! Thank you Jacob for a wonderful weekend!

Cheesing with mommy's medal!


Mom and I + a little munchkin with our medals after we got home.


Jayda supposedly helping Nanna open her manicure/pedicure gift certificate (but really playing instead).


All 3 of us at the duck pond on Mother's Day.


Feeding the ducks.


Oupa and Jayda being silly at the park.


Jayda helping Oma open her new martin bird house.


Me opening my mother's day present.


My new entry way table from Oma! Thanks so much mom, I love it!!

Sweet Summatime!

Well, it may not quite be summertime yet, but me and Jayda have already been doing all kinds of summer activities. It seems like around here once you hit May, the heat is on! It has already been getting pretty hot around here and the humidity has been about 100%. So, I figured we'd go ahead and start the summer activites like eating lots and lots of popsicles, playing at the splash park, swimming at the neighborhood pool, visiting the blue bell factory, etc., etc. Nothing too exciting has been going on around here, just lots of hanging out and playing around. Hope everyone is doing well and gearing up for summer, yay!!

All dressed up for Lourdes' birthday party. Too bad she pulled her pig tails out on the way to the party!


The birthday girl all ready to celebrate at her 21st surprise party.


Jayda having a blast playing at Dave and Busters with Daddy and Nanna.


Mommy and Jayda with the Blue Bell truck.


Mommy and Jayda posing with the Blue Bell statue.


"Nummmmyyyy" as Jayda would say.


Buddies eating their ice cream together, how sweet!


Playing around in the Blue Bell hat.


First splash park experience of the season. She LOVES this place! It's so nice because for one it's right by our house so we can go anytime, but also if the pool isn't open, I can throw her swimsuit on and run up to the splash park for a little while.


Swimming at the pool for the first time this year! She LOVES the pool! She had fun in the big pool and loved the baby pool too. She thought it was so cool that she could walk around on her own in the baby pool. She kept saying "Whoa, whoa, whoa... over and over while she walked around, silly girl!