Houston Vacation: On the Road (10/14/10 - 10/15/10)

We left work a few hours early on Thursday, picked Lily up from daycare, and hit the road for Houston. We drove straight through the night, switching drivers back and forth, and only had to stop for about an hour at a rest stop for both of us to sleep. Poor Paul ended up doing most of the driving because I was so exhausted from staying up late every night trying to pack and prepare for vacation. The entire trip took us about 24 hours which was amazing considering that we were travelling with a toddler. Lily was an awesome passenger! She didn't whine at all. That was especially amazing considering that the portable DVD player died about an hour into the trip due to a defective car charger. She slept well in her carseat at both nighttime and naptime. The only time she cried was after we stopped for dinner on Thursday night. The restaurant next to the McDonalds we stopped at had a playground with a giant chicken which Lily absolutely loved and did not want to leave.

Here are some pictures from the road.

Lily playing with the giant chicken:


Having fun on the slide:

Finished off with a dramatic catch by mommy:

Lily also loved this "big kid" swing with a safety bar to keep her in place:

When Lily woke up on Friday morning, she reached over and grabbed the newspaper. I heard a rustling in the backseat so I glanced back to see this:

My silly girl reading the newspaper:

Lily getting ready for her first Waffle House experience on Friday morning, a southern "must":

1Y34W: Houston Vacation (10/14/10 - 10/24/10)

We had a great vacation in Houston with Paul's brother, Mike, and his family but managed to take about 600 pictures. I think that people on safari tend to take less than that! I will not torture you with that many pictures but it is still hard to put up a post with more than 50 photos so I will break down the vacation into more digestible chunks then do a summary at the end. Here we go...

1Y33W: Lily in the Leaves (10/11/10 - 10/17/10)

My mom called on Monday night to inform me that my grandmother fell at the mall and broke her hip. They did surgery on Tuesday and performed a partial hip replacement since she broke the head of her femur. I felt so bad for her. She was in a lot of pain and was very upset about the whole ordeal, especially because her independence means everything to her. I worried about her making it through surgery and recovery, especially at her age, but she is one tough cookie. I felt guilty that I was unable to make it up to visit her before we left on our vacation but we were just too busy.

This week was mostly spent packing for our Houston trip. I got everything ready on Monday and Tuesday. Paul packed up the truck on Wednesday night and we loaded in the last minute items after getting ready on Thursday morning. We took the truck fully-packed to work with us. We got out of work a few hours early, picked up Lily, and hit the road. The details of the rest of the week and our vacation will be included on my next post.

Lily is in a good bedtime routine now which I fear will go out the window on our vacation. She is already a difficult sleeper which gets even worse when she is out of her routine. She is still not always sleeping through the night but usually cries for her “binkie” and goes right back to sleep when I give it back to her as it frequently falls out of her mouth and out of the crib when she is asleep. I always read Lily a bedtime story in the rocking chair and her hands-down favorite right now is Dr Seuss’s ABC book. She insists upon that book every night and won’t accept anything else. She anticipates and recites part of it and, therefore, now knows her ABCs up to G. When Paul misread one of her favorite parts as “glasses” instead of “goo-goo goggles”, she was quick to correct him which was absolutely adorable. Now she recites part of that page over and over again because it makes us laugh, “ABCDEFG…. Goo goo goggles”.

Much like Lily loved to tell us about her train ride at Crossroads Village (which she still talks about, by the way), she was very much into telling us over and over again this week about all of the fun she had at the Davison Pumpkin Fest last weekend. She talked about her ride on the “baby train” as well as her hayride on the “track-TOUR”. I must get a video of her saying that word because it is just too cute!

The fall colors were near peak this week and I feared that we would miss them while we are in Houston so we took some time on Tuesday and Thursday to get pictures of Lily in the leaves. That was pretty much all of the pictures I took this week but there were 120 of them. Don’t worry, I narrowed them down considerably before posting.

Our first photo stop on Tuesday was a church yard right by Lily's daycare with enormous maples and excellent light. Here is Lily looking very serious:

She greatly enjoyed running through the leaves:

My happy little sweetheart:

This is Paul's favorite. I love the light:

We then drove to the Nichols Arboretum looking for another good photo spot. The best place we could find was the Forest Hill Cemetery which was quite beautiful. Lily loved running around and throwing leaves in the air:

Suddenly Lily was playing with a football. It took us a minute to figure out where she got it until we went around to the front of this headstone and found that it belonged to Bo:

Throwing more leaves:

Then Lily decided to start gathering acorns:

I thought it would be cute to get Lily's picture sitting on this urn but instead it looks like she is trying to go to the bathroom. LOL:

It was hard to get her picture at all because she wouldn't stop running through the leaves and kicking them in the air:

Riding on Paul's shoulders:

Lily loves her daddy:

Happily chilling on a bench:

Lily and I:

Picking leaves:

And gathering acorns and nuts again:

I really liked how the pictures turned out at the church by Lily's daycare so we returned to take more pictures on Thursday before leaving for Houston. I absolutely love this one:

Lily had trouble running through the large pile of leaves:

Oops, she's down:

Back up and giggling:

I had Paul throw some leaves into the air for some photos. Lily thought it was hysterically funny:

I made this composite of my favorites:

Grandma's 90th Birthday Party (10/10/10)

Today was another fun-filled day for us. We tried to get a few things done around the house in the morning then after Lily's morning nap, we headed up to Frankenmuth for my grandmother's 90th birthday party. Her birthday is actually not until November 7th but we had to plan the party around everyone's schedules so it ended up being nearly a month early. Still, my cousin Todd was unable to attend at the last minute due to work but we tried! It was a gorgeous day so I think that everyone in the area headed to Frankenmuth as well. There was absolutely no parking so, after circling for quite a while, Paul dropped Lily and me off and parked nearly a mile away.
We had a wonderful dinner with my family. Here is everyone (minus Paul who took the picture)- me, my mom with Lily, my dad, my grandma, Aunt Margaret, Uncle Dale, Jeremy, Ashlee and my Aunt Robin are hidden, Uncle Lee, and Aunt Gloria:

My grandmother is notoriously hard to shop for so my mom had the great idea of giving her a money tree as her gift. Finally, a present my grandma won't return:

Grandma opening her cards:

Grandma with Aunt Margaret and Uncle Dale:

Jeremy, Ashlee, Aunt Robin, part of Uncle Lee, and Aunt Gloria:

Singing 'happy birthday' over her sundae:

Lily loved the ice cream:

But she especially loved the little animals that came atop everyone's desserts:

Where did all of grandma's money go? Well, we had to pay for the dinner somehow! Just kidding:

After dinner, we all headed back to my grandma's house to visit further. Lily was tired at dinner despite having almost a three hour nap beforehand so she ended up snoozing for about 30 minutes on the car ride to nana's house. She woke up in a great mood and enjoyed playing with her little plastic animals that came in everyone's ice cream on my grandma's window seats:

Paul, Lily, and my mom in the window:

Lily with her little animals on the window ledge:

Lily and grandma:

Lily, Paul, and I pose for a family photo outside:

It was a great day and I think that everyone had a wonderful time together celebrating my grandma's birthday. It was such a busy but fun-filled weekend and the weather was absolutely gorgeous and unusually hot. We were bummed to have the weekend come to an end but our next workweek will be short as we are leaving on vacation to Houston in only a few days.