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!

Mother's Day!

I had a great first mother's day! More of a mother's weekend thanks to my sweet husband. We went out to eat, my choice of restaurant, on Saturday and went and did some fun things I enjoy! Sunday I woke up to breakfast in bed and then got to go back to sleep while Travis took care of McKinley! Travis and McKinley got me an edible arrangement fruit basket with some yummy fruit, some were even chocolate covered! They also gave me some money to go shopping, one of my favorite past times, which I saved for the following weekend I was with my sisters and my mom in Dallas, one of their favorite past times as well :) It was an enjoyable first Mother's Day! In honor of Mother's Day, I found some pictures that document my journey as a mother so far! (In case you haven't noticed I love to show a progression of things in pictures :)

Here I am, almost ready to embark on the journey of Motherhood!

The moment I became a Mother :)

Showing off my precious baby girl! A proud Mamma :)

One of the best things about being a Mother, all the snuggles!

I have way too much fun dressing my baby girl up :)

See what I mean?

I love reading books to my sweetheart!

Celebrating McKinley's half birthday, the first of many celebrations to come with my precious girl!

Smiling at each other in the mirror, one of our favorite past times!

I love my sweet baby girl! I love being a Mom!

9 months!

McKinley is 9 months old! Boy, time sure has flown! She's getting so big and is not quite such a baby anymore! At 9 months McKinley is:

• Crawling like a crazy person! She crawls any and everywhere! She is getting faster and can maneuver on almost any terrain. She can pull herself up to sitting and standing. She's getting to be quite mobile and is always on the go! We can't keep her still for very long!

• Loves to talk and make noise! Her favorite noise to make right now is "BaBaBaBa". She can make other noises too, that's just the one she makes the most often. I love hearing her talk, it's the cutest thing to walk in and hear her jabbering!

• She is a little social butterfly! She loves smiling and waving at people everywhere we go! She smiles then hides her head in my shoulder pretending like she's shy! She loves seeing people and getting out! Here she is getting out on one of our walks on a warm spring day :)

• She still loves to eat! She's started eating table food and loves almost everything we've given her. She's still getting used to the new textures and new tastes, but is doing so well eating and chewing up new foods. She loves the Gerber puffs, yogurt bites, and pinwheel cookies.

• Waving to everyone! She loves to wave and waves at random people we see when we're out. Her wave isn't a traditional wave, but more of her just moving her fingers in her face. Here's a picture of her cute little wave!

I took McKinley to the doctor today. Her new Doctor here in Lincoln is Dr. Swisher. McKinley really seemed to like him and gave him a lot of smiles and waves! He even gave her a tongue depressor to play with, which made her very happy! He said she looks perfect and is developing perfectly, just what a momma wants to hear :) Here she is at the doctor crawling around in her diaper.

Her 9 month stats are:

Weight: 20 lbs. 4 oz. (75%)
Height: 28 1/4in. (74%)
Head: 18 3/4 in. (99%...hehe)

Cute Cousins!

This past weekend, and the first part of this week we were able to head to Texas for a visit! It was so fun to get to see all of my sisters, their families, my mom & dad and my grandma! One fun thing about getting together with everyone is getting to see the 2 youngest babies, Melia and McKinley together. They're only 2 months apart, so its been fun to see them grow up together. They're finally at an age where they can interact with each other a little bit, so that was so much fun to see. They'd get so happy and smiley when they would see each other! We took some really cute pictures of these two girlies together!

Bath Time!

Crawling cuties!

Playing outside!

Names on their booties!

In matching dresses that I made for them :)

After going through these fun pictures, I went back through and found all of the cute pictures of these 2 cuties together throughout their lives so far! I am sure there are plenty more to come! I'm so excited to watch them grow-up together!

Their first meeting when McKinley was just a week old! (Melia-2 mos. Mck-1 week)

Mommies and our new babies!

Mommies and our babies 2 months later! (Melia-4 mos. Mck-2 mos.)

Christmas cuties! (Melia-6 mos. Mck-4 mos.)

Both crawling now! (Melia- 10 mos., Mck- 8 mos.)

I couldn't leave out this sweet picture of all of the cousins on my side together! I'm so glad McKinley gets to have so many fun cousins to play with on both sides of our family! Oli and Gabby are so sweet with McKinley and love to play with her, just like they do with Melia! They're great big cousins to McKinley and I'm sure she'll love having them around as they all grow-up together!

8 months!

Our sweet little McKinley is 8 months old! She's been changing so much and is getting so big! The biggest change that has happened recently is she has started crawling!! She can make it all the way across the room! She's getting to be quite the little crawler and is getting into everything :)


She still loves to be outside! We like to take her swinging at the park, and she seems to really enjoy it!




Lately she has become such a Momma's girl! If she ever sees me, she starts panting and reaching for me. It's kinda cute, but drives me a little crazy at times too! If I'm ever sitting beside her on the floor she crawls over and pulls herself up in my lap, no question about what she wants!! She loves to smile for me and loves to for me to hold her! I have to sneak around sometimes so she won't see me and want me, so I can get a little break :) Regardless, I'm still glad that she loves her momma, and I love all the snuggles I get in! I love my little momma's girl!!


McKinley is also quite the little eater! She eats cereal for breakfast, a jar of fruit baby food for lunch, a jar of meat and a jar of vegetable baby food for dinner! She likes almost all kinds of baby food too. The only baby food she doesn't like is spinach and green beans... other than that she'll eat the whole jar of everything else! We've also just recently started feeding her non-pureed food. She can eat Gerber puffs and likes them. She also eats the Gerber yogurt bites and likes those too. She's getting better at chewing them up. I've also given her a little bread and bites of different fruits which she loves too. She's quite the eater!

Like Mother Like Daughter

Everyone has said that McKinley looks like her Daddy since the day she was born! I'm fine with that, but I recently found this picture of me as a baby, and I'm thinking she doesn't only look like her Daddy. What do you think...