Happy Father's Day

This is Jonathan's first of many.

I'm going to go off topic just a little here. Most of you know that Jonathan got laid-off. His last day was when Jack was 4-weeks-old. Knowing that the paychecks are going to stop before long and the savings are limited is stressful, extremely stressful. We have to keep reminding ourselves that for now, we're fine and that we're not going to panic until there is a need to. And honestly, there probably won't be a need to. We could worry and really freak out but we're choosing not to. Instead of this being an awful thing that has happened, we have turned it into something great. How many babies get both their parents home to take care of them? And not many dad's get to spend so much time with their new babies and not many mom's get this much help. It has been fantastic for all of us. In a perfect world Jonathan would only have to go back to work part time!

Another great thing about being laid-off is that Jonathan has now experienced first hand how many people respect and admire him. People from his old company (some still working there and some who got laid off as well) are recommending him for job openings all over. He's had 4 interviews, has another this week, and a lead on a different position at one of the first places he interviewed at.

We know he'll find something but for the time being we're enjoying the lay-off.

Oh yeah, remember to call your father today and tell him that you love him.

Water baby

There is no doubt that this is my kid. He loves the water. Before his little cord fell off we could only give him a sponge bath and to say that he wasn't a fan is an understatement.

Here are a few pictures from his first real bath:




Now I find it easier to just get in the tub with him. I can just put my hand under his head and he relaxes and floats. This way I make sure to get cleaned too and I don't have to worry about what day I'm going to get a shower on. He screams when we take him out but he seems to like having lotion massaged on him.

The many faces of Grace

The last few days with Grace were good. I'm tired, very tired. Here are some pictures I took, in no particular order.

This one is a bit blurry, but very cute.

"Mmmmm, breakfast"

She's so cute!

She loved the waterfall.

"What's this thing on my head?"

"Can we go home yet?"

These next two pictures are really great, but I had to edit the mosquitoes out.


"Hook Em' Horns"


"Please God, let the longhorns win the national title"

The rest of the weekend...

The rest of the weekend went great. I love this picture of Emily working on the tower.

Here is the finished product. It turned out great, and Emily really likes her "princess tower".

We picked up cousins Christopher & Meghan and took them all to a great park. They have a bran new baby sister so we figured they could use some play time outside. That, and Emily LOVES them so much, they all provide great entertainment for each other.

A friendly game of duck-duck-goose.

When it was all said and done we dropped the cousins off back home and took Emily back to her parents, who were very excited to see her. Now Jonathan and I are going to enjoy our last few months of having a quiet house.

A princess weekend

This weekend we are taking care of our niece Emily, who is 4. She's very into princesses and is quite the little princess herself. This morning as I was getting dressed she was in the bathroom talking to me. After I put my bra on she looked at me and said, "wow, those are big". Trying not to laugh hysterically I explained that they were getting bigger because when the baby is born they will make milk to feed him. I'm not sure she really got it...

This morning we went down to Zilker park to the dinosaur exhibit. It was in the gardens and we took the camera to do a photo shoot. Mostly, she looked like this:

I did manage to get a few good ones. As you can see, I couldn't pick which one I liked the best.


There's a dinosaur in the background!

This is what most of the exhibits looked like. These were just some of the little ones, but there were some really big ones too. She's was a little unsure of those.




Emily was very curious about the HEB Buddy. She said hi to him but didn't get too close. This was her peaking at him from a safe place.





After we got home she watched a movie in the bed room while I watched UT beat the #1 team in the nation! It was an awesome football game, one of the best I've seen since we won the Rose Bowl. Emily had a little crying spell when she realized that she wasn't going to get to watch her movie on the big TV (even though we had just talked about it in the car) but she did great and enjoyed her movie. I think that crying to try and get what she wants is a stage thing, it doesn't work on me but it is annoying. I told her that she could cry as much as she wanted, but that she couldn't watch the move in the living room. It didn't last long.

We also put together an art project that was a haunted tower. She added a princes in the tower that needs to be rescued. It was a lot of gluing and got a bit tedious. Now that Emily is in bed, Jonathan pulled out the glue gun and is finishing it up. I'll post pictures of that later.

Tomorrow we're picking up her cousins, Christopher and Meghan, and taking them all out to a huge play scape in Georgetown. We're going to have a pick nick and let them run and play before we get back in the car to take her back to mom and dad.

She pulled out all the stall tactics when going to bed tonight but she cleaned up a bit and never melted down so I'd say it was successful. She's a good kid and so far, we're surviving too!