My little sis, her boyfriend, their first gig

So she's probably gonna yell at me, but Bo sent out this video & I have to share it here ~ hey, what's a big sis unless she embarrasses you once in awhile? Allie & Bo had their first 'gig' in Lexington this past Saturday. It went great and I'm so sad I couldn't be there to cheer them on. Congrats Al, you look & sound great (as usual). You too Bo!
Can't wait to see you guys in October...Charlotte's counting down :)

Now THAT's Texas! what we've been up to the past week...

With Grandma & Grandpa here, we've done some true Texas things. Last weekend we headed to Ft. Worth to see the old Stockyards. It was a great day! It's a little old western town, complete with brick roads, lots of little shops, an antique working railroad, a maze, cow camp, a rodeo, a cowboy museum, some cool old bars, a mechanical bull, and they do a cattle drive right down the street twice a day. Charlotte wasn't too fond of touching a longhorn (see pictures), but she did love the cowboys from the street-fight skit and sitting on the saddle at the bar while the adults had a bottle of Buffalo Butt beer. Grandma of course had to buy Charlotte a souvenir: a pink cowgirl hat which she also loves. I can't wait to head to the rodeo with someone friends from home.
Here's a slideshow from the stockyards:

On Friday night, we headed to Babe's Chicken Dinner House, this is a true Texas tradition (so we've been told). The Babe's in Frisco is in a little old town-type setting they're building. The place is huge. We put our name in & dad headed to the bar to grab some beers. After looking around for a minute, he asked the hostess where the bar was and she replied "it's BYOB." What?! A restaurant, seriously...BYOB?? Our wonderful new neighbors forgot to tell us to pack a cooler. Yep, there were several people hanging out with coolers...hilarious! So we settled on iced tea with our meal. Here's the deal with Babe's, they have 5 menu items: fried chicken, chicken fried steak, pot roast, smoked chicken or fried catfish. You pick your meat, then the sides are family-style: corn, green beans, mashed potatoes, gravy and of course biscuits. Oh yeah, and there's salad. Did I mention everything is cooked in straight-up bacon grease? The food was YUMMY and we all left stuffed, no room for the Snow Cone Lady or the Double Dip. Good thing we didn't have any beer to take up room in our tummies. Oh yeah, and for a doggie bag, they seriously hand you a plastic baggie from a hook on the wall. It's an experience! Here's a few pictures from Babe's and the web site. You can see Charlotte loved it too (no she didn't eat anything fried in bacon grease, but it looks like it huh?):

http://www.babeschicken.com/

We've been busy

So sorry for the lack of posts & pictures over the past week. Grandpa & Grandma (my mom & dad/Dave & Susan) have been in town and we've been hitting the town. I also started working part time. Charlotte's had so much fun with Grandma & Grandpa and we've all eaten extremely well - thanks mom & dad! I have tons of photos and stories of our days, so stay tuned, I'll post in the next day or so.

One thing that made the journey down here was my mom's old Sears Kenmore sewing machine...it's 25+ years old, but still works pretty well! My mom taught me how to thread it, put the bobin in, and change the stitch, foot & needle etc. I do know a few things about sewing from a lifetime of watching her, but have had no formal training, so I need lots of help. So while she was here, I got a lesson and made my first curtain for the new house. It's about as basic as you get, but I did it all by myself with the old machine. I think it turned out pretty cute. It gives some color to the kitchen and matches the cute plate Shauna gave me (thanks Shauna!).

Upcoming sewing projects: add the same fabric to some kitchen towels and hem Charlotte's curtains.

Long-term sewing projects: bedroom curtains & clothes for Charlotte

House update Friday

So our house is coming along. I'm not going to say it feels like home yet, but hopefully we're getting there. The office will one day be put-together and we hung some shelves so we'd have prime spots for family photos. Doug made his first trip to Ikea on Sunday! He thought it was a pretty cool place, yet "didn't realize it was going to be an all day thing." There were several times when he asked me where we were and how many floors the place was, hehe. We didn't do too much damage, got what we went there for: a big shelf for the office, a dormat and a recycling bin. Doug promptly checked those items off his list. I customized the dormat for our porch (if it's big enough to call it that) and I think it turned out pretty good. Ikea $4.99 dormat + some black paint and voila!
Our yard is pretty sad. The front needs grass and the landscaping is puking green everywhere, no flowers. There's a ton of rosebushes in the back that are in need of some major lovin'. I started pruning them and the yellow one is blooming like crazy. It's fun to have roses in the house everyday! I trimmed this one and noticed it had 2 centers!...do roses have DNA? Wonder if it's a gene mutation...oh Doug, can you get on this?

