The Long Road Home

Our visit to the Cove served it's purpose, which was to tire out the girls before our long trip back to Texas. After the girls and Michael got a little nap in we said our tearful goodbyes and loaded up the car for the journey home. We had decided to stop in El Paso for the night on the way back so the journey took longer but was so worth the comfortable horizontal sleep at the Marriott Town Suites. Confession, the reason that I don't mind driving long distances is that I am usually unable to sleep in the car. I do get sleepy but I find it impossible to drift off to real sleep. So I very much enjoyed our stop over in El Paso. So a funny "first" for our girls was that they took their first real shower while at the hotel. Our room didn't have a tub so the girls were super excited to step into the shower and wash like big girls. I took a snapshot of the two of them standing side by side but have to crop it to exclude bare bottoms for the blog. lol.


And after showers it was story time with Daddy before sweet sweet sleep. :-)



On Sunday morning we slept in a little before going downstairs for the continental breakfast. The girls enjoyed trying just about everything but especially liked the yogurt.
After eating we gathered up our belongings and loaded back into the car. Driving in the day time requires more frequent stops for little ones to stretch their legs, potty, and eat. So it was an all day drive and we finally reached home at about 9pm. We always enjoy coming home to happy doggies and were grateful that our friend Shauntae took great care of our furry faced friends during this trip. Thanks again to Brent, Randi, and Brenna for hosting us for a wonderful Thanksgiving week. We had a great time and hope to get together more often for play dates, holidays, and fun adventures.

The Cove

Brent and Rand took us all to this amazing aquatic center in Sierra Vista called the Cove. It is an indoor water and surf park owned by the city and it was the perfect Saturday morning activity to do together as a family with small kiddo's. It has a large shallow pool area that has a beach entry so it's easy for little ones to walk in and out of the water. There were toys such as boats, foam floats, and water pails to keep the kids busy. Also there was a small water slide and fountain that all of the girls braved. The best part about going early was that the facility was only open to families with younger kids, so there wasn't the stress and noise associated with a full park and lively older crowd.

 

Some favorite moments from Sierra Vista

 

Playing outside with cousins and daddies/uncles.

Running and racing.

 Swinging with no risk of kicking little sister or cousin.

 Making fishy faces on the back door and greeting each other.

 Tickling, climbing on, and hugging Uncle Brent.

Doing "cousin hair" on Brenna. She looks so cute.

Tub time. What makes bath time even more fun? Bath time with friends of course. These water babies loved playing with the toys and soapy suds.

Looking at picture books and watching shows together. (Savannah was so excited about Brenna's Disney movie collection. We have nearly all of the Disney books that we read to her but she hadn't had the privilege of seeing the animated classics until now.)

 Coloring Thanksgiving turkey place-mats.

Wearing and then eating black olives.

 

Eating yummy food at JoAnna's former place of employment. 

Brenna's sweet smile and her cute monkey hat.

We had many fun times and have hundreds of pictures to prove it but I'm only putting in a few 

cause a girl's gotta sleep sometimes rather than blog. :-)

Dress Up

My girls absolutely love to play dress up. And they hit the jackpot over at cousin Brenna's house cause Randi had purchased a few Halloween costumes on clearance after the holiday, so there were plenty of fun things to wear/dress up. The funny thing was that it was more like a fashion show because they would put on a costume in Brenna's room and then walk into the living room to show Michael and Uncle Brent. After posing and twirling, then they would return to change and repeat the process again. It was cute and a fun activity for all of the girls.

Thanksgiving Delicacies

Wow, Brent and Randi sure can cook. They prepared amazing meals and desserts for us during our visit but none were quite so succulent and beautiful as the Thanksgiving dinner. Just take a look at that turkey - golden brown on the outside and oh so flavorful and juicy on the inside. I know that I did some damage cause who can turn down hot rolls and this amazing spread?! In the words of Dora the Explorer it was "delicioso!"

