Lazy Saturday Morning & Feeding the Ducks

We had such a good weekend, beginning with a lazy Saturday morning.  We woke up to the 'Brylee Alarm' babbling away at about 7:45.  I made pancakes, which Brylee enjoyed for the first time (I'm pretty sure the little amount of syrup I put on top was her favorite part!)

Brylee and Bryan enjoyed a morning Baby Einstein video. 

Brylee does well for about the first 15 out of 30 minutes of the video, then she starts to get restless and bored. It was enough time to allow me to clean up the kitchen, though!

 It was a pleasant, but humid morning, so we decided to take a walk to the small lake in our neighborhood to feed the ducks.

 Brylee and I usually stop and look at the ducks every time we go for a walk, but this was the first time I actually remembered to bring some old bread to feed them. They are very tame ducks, especially since they've made their home right off the sidewalk near the neighborhood pool.  But I was still surprised at how close they came to us.

 These two geese were practically taking the bread out of my hand (although I never actually let them do that because I was afraid my fingers were going to get bit!)

 Brylee was mesmerized while I was standing up, but got a little nervous when I knelt down and she was eye level with them

After about 5-10 minutes, Brylee got bored and was more interested in trying to eat the bread out of my hand instead of watching the ducks. Obviously, we're still working on our attention span!

When the bread was all gone, Bryan let Paisley, our dog, run at the ducks.  I wish we had a picture, because it was a fun site to see about 30 ducks all take off hovering above the ground, flying into the lake. I have a feeling we will start contributing more and more to these ducks' diet as the months go by.

DIY and Home Projects

So, like many of you, I have jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, and have gotten addicted looking at the kids section.  I don't actually do any "pinning" myself.  I just find ideas of mostly DIY projects, take note, and then try them myself.  Here are a few DIY and home projects I've been up to lately.

I've been looking for a way to record Brylee's height as she grows throughout the years, and as her first birthday approaches, I found this really cute 'ruler' idea. The reason I love it so much, is that it is portable.  I just hung it on the wall like a picture, and if we ever move, or hopefully have other kids in the futer, I can move it and add to it as I wish (vs. marking her height on the wall somewhere and then not being able to take that with me if we ever move).

 It was a pretty simple project, really.  I bought a $7 6' x 12" x 1" pine board at Lowe's. I stained it the color of my choosing one night after Brylee went to sleep.  The next day during nap time, I marked the board off in inches (with pencil first), and outlined the numbers at each 1 foot incrament, then traced over it all with a black paint pen.  You can see the full tutorial I used here.

 I also saw a cute idea for a card table play house, and remembered playing as a child under our kitchen table in a "playhouse" that my mom had. I had a bunch of fabric left over from making Brylee's bedding, so I used that to make this adorable slip cover table playhouse.

 I added a small peep-hole window to one side

 And left the back covered

Here is the one I used to play under as a little girl

   I intend for this to be a birthday or Christmas present for Brylee, but wanted to see her "test it out" first.

 I doubt she will remember she has already seen her present!

 We also have been doing some work in our living room... finally! For the longest time we had moving boxes and tv dinner tray tables holding up our cable box and dvd player.  We finally got this simple piece of furniture, and use the pull-out baskets to hide some of Brylee's toys and dvds. We also hid the wires of the tv behind the dry wall, which makes for a much more finished look.

 I covered some of our old pillows with new yellow & green fabric, and have stuck with the yellow/green/brown theme in adding some accents to our living room.

 I added an "art piece" to the back wall, which was also a DIY project I found on pinterest.

I bought a few pieces of shelving board for about $9 and had Lowe's cut them for me into 12" x 12" squares.  I covered those squares with cute, modern fabric I found at this great fabric store, City Craft, in Dallas, then hung them in the pattern I liked best to make 3 x 3 square. I added a brown wire cross to the middle left square for a little more 'artistic' feel.

 I also spruced up our mantel with some spray painted candle holders, clock on clearance at Hobby Lobby, and some picture frames we had to take up from our end tables because Brylee was pulling up and reaching for them.

 In the kitchen, I sewed some simple curtains from fabric I also bought at City Craft.

 I had found some new rugs with a modern twist on primary colors at World Market a few weeks ago, and liked the idea of adding color to the kitchen to make it young, modern, and kid friendly as we start adding children's art projects to the fridge.  I have a few more DIY projects to add to the wall in the kitchen, but haven't found exactly what I need to make them yet.  More to come...