Ok, so here's what you guys really want to read & see...Charlotte:
I think Charlotte will eat anything I give to her, there's nothing yet she's turned her nose up at. Not even the peas or green beans, or green beans mixed with sweet potato which I have to admit did not look appetizing whatsoever. I've started giving her finger foods. Puffs, yogurt melts and small pieces of fruit, avacado and sweet potato. As you can see, she makes a mess but has fun doing it.

oh yeah, and I've found 3 more lizards in the house (well one in the garage). I'm starting a lizard count on the side here...stay tuned to see who wins me or the lizards.

Charlotte live

So I've been promising many people a video of Charlotte crawling. She will hustle her little hiney across the room at this point (usually to get to Cali or something else she's not supposed to have), but I have yet to catch a great one on camera. But below is a video with 3 parts: 2 where I was trying to catch her crawling & one when she woke up from a nap. She usually wakes up from her morning nap in a wonderful mood, so I grabbed the camera and caught it! Unfortunately it's all in one long video; I have not yet spent the time figuring out how to edit our videos, so for now you'll have to watch the long versions.
Enjoy!
ps: not sure why I titled the video "crawl time" cuz I didn't catch a good one, oh well

Welcome to our home

As promised, the long awaited house tour!

Disclaimer: I'm not a videographer & it's hard to hold a camera steady in one hand, with a baby in the other (oh yeah and walk & narrate). So sorry if the camera work makes anyone ill. We hope this gives all of our friends & family at home a little feeling of knowing where we are and a feeling of being in our lives even though we're so far away. Enjoy!

(oh and sorry about the first little snaffoo, I don't know how to edit that out)

Charlotte is 7 months old!!

I can't believe it! I mean, I knew 6 months would come, but 7?! That means she's actually closer to 1 year old than to being born. Here's some photos to mark the over 1/2-year old milestone

Settling in

Sorry for the lack of posts, this one's gonna be long...

So we've been in our house for almost 2 weeks now & we're settling in pretty well. Every box isn't unpacked yet, but the place is looking more like a home than a tornado zone of boxes. There's actually a few things hanging on the walls now! We went to a Rough Riders game (the Texas Rangers like minor league team or something) with our neighbors. It was a fun night and great to get out of the house and get to know our neighbors.
A Charlotte update:

• Tooth #2 is just about through ~ You can almost see them now when she smiles big
• Well, it's really crawling now! She's been army crawling for awhile, but it can now be labeled a full-on crawl. The baby-proofing has begun! Oh, and she's already started pulling herself up into a standing position on the hearth
• She loves shopping, sitting in the cart looking at everything and smiling at everyone, oh, and screaming sometimes too
• She loves going on walks in her stroller. We try to go as often as we can when it's not so crazy hot
• The splash park is a hit! She's a bit too little for it, but I sit her down in front of a sprinkler thing and she loves it. Her face is covered in water splashes and she gets so excited watching everything.
• Charlotte has figured out that Cali is a wonderful and soft play-toy. She sees the dog from across the room, crawls over to her & starts grabbing her fur. It's so cute because Cali just lets her and seems to like the attention.
• She's started doing this "fake-cough" thing. She coughs, then I look at her and kinda cough, she laughs and does it again - it's hilarious
• Daddy & Charlotte have started reading books before bedtime. It's so cute to watch and Charlotte loves looking at the books, especially the touch-and-feel ones
• We went on a play-date to the Wiggly Play Center (yes, that's The Wiggles). Charlotte met some new friends and loved crawling and climbing all over the place
• She is still liking food! I made a squash and mixed it with rice, carrots and applesauce for 3 yummy meal combos

The excitement of lastnight:

Charlotte shared her bath with a lizard! Granted, a baby one, but a lizard still. I have her tub in the regular tub & water in both...I use the water outside her tub to rinse her off. As I'm filling up my little cup with water, I see something besides a tub toy. Surprisingly I didn't freak out too much. I mean, I kinda like the little buggers, but not in the bathtub with my daughter. So we moved Charlotte's bath to the sink and the little guy stayed there until Doug came home, scooped him up and put him outside. I learned that lizards eat mosquitos, so I decided that we'll befriend lizards from now on.

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