Baby Nora Has Arrived!

Baby Nora was born on February 8 at 5:57 p.m., weighing 5 pounds and 14 ounces! We are so thrilled to welcome such a precious blessing into the world!

Here are my two very favorites!

Thanksgiving with babies on the way!

It's been so long since I've posted anything, but things have been so busy! Jason and I finally got to go home for a visit during Thanksgiving week, and it was great to see so many of our precious family and friends! The week was flew by, probably because our schedule was so packed. We drove to Starkville for the State/Arkansas game, then to Jackson for Thanksgiving with Linda, then home for Thanksgiving at Nanny's, and finally Thanksgiving with my parents. Of course I was having so much fun visiting with everyone that I forgot to take pictures AGAIN! Maybe I'll remember this Christmas...

At least we remembered to take a family picture on Jason's side. Next year is going to be a big year of growth for our family! Jason's sister, Rachel, is pregnant with twin boys, and we are having a little girl! Also Jason's brother Daniel just proposed to Sarah, who has three adorable children, PJ, Chloe, and Mia. They will get married sometime next year, adding 4 more! How exciting!

And finally, here's an update on baby's growth...this is my belly around 27 weeks. Baby Nora is going to be here before we know it!

Lane and Bo!!!

What a wonderful weekend! Our dear friends, Lane and Bo Baxter came to visit us for the Mississippi State vs. Houston game. We picked them up from the airport on Friday and went to eat at our favorite Mexican place, Lupe Tortilla!

After dinner, Lane was so excited to give me the sweet gifts she got for our little baby girl who's on the way! I'm totally obsessed with the little bunny rattle! Our baby girl is going to love her Aunt Lane!

 Saturday morning Lane and I took a walk around the neighborhood, and then we did a little shopping. We met the guys for lunch at BJ's Brewhouse!

 

 Later that afternoon, we drove into Houston to go to the game and were surprised by how many MSU fans were on campus! Luckily our tickets were in the MSU section! The game was exciting, especially since we won 47-24!

Here's Lane rubbing the baby bump!  

 Lane and Bo, thanks for a great weekend! We miss y'all already and are looking forward to our next visit!!

A Fall Full of Visitors

A couple weeks ago, Jason's mom, Linda, came to visit us for Jason's birthday. Although a good portion of our time was spent going to appointments for both the baby and Jason's fractured foot, we had lots of fun together! She brought us some of the clothes Jason wore when he was a baby which included a little outfit that she smocked herself and Jason's first little pair of Osh Kosh overalls; they were so adorable!! She even found pictures that show him wearing each outfit! She also brought a sweet handmade birthday present from Jason's grandmother, Maw.

Linda picked up a delicious strawberry cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory for Jason's birthday! 

After church, Linda and I took a couple pictures in the lovely prayer garden across the street and prayed for all the little babies on the way!

 Thank you so much for making time to come visit us, Linda! We really enjoyed our time with you, and we miss you already!

Just this last weekend, Jason's grandparents, Nancy and Travis Satterfield also came for a visit! Although I completely forgot to take pictures while they were here, I wanted to mention how much fun we had with them and how much we really appreciated them driving all this way to see us! We love and miss all our family and are really looking forward to spending time together over the holidays! 

Surprise, Surprise!

By now I'm sure (if you're reading this) you probably already know that Jason and I are expecting! But after requests for updates and pictures, I'm going to post about it just a little bit. The baby is due on February 26, 2011, and we are currently around 16 weeks (or 4 months) along, hoping to find out the sex of the baby in early October!! Please keep us and the baby in your prayers.

And here's what the belly looks like so far...