Cousin Portraits & Meeting Santa

Randi and I share a lot of hobbies and interests. One of our addictions is taking pictures and/or having portraits taken of our sweet girls so it was a given that we would visit the Sears Portrait studio to have "Cousin Pictures" taken while together. And we couldn't pass up the opportunity to match them, so we headed into the Children's Place the night before to find these cute threads.
The photo shoot itself was hilarious and much like wrangling stray cats, with one girl popping up or making a face constantly. Luckily for us a few adorable shots featuring their true personalities were captured in the wake of our exhausting ordeal.
After our antiperspirant had worn off what could top the experience? Why a picture with Santa at the mall of course! Because it was an early morning in the middle of the week there was NO LINE so we herded our sweet girls over to the man in the red suit.
Savannah is just getting over her fear of Santa and was only okay going to him after I encouraged her to talk about Dora the Explorer. So she climbed up on his lap and in a quiet voice started talking about her favorite thing ever - Dora. And while she talked her picture was taken. Next Brenna sat on Santa's lap and she cautiously eyed him with no expression on her face as she was unsure about the experience. Then I encouraged Lexi to go over to sit in his lap. She wasn't having it. She turned to run away and I scooped her up and set her in his arms. Instantly the tears and cries started in and her little eyes were closed so tight as if she thought if she didn't see him he wouldn't be there. The lady working the camera was I think waiting for a smile cause she just stood there watching the ordeal as a crowd gathered as Randi giggled and I cackled. I did feel bad for the friendly Santa Claus who kept apologizing for making Lexi cry. (I think that his job definitely ranks up there as quite stressful cause he's dealing with traumatizing little ones and pushy parents who want the best picture cheap and fast.) Lastly of course we had to get a shot of the cousins all together and that is when Brenna's waterworks began too. Savannah was at this point probably still thinking of more Dora toys to ask Santa for. :-)

I promise that the tears and cries dried up in no time as I brought the kids to the mall's indoor play area whilst Randi remained waiting on the printouts of the pics. It was a great day with epic moments that were captured on film so that negates any traumatization right?! haha

Finally Meeting Cousin Brenna

Our first day together with the Arizona DeRoest family was all about observation and getting acquainted. My girls are not shy about meeting new people and have no reservations about playing with someone else's toys, so it was kinda humorous to see Savannah exclaim "Brenna we're here to play!" and Brenna trying to figure out just what to do about her cousins who were invading her space, toys, etc. Luckily she didn't mind sharing and appreciated their companionship right away. Our first cousin outing was at the neighborhood park where the girls really bonded together as they explored, climbed, and kicked the soccer ball around. The weather turned surprisingly cold during our visit so most of our outdoor pics feature cute red running noses. lol.

Thanksgiving Road Trip

In July I got a text from my sister Randi. It read "I was thinking about our little girls and was wondering what I could do to try and talk you into coming for a visit? Maybe for Thanksgiving??? Our girls need to play together before they go off to college!"  Well, Michael and I had been talking about how it had been too long since seeing my brother Brent and his wife Randi. AND that we still had not met their little girl Brennalyn who was nearly 16 months at the time of the invite. SO we agreed on a road trip to Sierra Vista for the holiday week. It's a 12 hour drive, which we had initially planned to break up over a couple days on the weekend but Michael had to work in the Austin office on Monday morning so we left that afternoon and drove straight through the night. Lucky for us our kids enjoy traveling and were excited to finally play with cousin Brenna, so the trip was rather easy with them sleeping and/or doing activities the whole time. We made it their house at 5am which I know was rough for them to get up so early but we all crashed soon after and were back on schedule in no time. In fact the girls ended up waking up at about 9:30am and then going down for naps at the same time as Brenna did, so it was great that we were able to enjoy our time together and not through off the system too much. I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father blessed me with such happy easy-going kids so that we can travel to see our family spread out all over. And I'm so grateful for the invitation that we got to spend Thanksgiving in Arizona because we enjoyed every moment with Brenna, Randi and Brent. It was a long haul road trip but worth every mile traveled.

