Ranch in the City

Friday: Spa Day

Fridays are wonderful at our house...besides the obvious fact that it's Friday, I have my little girl at home since her Pre-K class doesn't meet on Fridays.  That means we have no pressure to hurry up and get ready to get to school on time (our present defintion of on time is consistently 15 minutes late), which means we can lounge around a bit.  

The last several Fridays Devynn has been getting her fingernails and toenails polished, in fact it is becoming a Friday ritual. On the very first spa day, she grabbed Kam's boppy, a few old towels, and some polish and set up an area in my bathroom floor and asked me to come paint her nails.

(Photo taken with my iPhone.)

I was happy to beautify her nails and toenails.  Fast forward a couple of Fridays and could this get any better?  

She's in my bed with Bear, watching cartoons, wearing her favorite pony shirt, she got to do her own hair and now I'm about to paint her nails.

Plus, she's got the electric blanket turned to eight.

And just like that she has glitter nails...

And she's intently watching Jake and the Never Land Pirates while they dry.

Fridays are wonderful.

I sure am going to miss our Fridays together when she starts kindergarten this year.  I can't believe my baby girl is about to turn five!

TGIF,

The Bear Sleeper: Who Dat?

Just thought this would be fun...

I get comments every single day that Kam looks just.like.Devynn.  Strangers tell me that, friends (old and new) tell me that, family tells me that.

So...

I have a gender neutral (it's cream) bear sleeper that was Devynn's when she was a baby.  I have a picture of her dressed in it so I thought it would be fun to put Kam in the same sleeper and take a picture!

So, which one is Devynn and which is Kam?!

(I converted these to black and white to focus on their features and not the distracting colors and backgrounds.)

Do they really look that much alike?

Just uploaded lots of pictures to the Mac, looking forward to posting more this week!

Happy weekend,

My Little Skunk

The weather has been so dreamy; mild and springish, so this weekend we took Kam on his first little outdoors walk near our home.  He loved his stroller ride, complete with his mommy and daddy, brother and sister.  He even loved his little skunk hat that kept him warm and cute!

Hello world!

This past week baby skunk has done great with his sleeping.  He is getting in about 6 hours straight, waking to eat, and then sleeping another 3-4 hours.  Yea!  Ryan teases me about putting him to bed in his "straight jacket" but I swear it works: he can't swing his arms all around and wake himself up!

Check out the sweet hands, notice that his "straight jacket" (street name SwaddleMe) keeps his hands down low by his side, instead of up by his face.

 

In other news, I'm working on getting rid of bad dog Andy Grandi.  Yep, he's terrible right now...he's not getting nearly enough attention and he's full of negative energy.  I met with a fellow Dal owner today to see if she wanted to take him to be her girl's boyfriend.  Turns out her girl is a really good judge of character because she HATED Andy and she made no apologies for letting him know that.  Oh Andy, will I ever get rid of you?

I'm not holding my breath.

Cow Gizzard

My little cousin, aka Cow Gizzard, tied the knot this past October in south Texas and I have neglected to post my wedding snapshots, much to my aunt's chagrin :)

It was a beautiful outdoor wedding, with a Texas flair and lots of fun!  The bride was gorgeous, the groom was handsome, and the flower girl (my little Devynn) was absolutely squeeze-able in her turquoise dress and cowgirl boots.  

Here is one of my favorite pictures of my sister and I giving the groom a Wet Willy.

This is a great picture of all the girl cousins! Love y'all!

 

The cow gizzard and his girl cousins.

My little flower girl.

To see all of my wedding snapshots (Aunt Joanie), click here: The Cow Gizzard's Wedding.

Good-bye 2011

Hello 2012!  I'm looking forward to this year but I can't complain because 2011 was pretty darn good to me. Usually I love working up my New Year's Resolutions but this January I'm not sure when I will get to my resolutions!  There are many things I would love to improve upon and I could scribble up a piece of notebook paper with goals and dreams and ideas, things I want to see, do, read, and achieve, but I also want to keep it realistic: 2012 is not going to be a year all about me and my desires!  Kam is keeping us busy and although he's a precious bundle of joy, having a newborn doesn't allow for much time in my day to do anything that doesn't involve showering, feeding, cooking, or cleaning. In fact, if I get those things done it's been a good day!  This is a busy phase of life and today when my daughter handed me a piece of paper that said, Dear Mommy, I love you, I decided I would frame it to remind myself that I am loved even when life is so amazingly hectic and I feel like I'm not giving each family member enough attention.