Daily Happenings

I have definitely been slacking on both taking pictures and then posting them lately. But here are a few documenting what we have been up to the last few weeks.

We have been going to a fair share of Rangers' games lately.  Brylee has been so good at staying up late to make it through the games, but then falls asleep immediately when we get in the car.  However, it is getting more and more difficult to actually watch any of the baseball game because Brylee is getting more and more active.

 We went with some good friends, including Brylee's friend Jake.  What a handsome  boy!

We also enjoy having our friends, the Shivers, over for dinner. Dinner time is getting messier as the weeks go  by, which often requires an immediate bath. (And who doesn't love two naked babies in the bath!)

 It may be hard to tell in this picture, but Tyler was splashing the water non-stop the entire time, as Brylee calmly played with her bath toys.  Shannon and I laughed at how different boys and girls can be. 

 We've also been doing a little "baby-proofing" the house with locks on some of our cabinets, as Brylee is getting more and more mobile.

 She's getting faster and more proficient with her crawling, and it's beginning to become a really fun stage!

 "Hello, Mom!"

Brylee is wanting more and more to start feeding herself these days. I gave her spaghetti for the first time last week.

 Although skeptical at first, she warmed up to the mess and loved it.

 Bath time quickly followed!

Meeting Baby Jake

We just got back from a great weekend visiting some very good friends who live outside of Houston. Wade and Wendi Holmes have been best friends of ours for over 5 years now, with so many fun memories from college. After years of taking road trips to see each other, vacations to Mexico, guys trips to Chicago, girls trips to the Bahamas....all those have been trumped by visiting each other at home to welcome new precious babes to our families. We didn't have a very eventful weekend, but we loved every minute of our quality time with Wade and Wendi and their new little boy, Jake.

We drove in Friday early evening, and got there in time for Bryan to play softball with Wade's team for a missing player that night. Wendi and I did our best of getting there in time for the first game, but left halfway through the second to get these cute babes home to bed!
The four of us stayed up way too late Friday night talking (especially since Wade and Wendi are still having to get up during the night with their little man), so we chose to have a lazy Saturday morning. We let the kiddos play around the house, and we found time in between baby feedings, lunch, and naptime, to play a game ourselves. Brylee really enjoyed this rubber shark as a chew toy all weekend!

Jake was enjoying this piggy-back ride way more than Brylee was! Ha!

Brylee is so close to crawling, but still cant cover any real distance or get anywhere. But boy does she enjoy standing these days, and the Holmes had the perfect ottoman for her to cruise around all weekend.

As any friends would, Wendi and I thought it would be cute to bathe these babies together.

All in the hopes that one day these pictures can be used as cute embarrassment in a wedding slide show during their rehearsal dinner! (Hey, it can't hope to dream, right)

After bath time, they both got dressed in their Ranger's baseball gear! Sweet Brylee was born during the Ranger's playoffs last year and little Jake was conceived during the Ranger's playoffs. Ha! Destined to be Ranger's fanatics!

We thought it would be cute for Brylee to try to hold Jake, and we were all prepared with our cameras to shoot quickly because we didn't think the pose would last long before meltdown. To our surprise, they both just sat like this for several minutes watching us four make fools of ourselves jumping around and taking pictures. We had a good laugh!

I could tell Bryan was missing the itty bitty baby phase that Brylee has grown out of. It was too cute that he offered all weekend to rock Jake to sleep or cuddle and hold him whenever they needed. It was amazing to all of us how much difference there can be between babies who are just 7 months apart. It seems like so long ago that we were doing the things that Wendi and Wade had to do all weekend with a 2 month old.

On Saturday evening, we went over to Wendi's parents house before we went out for the night. How things have changed for our two families!

Butch and Melanie were so kind to keep our children that night while the four of us went childless on a double date.
We went to an improve comedy club, had a bunch of laughs, and ended the evening with ice cream and more laughing.

Sunday morning we went to church and out to lunch with the Holmes and the Blackburns. We didn't get to see much of Brittnie and Brandon while we were there, but had a good time at lunch. Brylee was a little leery of a bearded Brandon...until he gave her a bite of frozen yogurt, of course!

We had such a great weekend, that always feels way too short. It is a Godly blessing to have best friends who I will raise my children with. We love you guys!