For Your Consideration

This is Abbey.

She makes me smile, and has since our days together in Zeta at Baylor.

Now, she can make you smile, too! Abbey just won a spot on a team that will be running the New York City marathon this fall while raising awareness of childhood obesity, and she's recently started a blog on healthy and happy living. I wanted to pass it along since so many of you are runners. For the remaining lot of you (non-runners UNITE!), it's still worth a look because, really, don't you want to be healthy and happy?! :-)

Thankfully, there's no smell-o-meter on the blog. She just participated in a shower-strike through her Rotary club in Austin: no showers until they raised $2500 for a water collection system in rural Kenya. I'm sure her co-workers, friends, and husband are all thrilled that they just met their goal!

I feel like I should say, "Sic 'em, Abbey!" like they do at the bottom of all those Baylor Pride emails...!!

HAPPY FRIDAY!

One Half

Of a year.

How can that already be true?

One thing's for sure....she LOVES her brother. Guess who's distracting her in this pic?!

It's THAT GUY!


"Meelie" continues to be a happy, laid-back, and quiet child. More times than not, we'll peek in on her and find her just silently lying in her crib, hanging out, and grinning. Maybe she already has my laziness and just doesn't even want to exert the energy to fuss?! ;-)

We're still just doing rice cereal since I realized (after I wrote this post) that I really didn't want to deal with any baby food on our 11-day escapade, so we picked back up again when we got back. She's definitely gotten better over the last week with actually swallowing the cereal, so yay for that. I guess pureed veggies and fruits are in our very near future!

B's new car seat arrived yesterday so we can get her out of the infant carrier and into his convertible seat. We have an older, smaller SnugRide and her feet are pretty close to hanging off the end. While it's been nice to have "the bucket" in the event she falls asleep, I'm sure ready to stop lugging her around in it. (I'd rather her learn to transfer to the crib after having fallen asleep, anyway!)

In other milestone news:

She can sit! Well, kinda. I think her record is 33 seconds for sitting unassisted, which is pretty good, but she's certainly not at a point where she can be trusted not to fall right over! I'm eager for the new world of photo-opportunities that will open up when she's got that mastered!!

We went to the doctor yesterday, and she grew 2 inches and gained close to 3 lbs in only two months! I knew her thighs were getting chunkier! (Eh, she's doomed for that, anyway!) She checked in at 28.25" and 16 lbs, 10 oz, both of which are slightly lower than her brother at 6 months, but still off the charts for length!

Half a year! Hooray!

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

(Where "Ranch" = "the Lone Star State" although it should be made clear that we were never actually on a ranch...!)


We enjoyed a bounty of family time on our trip. It's always fun to reunite the sibs:

As you can imagine, the family has expanded quite significantly since those original 4 "kids." The B-man LOVED spending time with his cousins. Here, B and his next-youngest-cousin and orange twin, Miles, do some important technological bidness:

There are 6 grandchildren now, with another baby girl on the way in October!

The little miss got in on the cousin action, too. Ten (!!)-year old Caleb was such a sweet guy to his littlest relative:


Even Rachel got to hold the baby!

And then the baby found her own baby to hold gnaw!

Didn't get all the kiddos gathered with Grandma, but she sure enjoyed the time just like Big D!

After all, if it weren't for Grandma, who'd lead the charge in finding crickets to put on the fishing lines?

Portraits of a Party

It's never a bad thing to have a professional photographer as a dear friend. Many thanks to Ian for the gift of his time and talent!

Speaking of....I'm pretty darn sure my eyes are not this sparkly so I also thank him for his editing prowess!! Funcle Joel managed to escape the camera's eye so Kathy scores this pose with me for her "couples portrait"! :-)

Jen and Chris:

Christy and Eric:

Carrie and Matt:

Ian and Karen:

Emily and T:

Cait and Dave:

And our fabulous (and jovial!) hosts, Anne and Adam:

I'm sure it surprises no one that there were plenty of Emily Expressions to go around!

(I hope any former yearbook staffer recognizes that I kept shuffling pics until it was arranged so that I was not looking off the page in any of them! :-)

In other news, you'll see in the bottom right pic that I'm guffawing over a book. Anne gathered memories from lots of friends and put together an album with pictures and messages. What a wonderful treasure! Thanks to everyone who contributed!

La Soiree Magnifique

When Anne offered to come to town and throw us a 10th anniversary party, I scoffed at the unnecessary nature of such an event. But she insisted. What was I supposed to do, argue?! ;-)

She wouldn't tell me a stinkin' thing about the planned festivities. All I knew was that she made a super-cute invitation:

Seriously, she wouldn't tell me a thing until my house was full of fun treats and the soiree was about to start. I should've known she'd want to rub in the fact that she scored higher on the French Regents (NY State) Exam than I did! Oh wait, that's not the reason (although it's true). The French theme was to celebrate our July 14th, aka Bastille Day, wedding!!!