My one and only resolution last year was to live in the moment and I think I did a pretty good job of it but it's something I need to concentrate on even more so on this year.  This being my third child I realize all too well how quickly babies grow and change, and I know that this too will pass so I want to enjoy every moment, even the challenging ones!

We had a wonderful Christmas this year.  Of course we received many nice gifts, but nothing could overshadow the birth of Jesus Christ along with our beautiful bundle of joy.  Ryan gave me some new clothes and shoes, which was perfect, just perfect, because I've spent the last nine months in less than fashionable attire.  Kade gifted me a bracelet that he made himself along with some bubble bath; I can't tell you how much I appreciated that kid's thoughfulness!  I received many other very special gifts given with love and thoughtfulness; no doubt I am extremely blessed.  The kids were spoiled once again by Santa, aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, and mom and dad.  To say it was a nice Christmas would be an understatement.

I've somehow just completed putting away all of my Christmas decorations, which is nice because they were starting to feel like permanent fixtures since I put everything up mid-November in anticipation of the Thanksgiving birth of my son.  We've also devoted some time to cleaning and organizing because every year we have to make room for the new toys and gifts which involves getting rid of old possessions.  It's taken me a good week to do all of this!  

What's next on my agenda?  A to-do list that I'm too scared to approach!  Thank-you notes, phone calls, and downloading hundreds of photos to the computer are just a few of the things on my list.  Oh and convincing my mom and dad to move here--that's pretty high priority for me.  

I'm gearing up for this week as my kiddos go back to school and the mom taxi is back in business.  I'm thinking the school bus is going to start taking care of some of my taxi clients for me!  

I hope to blog again soon and post some long overdue pictures.

Wishing you the happiest of New Years,

Near Fumble

I'm happy to report that Kam did great during his first {big} football game yesterday.  I wrapped him up in a Moby wrap that my cousin and aunt gave me and it worked perfectly!  There was lots of noise and onlookers but he held up like a champ.  

In other not so good news, yesterday before the game we almost had a huge fumble.  I was in Kam's room and had him laying on the changing table.  I had moved over to his chest of drawers to get out a blanket; in the meantime Devynn was watching Kam closely, too closely.  She had put her feet on the bottom rail of the changing table  with her hands on the top rail, and her weight caused the table to fall forward with Kam going down with her.  I turned and screamed DEVYNN and then rushed over and miraculously grabbed the table before Kam hit the ground.  My adrenaline had not flowed that powerfully in a long, long time.  After Kam was evaluated and we ruled out an injury, Devynn and I both cried crocodile tears.

The joys of parenting :)  I have determined that a newborn's greatest threat is his older siblings!

Three Weeks

It's no surprise that I haven't been blogging lately, our baby boy is three weeks old today!  He was born the day after Thanksgiving (yes, Black Friday) at 7:15 pm and weighed 7 lb. 11oz. and was 20 inches long.  I'm sure the majority of you that read my blog (all 4 of you) have already seen his cute little picture on Facebook or via a text message, but I'm showcasing him again on the blog {of course}.

We are loving this "brand new" time with him.  Since he is my third, I realize how quickly he will change and I'm trying to cherish every single second of this precious time with my newborn.  

He's a really good baby and we seem to be getting in somewhat of a routine.  He had his circumcision earlier this week and along with that we've gotten to see his vocal side.  Ryan says it's just the Grandi coming out in him; he likes to encourage baby Kam by telling him, Show me your Grandi!

We are headed over to Cowboys Stadium today to watch our high school football team win the Texas 3A state championship!  This will be Kam's first football game, and his first visit to the infamous new Cowboys stadium.  Pictures to come soon!

Thank you all sweet readers for your love and encouragement during the birth of our son.  We are so blessed to have such a supportive network of friends and family.  

October Happenings

I've been a tad scarce on the blogging lately!  I'm so excited to be blogging today on my new Mac, using all the cool features that it has.  I've been going to one-to-one sessions at our local Apple store and learning lots of new stuff.  I feel so tech geek right now.  Between my personal sessions and Ryan reading the Steve Jobs book right now, I almost want to be an Apple employee.  Just not sure what I would contribute to that fine company.

Here's a few of the things we did in October.

We had our last soccer game, I would like to say the season ended with a hard-fought victory...but that was not the case..hard-fought OR victory.  But we had fun!

Dirty knees and all.

 

We played some football.  It's hard to see him in this fuzzy picture, but that is Kade making the tackle.