Anniversary Trip: Fredericksburg, Texas

This past week, Jason and I had our three year anniversary! I cannot believe how quickly time has flown by, especially this wonderful year, full of surprises! We love to take little trips together to get away from time to time, and for this anniversary we decided to visit Fredericksburg, Texas. We heard from several friends that Fredericksburg was an interesting town with a great deal of German influence, so we did some research and decided to go. Fredericksburg is located about an hour straight west of Austin in the beautiful Texas Hill Country. We found a quaint little bed-and-breakfast called Hoffman Haus. Although it was right in the middle of a neighborhood close to downtown, because it was surrounded by fences and trees, it seemed very secluded. We stayed in a lovely room called the Evening Star inside a restored 1850's log cabin. Our room also had an adorable little patio entry with a couple of rocking chairs and a swing, so we lounged around outside before heading to dinner.

 

We chose to eat at a wonderful place called August E's and were so glad we did! The menu, service, and atmosphere were absolutely phenomenal! I had the Shrimp Scampi Linguine, and Jason ordered a New York Strip. Both were fantastic, and we would recommend this place over and over again!  

After a wonderful night's rest, we awoke to breakfast delivered right to our room.

Sitting outside on our little secluded patio, we tried to decide what to do with the rest of our day.

Fredericksburg is filled with plenty of things to do, and its main street is chock full of adorable little shops where you can find just about anything you could possibly want. We decided to park near the place we were going for lunch so we could do a little window shopping. One of the first stores we visited was called Chocolat (have you seen the wonderful movie by that name...you should)!

We picked out a small assortment and nibbled on them while sitting on a park bench in the shade.

We visited several other little shops before stopping for lunch, including one I particularly liked called Homestead Antiques and Home Furnishings. It reminded me so much of the antique stores I visited in Italy with intricate and beautiful old furniture as well as eclectic memorabilia stacked one of top of another. I could have browsed for days, but of course we were growing hungry and tired. One last stop though at a shop for little ones called Beulah's....I wanted to buy EVERYTHING, especially the precious little onesies! For lunch we ate at a little deli and gift shop called The Peach Tree. We were definitely glad to have reservations, because that place was packed! The food was fresh and delicious, definitely worth the short wait. After lunch, we headed home. It was truly amazing to see how many road-side peach stands there are between Frederickburg and Austin. As with most good things, the only trouble is choosing just one! We stopped and bought a basket full of peaches, and I'm looking forward to trying some new recipes with them tonight.

Missing you, girls. (This could be the longest post ever!!!)

Goodbyes are just plain dreadful.
Jason's family left a few minutes ago (I wrote this last week), and our apartment feels so empty. No bags or wet towels or blow-up mattresses filling our tiny living room. Just lonely. I guess goodbyes make me a little fearful, because I don't want there not to be another time...another visit. Maybe I am being dramatic, but maybe also realistic. I always want the people I love to hear from me-just in case there isn't another time-how dear they are in my heart. So girls - please know that you are all so precious to me, and thank you for coming to visit us!

For any of you who don't know, Jason's two little sisters came to visit us by themselves this past week, and Jason's step-mom, Regina, and his sister Rachel, drove out to visit and pick them up at the end of the week. On Sunday I drove to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to get the girls; on the way, I stopped in Lafayette to spend the night with my dear friend, Jessica Lovelady. After a refreshing visit with her, I took some pictures of her adorable house while saying goodbye to her kitty cat, Maury. I'm pretty sure he was pleased to see me go.

After meeting Regina and Dwayne in Baton Rouge, I drove all the way back to Sugar Land. With Mary Grace sleeping soundly in the back seat, Sally and I listened to music and talked the whole way. We went to bed early that night, getting up the next morning for a full day of playing in the pool! After all that swimming we needed a "little" snack so we made homemade chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream!!!

Wednesday morning, I got the girls up extra early to get to the Houston Zoo while it was still (hopefully) cool. My friend Shelley and her three-year-old son, Brayden, came over, and she drove us to the zoo.

The zoo was wonderful! However, after eating lunch, walking through just about every exhibit, and searching for the bears (which were sleeping by the way) that Brayden so desperately wanted to see, we were all pretty exhausted, not to mention hot. We had to get home! Later that day, (after a nap) we headed over to Shelley's house to play. Brayden and "the girls" had a pretty good time playing in the back yard and at their neighborhood splash pad.  

