Summer Days!

Our little family spent a summer evening out at a summer festival in a small town called Fremont, Nebraska. We had a good time driving out there on the scenic Nebraska roads. We saw a lot of cornfields on the way! We had fun visiting all the booths and got McKinley a tye-dyed dress, a caricature drawn of McKinley, some homemade rootbeer, and some yummy treats! We enjoyed seeing the entertainment venues and just walking around in small town Nebraska. It felt like the perfect summer day, complete with hot dogs and snow cones :)

10 Months Old!

Our sweet, not so little McKinley is 10 months old! What a fun age :) We love how much she interacts with us! It's been so much fun to see her little personality emerge as she grows into a toddler, and becomes less of a baby everyday! Some fun things about McKinley at 10 months are:

• She's quite the crawler. She's gotten really good at crawling and can crawl at a fast speed! She loves it when Travis or I get down on the ground and crawl around with her, she thinks that's pretty funny!

• She can pull herself to standing and stand on her own for a few seconds. She tries to stand up on any and everything, which gets her into trouble sometimes! She can get into almost anywhere and loves to try and reach things to play with!

• She can open cabinets and drawers, looks like a new round of baby-proofing is in store for our house!
• Her favorite past time is taking things out of a box or a bag or a cabinet or drawer. She loves to take things out one at a time, look at them for a second then toss it aside. Then she takes something else out and repeats the process. It's really cute to watch her, but not so fun to pick up after her :)
  
• She is still little Ms. Social she loves it when people talk to and smile at her. She gets excited and smiles and waves at them like crazy!
  

• She loves it when Daddy comes home, when she hears the door opening she gets really excited and gasps out of excitement. She hurries and crawls over to see him once he walks in the door.

• She has 4 teeth! 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom. She's had them poking at her gums for a couple of months, and finally one day they just broke through. One broke through on the bottom and one on the top. A few days later the other one on the top and the other one on the bottom came through, so in about a weeks time she went from no teeth to 4 teeth!

• She still loves eating. She loves gold fish, graham crackers, bread, fruits, and any other thing we'll give her. She's gotten really good at chewing things up and even bites into things with her teeth. She's not as fond of baby food as she used to be, but she'll still take it which is good so I can feed her meats and veggies which are too hard for her to chew and swallow on her own right now.

• She is a good sleeper! She goes to bed around 7pm every night and sleeps until around 6 - 6:30am (some mornings she'll sleep in until 7 or 7:30am)! She still takes 2 naps a day one in the morning and one in the afternoon, in fact that's what she's doing right now giving me time to write this post :) She sleeps with her "love bug". Sometimes we'll go in to check on her and see she cuddling with it while she's sleeping, it's the cutest thing!

• She has quite the personality! She always has to be moving and doing something! She's so busy! She makes the funniest faces, especially when she gets mad like this one!

• She is still a little sweet heart! She loves to snuggle with me when she's sad, when she's tired or just woke up! She reaches for me and Travis when she sees us because she wants us to hold her! She gets so excited when she sees us when we've been gone for a while! She lays her head on our chest and melts our hearts :)

We love our sweet little 10 month old!

Cruisin'

Once we finally made it to Houston on our road trip, we had a pool party to celebrate everyone being together and 2 birthdays in our family, Melia turning 1 and Travis turning 25! We swam, ate pizza and cupcakes, opened presents and played some girls vs. boys pool volleyball, which the girls won :)





The next morning, we headed down to Galveston to board our ship, The Carnival Conquest!

On the ship, we had fun playing games, attending the trivia/shows, eating at the many various places to eat, and just spending time together as a family.

Every night we had a nice sit down dinner in the Renoir Dining room.





Our waiter was named Dennis from Croatia. We got to know him really well throughout the week and we really enjoyed him! He loved kids, which is good considering our group had quite a few of them :)

Every night after dinner we came back to our room to find a neat towel animal on our bed! It was always fun to come see what creation we'd find! We took a picture of McKinley with our towel creation every night. Here are a few of my favorites!



On the ship, I was selected to participate in a trivia game show, which I won :) My prize was a ship on a stick!


Our first stop was in the Bahamas at Naussau. We spent the day there playing on the beach! We rented some jet skis and played on those for a while and enjoyed some fun in the sun!





Our next stop was on another island in the Bahamas at Freeport. There we went to another beach and went on a boat ride and saw some nice homes, a ship from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and some dolphins.

The Bahama Mama!

Our last stop was at Key West, Florida. It was a neat little island! There we walked around all of the cool shops and took a trolley tour of the whole island (it's only like 4 miles by 2 miles).


The boys all got hats from a shop called The Mad Hatter hat shop. Here they are showing off their new hats.

We had such a great time on the cruise visiting fun new places and spending time with my whole family! It was a relaxing, fun, exciting week! We can't wait for our next big adventure! Here is McKinley ready to go on the next trip :)

June Adventures!

June was a fun and busy month for us... hence no blog posts :) We moved into our new apartment at the end of May. So we spent the first part of June getting settled in. I finally feel like I have everything situated and in place. I will take pictures soon to share, I was just waiting until everything was set up and in place to do so.

We celebrated Travis's first Father's Day! To make the day special McKinley and I made Travis breakfast in bed and let him sleep in! We also made his favorite meal for lunch and let Travis relax and watch movies throughout the day! We made him a book about why he is the BEST Daddy, and got him some new tennis shoes! He is a great Daddy to McKinley and she sure loves him! I'm grateful for him and all he does as a Father and Husband in our family!


McKinley wore her "Daddy's Little Cupcake" shirt in honor of Father's Day!


We also had some visitors in June! Emily and Basilio came to visit on their road trip! It was so fun to have them here for a week and for McKinley to spend some time with her Aunt Emmy and Uncle Bossy! We took a trip to the Nebraska state capitol building, Emily and I got our hair/toes done, we played some frisbee golf at a park near our house, and went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We had a great time showing them around Lincoln and spending time with them!



McKinley had so much fun playing with Uncle Bossy!





Fun times at the Nebraska state capitol building!




At the end of the week, we all packed up and ventured out on a road trip back to Texas so we could be back in time to set sail on a cruise with my whole family! Overall the road trip went well, and McKinley did pretty good! We stopped in Oklahoma for the night. I've never seen McKinley so happy, as she was when we got out of the car at the hotel in Oklahoma. It was 9pm, 2 hours past her bed time, but she was so happy to crawl around and play! She was smiling, giggling, and crawling all over the place! It was so cute, I couldn't bring myself to put her to bed right away since she was having so much fun after being cooped up in the car all day!

Stay tuned for my next post about our fabulous cruise!