big improvements

I have mentioned that Bryce is very anxious in the pool and swimming lessons have been very touch and go.  Once he warmed up at his lesson yesterday, he did great.  His lesson was cancelled today due to weather, but we were able to go to my parent's pool tonight.  Now his teacher may not be impressed with the swimmies, but he was so brave tonight and didn't want anyone to help him!

A few weeks ago Bryce would scream hysterically if you weren't holding him in the pool even with swimmies.  He has made great strides in the past two weeks.  I'm so proud of him.  He has a double lesson tomorrow and then swimming lessons wrap up on Thursday.  I am happy that he has gained confidence through all of this. 

Way to go Bryceman.  We're so proud of you!

more weekend fun

Bryce has a few friends who share my birthday so we had fun at some kid birthday parties this weekend.  First we swam at Kathryn's party.

These big inflatable pools seem to be the rage!  Bryce enjoyed playing with the other kids and seemed to be a lot more brave in the water after a week of swimming lessons.

Emmy enjoyed the party too (while she was awake), ha!  She may have had a green mouth after tasting the icing on the birthday cake!

Later in the afternoon we headed to Jason's cousins house for Sarah's party.  She wasn't very excited about getting her picture taken with Bryce!

Sarah's older sister Hannah was much more inclined to picture taking!  The party was rainbow themed and the decorations and food were perfect.

In between the two parties we had a Splash Spectacular at church as a follow-up to VBS earlier this summer.  Bryce enjoyed playing in the water and practicing the songs they had learned.  This morning in church the kids performed one of the songs again.  Too cute!

We're headed to a family birthday celebration for me tonight.  It sure has been a fun weekend of celebrating!

my 30th birthday

So turning 30 isn't that bad, but the months and days leading up to it had me dreading the day!  We had a fun day taking Bryce to birthday parties for his friends, but then we headed out with friends tonight.  I haven't been clothes shopping since before Emmy was born (and those were maternity) so I enjoyed buying a new dress and dressing up for a night out!  And my hubby surprised me with a Coach purse!

My friend Kathryn and I have celebrated most of my birthdays together!

We didn't manage to take pictures at dinner (The Water Grill), but we did snap a few at a new frozen yogurt shop (Yapple) during dessert. 

It was so fun to go out with friends and enjoy a meal without cutting up food and entertaining or calming kids.  Don't get me wrong, I cherish my time with the kids, but adult time is very important! 

It was a great night out and I'm so lucky to have such an amazing husband and friends to celebrate with!

a look back

In honor of my 30th birthday tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane and look at birthdays past.  I can't get over how my hair, weight, and my style of clothes have changed so much over the years!

29 - poor picture quality, but you get the point.  I was 12 weeks pregnant with Emmy.

28 - I can't get over how young and babyish Bryce looked!  He was almost one and a half.

27 - I had gone back to my natural hair color because our well water was affecting my highlights.  Bryce was also 5 months old and I hadn't attempted to lose a pound of baby weight yet!

25 - I'm not sure what happened to 26, but I had dark hair again and I was 2 months pregnant with Bryce.  I think my 25th birthday was the last time I went "out" to celebrate my birthday.  Oh how having kids has changed me.  Maybe we'll go out this year for 30!

24 - I think I look so young here.

23 - we were in Hilton Head for a friend's wedding. 

21 - I couldn't find 22 so I stopped here.  This is just 5 days before our wedding.  We were so young! 

thursday thoughts

• I have been the worst blogger lately.  
• I'm exhausted.  It's been almost two months since Emmy stopped sleeping through the night and I'm still not used to getting up during the night to feed her 1-2 times again.

I may not be getting a good night sleep, but who could get upset with this sweet face!

•  We got rid of cable and our home phone a few months ago to save some money to help my new stay at home mom budget.  It's been an easy adjustment, except I REALLY miss HGTV.  Luckily our tv is new enough that it picks up local digital channels so I still have TLC and Food Network to get me through!
• Jason went to a local cupcake bakery today and brought home some delicious cupcakes as an early start to my birthday celebration.  He got me a cookies and cream, red velvet, and chocolate hazelnut with Nutella.  YUM!
• I got my hair highlighted today.  I.don't.like.it.  The same girl has highlighted my hair the same way for years.  Today she decided that she wanted to use some other kind of color that is more "green" and healthier for my hair than bleach.  I told her I didn't want it, but she insisted on doing some new color and some bleach.  When I got a good look at my hair when I got home, I noticed my hair was orange.  I went back and she tried to fix it.  I didn't have time for her to dry it so I just left there curly.  Hopefully I'll like what I see when I style my hair tomorrow.
• Bryce has had swimming lessons this week.  He loves the water (when he can touch the bottom).  He hates swimming lessons and any guided pool activities.  The director of the swim program we are using came out today to help with his lesson.  She was amazing!  Bryce spent more of the lesson under water than he did above water.  We went to the pool tonight so he could show Jason what he learned.  He cried and screamed the majority of the time.  He did calm down some and did some tricks, but good gracious we have a ways to go.  Hopefully 4 more sessions next week will help him!
• Emmy girl is getting more steady while sitting up.  I can't believe how quickly she is changing. 

It's a little blurry but I was afraid to let her go on her own for too long.

Hopefully I won't be such a stranger to the blog in the coming days.  I do have a fun post scheduled for tomorrow so come on back! 

A day at the lake

We headed to the lake with my parents today. It's probably been at least a year since we have been out on the boat with them so it was time! We had a wonderful day.  Somehow I didn't snap a picture of Bryce and Nanny, but she was there and Bryce enjoyed sitting with her while we rode.  I uploaded the pictures on my blogger app so the pictures aren't in the order I had hoped.