Wednesday morning, we got up to go ice skating! I love ice skating (and really enjoyed it in Montana earlier this year), so I was pretty excited to find a place to skate so close to home. While skating inside a rink is never quite as fun as on an outdoor iced-over pond, we did have a really good time! 

After initially clinging to the side for dear life, the girls quickly moved away from the wall and skated on their own; I was so proud :) Towards the end of our two hour block everyone else got off the ice and we were the only ones skating in that huge rink for about thirty minutes! 

 Later that day, Jason got off work early, so we went to the Incredible Pizza Factory for dinner! 

Mary Grace hit the jackpot on one particular game several different times and won a ton of tickets. It was hilarious, because she just kept on winning over and over again. One of the pictures above is her waiting while the machine printed out all of her hundreds of tickets!

Thursday morning, we went to the Children's Museum in Houston. 

Definitely my favorite part of the Children's Museum, and probably Sally and Mary Grace's favorite too, was this huge climbing structure in the middle of the museum! They climbed up and down it several times, and I climbed up once. I probably would have spent way more time on it except for the fact that I was carrying my purse and a bag full of shoes....which made me feel a wee bit claustrophobic.

After the Children's Museum, we drove by Rice University to check out an exhibit at their art gallery. The show was done by Andrea Dezso, and it was absolutely fantastic! 

 Next we drove to Discovery Green in downtown Houston. Several people told me they had a great "splash pad" (which apparently is the new name for water play areas in public places with no standing water...see wikipedia), so we decided to go check it out while we waited for Jason to get home. Um, it was not quite what we expected...being from the country, we're used to a bit more water and wide open spaces....(cue picture of Mary Grace on the rice well from last summer in Benoit, Mississippi) 

We decided it was more for younger children, but it was still nice to know about for future reference.

Here we are eating our little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with apples, raisins, and fruit roll ups.

Mary Grace looks to be enjoying herself, while Sally sits back to watch. (Mental note: save Discovery Green for the younger kids)

That night, after coming home from the park and doing a little swimming in the pool, Jason came home and we went to our FAVORITE restaurant, Lupe Tortilla (I think we may drive people a little nuts talking about it so much). Also we took a couple silly group pictures, but I'm only posting the semi-serious ones. 

Saturday morning we all got up, ate breakfast, and cleaned up the apartment a little bit because Regina and Rachel were coming!!! Once they got here, we went shopping in the First Colony mall and later ate dinner at BJ's Brewhouse. Sunday morning, instead of going to church, we decided to stay home from church. Jason and I got up and got doughnuts for everyone for breakfast. As if they hadn't been driving enough already, we decided to take them riding around all through the countryside. Our first stop was a Buc-ee's Gas Station in Wharton, TX. This link will take you to pictures of the actual Buc-ee's store we visited if you're interested in seeing how serious they are. You probably can't tell by the picture, but they're kind of a big deal here in Texas. :) They pretty much have everything you might ever need (or not need, depending on your point of view).  This is the stuffed bear near the entrance to their outdoors store (where Regina bought us a couple awesome fajita pans in which we will practice making beef fajitas just like Lupe's until we have perfected it like an art).

 

After touring Buc-ee's, and making sure everyone visited their amazing bathrooms, we headed to a miniature horse farm Jason passes on his way to work. You might not be able to tell from the picture, but these horses are definitely small-scale.

Our next stop was the Glen Flora Emporium, truly one of my favorite little antique places, located in the precious town of Glen Flora! Some furniture was purchased :)

 

Lastly, we stopped by our church in Richmond to take a few pictures.

 

We went to Lupe's again for dinner just to be sure Regina and Rachel got to eat there too. Monday morning it was Starbucks for breakfast; then shopping, lunch, and heading home. Although it's always sad to see them go, we're already looking forward to their next visit!