His team sadly ended their season with a loss and now we are on to basketball.

We attended my cousin's wedding near San Antonio.  Miss D got to be the flower girl!  I'm posting a picture below, but I will do another separate post on the event itself, I've got lots of good pictures!

Kade had to do some allergy testing, not fun.  We discovered he is allergic primarily to molds.  What a relief, he was afraid he would be allergic to the dogs.  Had he proved allergic to dogs, Andy Grandi would be gone right now.  But unfortunately he still resides here.

We went to the pumpkin patch with school friends.  I found this cute headband at Canton.  It's hard to tell from this picture, but it's a huge jewel spider on the headband with a little bit of black tulle.  

I think this was the first chilly day of the fall and I didn't even have a jacket that fit so I braved it until shortly after our early lunch and then headed straight to Starbucks!

Waiting to ride the ponies.

And we're off...

A great time with friends and their mommies!

We also had a baby shower, but I haven't uploaded my pictures from the camera to the Mac yet.  I will post a few of those once I get caught up with all of my picture uploads!  While my mom was here for the shower, she made this adorable wreath to hang at the hospital, and it will hang over his changing table once we get that sweet bundle home.  Isn't it cute?  There are special priviledges of being the daughter of Martha Stewart. 

Speaking of sweet bundles, I'm afraid he might be a big bundle.  We went to the doctor today and according to my sonographer, he already weights 7 lbs. 2 oz.  Kade weighed that much when he was born and Devynn weighed 7 lb. 3 oz., so I'm thinking this might be my biggest baby.  Ten more days to go!

More posts soon!

I would like to blog...

...but life has been crazy! 

In effort to catch up, I am posting some random pictures on the blog tonight.

First off, Candice's wedding.  Here I am doing my job as program provider (or perhaps you might call me a guestbook attendant, I don't know the correct terminology).

Why is my picture taken from down low?  Because it's from the perspective of this young photographer:

Here she is on the other side of the camera.

And snuggling with daddy.

And here's my other photographer using the camera during the service to take pictures of himself.

Lovely, right?  Switching topics, here is my football player during the homecoming parade (very hard to spot).

And changing gears again, here are a few pictures from the apple orchard field trip that Devynn's Pre-K class took recently.

We first had a demonstration on pollen and beekeeping.

Then we were allowed to pick one apple.  Decisions, decisions.

Next we took a tour of the apple orchard/garden/farm.

Both Pre-K classes at Devynn's school.

I feel a little caught up!  More blogging soon!

First Monday

This past weekend I had the pleasure of going to First Monday in Canton.  I met up with my mom and a couple of my aunts.  My sister had plans to go as well but at the last minute she was too busy to come.  We had a fun girls weekend and got a lot of Christmas shopping out of the way.

If you've never been to First Monday, it is described as such on the First Monday website:

What started more than a century ago as a flea market, has become home to some of the most exciting, cutting-edge home furnishings, antiques and collectibles that can be found anywhere. Over the past 150 years, lots of things have changed in the Original First Monday Park; but, the genuine, down-home human relationship between vendors and shoppers is the reason people keeping coming back. This is a place where you can slow down, visit and ask questions, talk to collectors and antique dealers, and meet the artists and craftsmen who create one-of-a kind items.

The world's largest outdoor trade days takes place Thursday through Sunday before the first Monday of every month in Canton, Texas. Every month, thousands of vendors from across the country turn this friendly East Texas community into a shopper's paradise where you can find the rare antiques and collectibles, furniture, fine home decor, arts and crafts, clothing, jewelry, tools, produce, and much more. Make plans now to come to Canton and enjoy the First Monday shopping experience.

One of the things that I love about Canton is the booths that have instant personalization.  There are some really cute items that you can put your name on, which are usually ready by the end of the day. 

Canton was very busy but we made the most of it.  We met up Friday morning and shopped most of the day, ending it at Applebees with maragaritas (O'Douls for me).  Then we were up Saturday morning and shopped most of Saturday before calling it a weekend.  The weather was great, and maybe it will become an annual tradition?

Shown here (L to R): Myself, Aunt Joanie, Mom, and Aunt Lea

 

I'm lucky to have such beautiful women in my family, beautiful inside and out.

And I know Aunt Joanie is happy, BUT she just doesn't like to smile for pictures!

Here is a profile picture Aunt Lea took of me and my bump:

 

31 weeks and counting.  May my precious boy never have to return to First Monday, a woman's paradise!