Bryce enjoyed playing in the water.  We told him he has to wear a life jacket or swimmies in the water until he learns how to swim.  He is scared to death of water that is too deep for him to touch the bottom, but he loves the shallow water.  However, he has no concept of the slope in water so he will walk forever in a river or lake and not fear a thing.  So that's why he is wearing a life jacket in 3 inches of water, ha!

The boys were watching the waves the boat was making.  Macy enjoyed tagging along on this trip.

Bryce was Pap's co-pilot.  He really enjoyed the horn.  I was never expecting it when he beeped it.  I think I jumped out of my skin every time he hit it!

Emmy enjoyed her first boat ride.

It's nice that the boat is big enough that the kids can play on the floor.  Maybe we'll get back to the lake again sooner that we did between our last two visits.

sweet potatoes

We've been experimenting with foods for the past few weeks, buy Emmy hasn't shown much interest.  We started with rice cereal and she ate it a few times and seemed to like it, but also turned her nose up to it most times.  We tried bananas and oatmeal with bananas a few times and she finally started to take to it.  Tonight we tried sweet potatoes and I think it's safe to say that she really liked them!

I think she just likes her daddy to feed her instead of me.  Look at her smiling at him.

Disney World - Day 3 - Sea World and Magic Kingdom Encore

Jason and I headed back to Sea World on Friday morning with Bryce and Emmy while the rest of the crew did things at the hotel.  Bryce enjoyed playing in the sprinkler park and climbing the rope courses and going down the slides.  We also went to the turtle and manatee exhibit and saw a fun 3D movie.  I think Emmy may have liked it the most!

We all headed back to Magic Kingdom on Friday afternoon. 

We took a train ride around the park when we first got there.  I attempted to get Bryce a picture of Woody while we were riding.

After the train ride we headed to Tomorrowland to do the people mover, carousel of progress, and a photo op with Buzz Light Year.  Bryce didn't want to actually have his picture taken with him (Mickey was scary enough) so he posed for a picture with Buzz in the background.  He was still pretty scared!

We really enjoyed any rides that provided a good breeze or good air conditioning.  Thankfully the rides that were sutiable for our whole crew didn't have any lines!  We took a Jungle Cruise in Adventureland before heading to Frontierland for the Country Bear Jamboree.  The show and bears weren't exactly what I remember from when I was a kid. 

Bryce really enjoyed the show and got into the music.  The kids enjoyed clapping along with the songs.

After dinner we headed back to Main Street to get a good seat for the parade.  I was so glad we got to go back to Magic Kingdom.  We had a great time and did a lot on Wednesday, but it was fun to see the parade and we even saw the fireworks on the way back to the hotel. 

It's safe to say that Bryce had the time of his life!  He was fast asleep on the plane before we ever took off.  I remember him asking me when we would be in the air and telling him that we were on the runway for take off.  I looked back over to tell him we were taking off and he was asleep.

We are so thankful that Jason's parents took us on this trip.  I was a bit nervous about taking Emmy and how difficult things would be with her at this age, but everything worked out just fine and both kids could not have been any better!

   

Disney World - Day 2 - Sea World

We headed to Sea World on Thursday to see Shamu.  I was surprised that they really didn't play up the name Shamu.  We watched the whale show, but there was never a mention of Shamu.  Bryce enjoyed this because there were no characters to scare him and he loves animals!  I was sad when I realized how few pictures I took at Sea World.

Bryce gave me the caption for this next picture.  "Watching the DaDas feed the sting rays".  I also remember doing this on my first visit to Disney World.

Some of our highlights from Sea World were feeding the sting rays, watching the dolphin feeding, the whale show, and a sea lion show.  Emmy and I stayed cool while everyone else saw the sharks.  

The highlight of Sea World was when Bryce got to ride his first roller coaster.  I of course don't have a picture of it, but we have his pink bracelet to show that he was tall enough!.  He had on a hat and Jason may have told him to stand on his tip toes, but he made it!  He loved the ride!

We had so much fun at Sea World that we went back a second day.  Stay tuned for more!

Disney World - Day 1 - Magic Kingdom

Our Disney World trip was a success!  We had a wonderful time and made many great memories.  I just wish I had done a better job photographing things for Bryce so he can look back at them one day.  It was a bit difficult to take pictures of everything with two kids and all the gear we had. 

Once we got to Magic Kingdom, we rode the ferry boat into the park.  We headed straight to Fantasyland where we rode the carousel, tea cups, Dumbo, and It's a Small World.  While we were in that area, we ventured over to Tomorrowland and did the race cars.

Jason's aunt Vickie gave Bryce this blue muscle t-shirt and he kept insisting he had to wear it to Disney World to ride the race cars.  I had no idea they had race cars, but he knew what he was talking about!

The Dumbo ride was a must!  I went to Disney World for the first time in kindergarten and one of my few memories is riding Dumbo with my grandfather.

The morning started off sunny and nice but the clouds and rain quickly rolled in.  It didn't dampen our fun too much!  You can see how wet we were by the time we posed for this picture in front of Cinderella's Castle.

MeMa and PaPa with the grand kids in front of Cinderella's Castle.

Our main goal before leaving Magic Kingdom was to see Mickey Mouse.  We have been preparing Bryce for this moment for months, but it didn't help.  He was just as terrified of Mickey as we thought he would be. 

Emmy didn't mind the characters and Minnie Mouse just adored her and she loved her outfit!

We ended up leaving the park earlier than we had planned since the rain and storms never really let up.  We took the monorail back to the parking lot which was fun for Bryce because we have shown him lots of pictures of it and talked about it for months.  Luckily, we were able to go back to Magic Kingdom later in the week.  I'll save that for another post.