Gillooly Baby Shower/Poker Party

 

We are so lucky to have great friends here in the Austin area. And it was our pleasure to help organize a baby shower for our dear friends the Gillooly family. They are a fun couple with a zest for life and adventure. AND Jeff is an avid poker player. He's no professional but does enjoy a guys night so it seemed the best way to incorporate a couples baby shower was to have a poker theme. Gifts were not necessary and instead everyone was asked to contribute to the pot and then 60% went to the growing family whilst the remaining 40% went to the winning player. It was really a great time. The Berzin's were kind enough to host and run the game plus the scrapbooking table for us ladies. I think that all of those who attended enjoyed themselves and I must admit that I wouldn't mind more activities like this one. Most of all we are excited to meet baby girl Gillooly sometime in January 2011. Congrats to our friends and thanks for all of the fun.

Cousin Hair

Michael's sister Kiki has a little girl who is nearly four years old. She's adorable and has always had a full head of hair that her mom has styled in an assortment of cute ways.
Savannah was born bald and her hair took forever to grow. She has only had hair long enough for pony tails for the past 6 mos. and so sitting still to get her hair styled has been a work in progress. When we went to Kenya in September Savannah saw lots of girls with their hair braided and she referred to their hairstyle as "cousin hair." In fact when we visited the salon in Nairobi we were hoping that she would sit still for the stylist to do braids for her too but she refused to cooperate and we didn't want to traumatize her! lol.
Since returning I've thrown the option of "cousin hair" in to the mix when I am doing her hair in the mornings. I only give her two other options (ponytails or a headband) because she is still not a fan of sitting still and I'm not as talented as my sister-in-law Kiki. Well for the past week Savannah has chosen "cousin hair" and this is my collage of her cuteness along with pics of cute cousin Kioni.

Warning: Content of this post may cause hunger

So for those of you out there who don't believe in feeding fried foods and hot dogs to kids, I advise you to just look away and move on to another post. :-)  Truth be told I don't fry foods. I bake things and if it still doesn't taste quite right then I go without. But sometimes I go for the real thing because I survive better with moderation rather than exclusion. 

And so the other day when we were out and about running errands and it was lunch time, I pulled into Sonic with the intention of getting something moderately healthy and not too costly. That is a difficult criteria to meet for any drive thru but then I thought how bout something cheap and not messy - a corndog! The girls thought it was great. Food on a stick really is genius if you ask me. I couldn't resist snapping shots of their grins as they enjoyed their lunch. I promise that I made sure to feed them plenty of fruit and fiber-rich foods to make up for this lunch of champions.

Side note: While tracking down a corndog image online I came across references to a "National Corndog Day in March." I do think that that is the funniest holiday I've come across in a long time. I do believe that I may have to become a fan on facebook. heehee
I've linked a wikipedia page about it if you click on the corndog picture above.

Sweet Smiles

Well it's no secret that we love taking photo's of our sweet girls. Here are a few we took after church. Lucky for us both Savannah and Alexandra are rather comfortable in front of the lens and expressive too. 

'';\

 

No she doesn't speak much yet but for those of you who know your ASL you can see that she is "all done."

Halloween Highlights

So here we all are dressed up for the holiday. I was a dinosaur, Michael the Wendy's Guy, Savannah as Dora the Explorer and Alexandra was Boots (Dora's monkey friend).

The girls enjoyed dressing up so much and it didn't take them long to realize how cute they looked and that they could really rack in the treats with their sweet smiles! On Saturday evening we went to our church building for a Fall festival and Trunk or Treating. This was their main effort collecting candy because on Sunday evening we were grilling burgers and hot dogs with our neighbors and visiting together while passing out candy to the trick-or-treaters.