Memorial Day Weekend

We had an extra fun Memorial Day weekend this year! We left Friday after Travis got off work and flew to Texas to spend it with my family! All 3 of my sisters, their families and of course my parents were all there for the fun! It was great to have everyone together! McKinley enjoyed her first airplane ride being aware that she was on an airplane! She was excited to get on and kept saying, "ai-plane"! She did great too, on the way there she even got her own seat and enjoyed watching Barney on my ipad. Here she is with her set-up on the plane:

While we were in Texas McKinley got a lot of swimming in and quite enjoyed my parents swimming pool! But I think her favorite thing to do there was play with her cousins! She had a lot of fun playing with all the new toys at Meme and Pepe's house and having fun cousins to play with!

We celebrated Memorial day by wearing flag shirts and having a BBQ, complete with my flag fruit pizza :)

We even got to have a sister and brother-in-law's night out! We all went bowling. We played boys vs. girls, the 3 boys scores totaled vs. the 4 girls scores totaled. I'm happy to report, the girls won both times, even though by only a small margin :) We then completed the night with cold stone, you can't go wrong there on a hot summer evening in Texas!

We went to the mall a few different times, one of my favorite places, especially when I'm with my Mom and my Sisters!

My Dad had just gotten home from a 3-week trip around the world, literally. He brought as all back gifts from Kenya. He got the girls handmade Kenyan necklaces and bracelets! And he got the boys, African smocks (I'm not sure that's what they're called, but that's the name I gave them :)  Here they are modeling them!

Before, Mandy and Natalie had to head back to Dallas, we stopped in at the nursing home where my Grandma is, and visited with her for a little while. It was so good to see her and to know that she is doing better and is in better health than she has been! Here's the whole group at the nursing home!

The kids thought the nursing home was great fun and enjoyed running around in the open spaces. Here are all 4 of the cute cousins playing "Ring Around the Rosies". They were so cute together and has such a great time!

Lastly, here is a picture of my Dad with his 2 almost 2-year old granddaughters! They're such cuties! It's so fun to have them so close in age! They played really well together, better than most toddlers play with other toddlers, so that was a pleasant surprise :)

We had so much fun getting to spend time with my family! We of course played lots of games. The boys got in 2 games of golf, which Travis loved! The girls of course got in tons of shopping and I got to go to all of my favorite Houston stores! Travis and I got to go out to dinner with my good friend from high school and college, Kari, which was fun to get to catch up! We can't wait until the next time we get to go back!

21 months

At 21 months, McKinley is still keeping us on our toes! She's a talking, dancing, singing, running, kissing machine :) One of McKinley's favorite things to do is go swimming. We got a little pool for our porch and she loves being outside and wading in her pool!

She also still loves animals or "amals" as she calls them. She loves going to the zoo and also seeing any kind of animal around outside like birds, bunnies, dogs, cats, etc... We went to the zoo with Mya and Madison last week and McKinley loved it! She was with some of her favorite people seeing some of her favorite things, animals!

She loved walking around the zoo holding Mya's hand. When Mya let go of her hand she said, "hand, hand" wanting to hold her hand again! The funny thing is, she won't let me hold her hand when we're walking around :)

She loves ice cream, or "icream" in her words. We took her to a frozen yogurt place one night and she was walking around the store excitedly chanting, "icream, icream!"  She enjoyed some of my red velvet cupcake frozen yogurt and got it all over everything! It was quite the stark contrast to her white shirt! She loved every bite of it though!

 And it's no surprise that she still loves playing outside, and she still loves the park!

 

 Recently, she's started to enjoy picking dandelions at the park! She likes to pick them and then we taught her to blow them.

 Something else fun McKinley likes to do is dress up! She likes to put on hats, glasses, jewelery, etc... I've even started a little dress up bin for her to play with!

  

Here are a few more fun pictures of my sweet 21 month old. Here she is doing a little light reading at Barnes and Nobel, "Secrets of Warfare".

Playing with her buddy Mya

Jumping off a package of diapers

We love our sweet 21 month old, almost 2 year old! She is so much fun and we enjoy getting to watch her grow up each and every day!

Meme visits Nebraska

Meme came back to Lincoln with us from Kansas City. We had a lot of fun having her here! We made 4th of July wreaths, went to eat at a lot of fun places, went shopping at a lot of fun stores, and of course spent a lot of time playing outside!
 

McKinley enjoyed getting donuts with Meme before we took her to the airport!

We enjoyed having Meme in town! McKinley knows who Meme is and gets excited when she sees her! I'm so glad McKinley knows her Grandma even though she lives so far away. We love having her come and stay with us and spend some time with us!

Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day this year! My 2nd official Mother's Day! We were still in Kansas City with my Mom and Natalie. So it was the perfect opportunity to spend the day with my mom, and of course my little McKinley who made me a Mommy!

I'm grateful for my Mommy and all the efforts she makes to visit us and spend time with us even though we live in different parts of the country! I'm grateful that she is such a great Grandma to McKinley and that McKinley knows her and loves her so much! She gets so excited when she sees her and sad when she leaves! She's a wonderful Mom and Grandma!

I'm also so grateful to be a Mommy to my little McKinley! She is such a sweet, snuggly, funny, cute, silly, goofy girl! She makes me so happy and I love her so much, tantrums and all :) I'm so glad she made me a Mommy almost 2 years ago. It's been the most challenging, but most fulfilling thing that I've done in my life! I look forward to being her Mommy forever and being a Mommy to other kiddos to come!

I'm also grateful for my husband and the support he gives me as a Mommy! He is supportive of my decision to stay home everyday with McKinley and works so hard to provide for our family so that I can do that! He is so helpful with McKinley when he is home and gives me much needed breaks after long days. He is a great Daddy to McKinley, which helps me to be a better Momma! He lets me know that my efforts are appreciated and surprises me with beautiful flowers :)

I'm grateful for my Mom and grateful to be a Mommy myself!!

Kansas City round 2

After the race, we got to relax and enjoy some fun time together as a family and some of the fun attractions Kansas City has to offer. McKinley enjoyed spending time with Meme and her Aunt Natty.

After waking up from one of her naps, McKinley found Meme's glasses and put them in her mouth like she was thinking. I thought it was pretty funny!

When my Mom and my sisters and I get together, we have to go shopping! So we went to nice part of Kansas City, called Country Club, with a lot of neat shops! Natalie and I were excited to shop at an H&M! So was McKinley as you can tell by this picture!
 

We worked up an appetite shopping, and went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner! One of my all time faves!

Having fun in the car on the way back to the hotel!

We also went to the Crown Center, in downtown Kansas City. They had a lot of neat shops there! McKinley's favorite was the one with the candy. She even got so excited her Dad had got her some M&M's that she peed on him :) She also enjoyed the fountains outside! She kept a healthy distance from the water, but enjoyed watching the fountains and watching the kids running through them!

 

Another fun site we were able to enjoy was the Overland Park Arboretum.  It had beautiful scenery and some very pretty flowers. We enjoyed walking around and taking some pretty pictures!

McKinley even found a fox statue that she enjoyed "riding" on :)

We had a great time and loved exploring a fun city with fun family! McKinley was happy to know that Meme was coming back to Lincoln with us to visit for a few more days!