The amazing amount of effort and thought that went into the planning of this party is humbling. What an amie that Annie Kate is!! She even rented tables so she could set up a garden party:

The favors blended Parisian plates with homemade-by-Emils brownies that looked just like the little initial heart on the invitation (yes, scroll back up and look!):


All the food followed the theme. For the appetizer spread, there were many kinds of cheeses, bacon-wrapped figs (apparently a big thing in the South of France), and puff pastries. Then for the main course, there was salade nicoise (pictured is the olive-less one but there was an authentic one piled high with olives), two kinds of quiche, and a big vat of French onion soup (not pictured):

There also was a crepe bar, with crepes handmade by Eric and lots of tasty toppings:

Someone really liked the crepes:

What's better than one dessert? TWO desserts, of course! So there was a cake, as well!

Which was a good thing since it allowed us to recreate a picture, limp-cutting-wrist and all!

As you might have guessed, Ian is responsible for all the fab pics starting with the favors and down to the end. He got some wonderful (and hysterical) other shots and I can't wait to share those next!

Water Makes Everything Better

(Especially when it is SO HOT.)

The B-man enjoyed lots of aquatic adventures on our trip, like....

Trying to drink from Big Daddy's backyard fountain:

Slipping and sliding in East Texas:

Doing some fishing at Grandma's pond:

And boating, too!

Getting wet by the "squirting frogs" at the Dallas Arboretum:

Playing at a splash park while his mumsie caught up with lots of Baylor Zeta friends:

And swimming in at least 4 pools: 3 backyard ones and 1 neighborhood one. That's the thing about more Southern climes-- pools are plentiful!!

Seems like everyone is "enjoying" some heat this weekend. Stay cool out there!!

Happy Friday!

Inaugural Trip Success!

Eleven days touring around the great state of Texas, and this girl didn't even blink. She did, however, amaze countless strangers with her flexibility:



The trip down went very smoothly, but she wasn't too keen on sleeping. Thankfully, her veteran status on the return trip allowed her to rest her eyes for a good hour:


We had a wonderful time across all FIVE of our destinations!! It's always nice to get back home, though! I'm going to go ahead and post this now since it's already Thursday-- hopefully I'll still be sleeping when many of you read this!!

(but not likely!!)

Teaser

I have so many great pics from our extended Texas trip and can't wait to make 'em even prettier when I get back to my own computer and editing software. In the meantime, however, here's one of the first ones I took, and one of my favorites ever:

With Cousin Rachel, who is exactly 6 months older

Classic

"This is a fun hallway on the way to the bathroom-- let's take a picture!"

"Hmm-- I don't want it to flash like that. Let's turn it off."

"Um, that's a little dark. Let me adjust the settings."

"Ouch! Blinded by the light! Lemme try again."

"Whew, so much better. And it only took 4 tries. Wait, what? It's weird that we just stood in the bathroom hallway and posed for self-portraits? Whatever you say-- we know we're cool!"

For Carrie

("My daddy always buys me donuts!!")

I grew up in a donut-eating family. When we lived in Houston, it was Shipley's and Southern Maid, and then we moved to Corning and enjoyed weekly boxes of our beloved Crystal City Bakery donuts (RIP). Whenever I'm back in Texas, I am reminded that there are local donut places on practically every corner. The ones pictured above come from a place just around the corner from Opa's & Grammie's house.

I understand that we'd all be better off if we didn't eat donuts. But, for the love of saturated fat and excess sugar, WHY DO WE ONLY HAVE DUNKIN DONUTS WHERE WE LIVE???!!

Oh, YES. I DID.

Soooo....we weren't quite able to zip it all the way up in the back. And we were too cheap to get it cleaned so it's been hanging in my mom's closet for 10 years (with the veil balled up in a plastic grocery bag, making it kinda curly) and it's clearly far yellower than it started out. But hey! It made for some fun laughs! Like when I got stuck trying to put it on....

HAPPY FRIDAY!

A Decade Ago

There was a wedding in Waco, Texas.

Wow, that was a long time ago. We were just babes....and now we have two of our own. Time marches on and all that. Might as well giggle at some really poor-quality scanned pics!

The rehearsal. BG looks dumbfounded; I'm in a trance, and Opa just has one little suggestion!


The bridal luncheon the morning of the wedding. Silk shantung outfits were quite the rage, as you can see from my attire. Man, I'd like even to be able to fit one thigh in those pants, though! (Note that the hostesses had a beautiful cake there, too!)

Getting ready. Or am I auditioning for KISS? Either way, I think Annie Kate is feeding me grapes:

Some pics from the church:

And from the reception, too!

And then it was time to scoot!

(There was LOTS to accomplish in the next 10 years!)