Thursday, June 21, 2012

Weekend at Horseshoe Bay

I wont say every moment has been easy, but Bryan working for Edward Jones has been a big blessing for our family. It is a very good company to work for, which values family time and values. Every summer, Edward Jones hosts a Summer Regional Meeting for employees & families. It's usually a four day weekend trip in which the employees have to attend business meetings for two mornings, and there is an awards banquet on Saturday night, but other than that, it's a relaxing time to hang out at a nice resort.

This year the Summer Regional was hosted at The Horseshoe Bay Resort outside of Marble Falls near Austin. It was warm and sunny, but we had a great time!


Each night Edward Jones hosted a family dinner, and on Friday night we had a great time at the outdoor concert they hosted!




(Brylee is pretty into her purse, these days!)

The band, Spazmatics, played for us, and they were SO GOOD! They were four young guys dressed silly and played all the greatest 80s hits that we could all sing along to.

We all sat on the lawn after dinner, and several of the kids (and adults) got up and danced. Brylee was a little shy at first...

...and gradually warmed up and started dancing with us!



Saturday morning Brylee and I enjoyed an event of feeding the birds. The resort had several exotic birds, and for an hour each morning they would bring them out so the kids could get an up close look.


This owl was the most incredible bird, and was supposedly only a baby. They said it could more than double in size. It liked to hang out just inside the kids rec center and sit on this little ledge by the window because there was an air conditioning vent in the floor by the window.

The owl would let you pet it without hardly moving!

Brylee (and I) thought it was so cool!

She tried her hardest to feed the parrot a peanut like the bigger kids, but couldn't reach close enough without dropping the nut. Oh well!

And we couldn't get much closer, but they had a token flamingo named Mingo! Cute!

Later Saturday we spent a few hours by the pool....







...and daddy joined us after his meetings were over.


Sunday morning we celebrated Father's Day before we headed home.

Brylee got her daddy a round of golf (no questions asked by mom, who usually wonders how expensive golf is, especially when  he takes off work to go play :)
...and a kids golf set so Daddy & Brylee can play together!

We had a great weekend away! Thanks, Daddy, for working so hard for us!

Celebration Week Alone

The week Brylee was with her grandparents in Abilene, Bryan and I celebrated my birthday and our 6th anniversary! We had such a great, casual week, and were able to go out each night without worrying about toddler-planned dinners and bedtime. I ended up working every day that week, and we went out every night but one, making the week fly by.

Bryan has been wanting to take me to Top Golf for a while now, so we decided that would be a great activity to do on our anniversary. We had a great, relaxing time, and tuned this fun game into a friendly competition.




My birthday and our anniversary are two days apart, so we have a tradition of trying to name and relive the activities we've done for the last several years since we've been married. It's always fun, mostly because we've used this week as a vacation week for several years. And having this week alone was sort of like a Staycation this year.

For my birthday, I wanted to have a casual night with Bryan, so we went out to Cheesecake Factory and actually ordered 3 courses, appetizer, meal, & dessert of course, and took our time without worrying about Brylee getting bored. After dinner, we walked around the outdoor shopping area and spent time together.
It was a great week, but we were both glad to reunite with our little angel!

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Brylee's Week with Nanny & Papa

So a couple of weeks ago Nanny & Papa (Bryan's parents) returned from traveling for a couple of weeks and made a trip through Wylie on their way home to Abilene. They stayed with us for part of the weekend...

 ...and then took this sweet girl with them back to Abilene!
 I was nervous at first about having her gone from me for a whole week! Especially since Bryan and I were just going to be at home and working. But it turned out to be such a great week for Brylee and her grandparents and for Bryan and I to catch up on some alone time.
 Brylee had such a great week with her Nanny and Papa, and they really spoiled her with all of her favorite things. She got to see goats and chickens out at the farm.
 She is really into farm animals these days, especially cows. Her favorite song is Ee-Ii-Ooh, and sings it multiple times a day.
 She also loves her cousin, Luke, who gave Brylee special attention all week!

 Nanny and Papa bought her a little swimming pool and lounge chair for the backyard, but her favorite activity continues to be swinging!

 She also had a lot of fun playing trains with Papa

 Nanny and Papa took Brylee and Luke to the zoo one morning, which is always a hit!
 Monkeys
 Bears
 Turtles/Fish?
 Poor thing was tuckered out after a long morning of animal sightings!

 One morning Nanny already had some commitments, so Papa took Brylee to the Library for story time!

 Papa also enjoyed building Brylee tall towers...
 ...and Brylee enjoyed knocking them over!
 And they ended the evenings with casual walks.
 It is so wonderful to have two sets of parents who absolutely love our child unconditionally! We were able to leave Brylee with my parents for a week in March while we were out of town, and it was so nice to have this week alone to catch up on time together with just Bryan and myself. And it is so nice to know that Brylee is in such good hands and having such a good time. I'm pretty sure she hardly misses us (although, when we Face-Timed her she would get extremely excited to see us, which made my heart happy!)

Bryan and I headed to Abilene the next weekend to spend a few nights with family and pick up our big girl. This "big girl" got to hold her first baby while we were there, and was only semi-impressed :) Ha!

It was so nice to have my sweet girl back in my arms!