Merry Christmas!

Here are some of the other pictures from Sadie's 9 month photos. We did them half Christmas and half regular. I'll share the regular ones after Christmas. I am giving a few as Christmas gifts, I don't want to spoil the surprise.

 

Cowboy Kringle

In our little town kids don't visit Santa, they visit his cousin, Cowboy Kringle. Last Saturday we took Sadie for her Cowboy Kringle visit. All in all it was a good visit, no screaming or crying is always a plus!

If they had taken the picture two seconds sooner it would of been waaaay better! We just plopped her down in his lap and walked away and once we were over by the camera she realized we weren't holding her anymore so she sloooooowly turned her head and looked up at Cowboy Kringle, now she is looking back at us with a "Hey! Mom and Dad, do you realize a creepy old man who thinks he is a cowboy is holding me!?!?!"

Oh well, there's always next year!

This Texas Baby: 10 Months

Oh my little Sadiecakes, where is the time going?? A few weeks ago you had a rough evening of falling, and staying, asleep. I think you were just over-tired, I could tell by your super pitiful cry you just wanted to be asleep, but you were having problems. During one of the many times I went into your room to check on and hold you I got super emotional about how fast everything was moving. I was sitting there rocking you and your head was on my shoulder and your bottom was in my lap and all I could think about was how it wasn't that long ago that you fit, head to bottom, just on my chest. Ahh, getting all teary-eyed just thinking about it again. Your daddy thought I was crazy when I came out of your room all red-eyed and asking for hugs. It's ok, he has his moments too!

This last month you celebrated your first Thanksgiving! You weren't feeling the greatest on Thanksgiving afternoon, you were running a temperature and just wanted to sleep, but after some Tylenol and a nap you were muuuuuch better!

You have finally picked up on the whole feeding yourself puffs, toast etc! So now you love eating puffs, and cramming as many of them as you can in your mouth before momma stops you. This also means you have shoved a handful (or two) of dog food into your mouth. Don't worry, you haven't managed to eat any of it yet!

I think you are totally aware of when you have things you should not have, or see something you want that you know we don't let you have. For example, a few weeks ago you spotted leaf on the floor and kicked it into baby high speed crawling to get to it and once you saw me coming after you to get it away you kicked it into baby high speed crawling to get away from me! It cracks me up, sometimes you are crawling so fast your knees slip on the floor so you look like you are crawling in place!

Your favorite thing right now is when I am unloading the dishwasher. You love pulling up on the door and yanking the bottom shelf in and out. You're going to break one of my plates sometime soon I think! You have also been doing your best to climb up onto the door, you've had the one knee up on it for a while, but this morning you managed to get yourself all the way up onto it. Even though this is technically the first day of your 11th month, I'm still going to post it!

You have started doing a little walking when pushing on things. Just a little. I still say you are going to be a late walker. Why walk when crawling has been getting you around great for months now? Here is a little video of you pushing a tub around. Please ignore my weird shaky voice, and the fact that Sadie left her pants at home, and that she only has one sock on...

 

I introduced chunkier food to you at the beginning of this month and you were not a fan. But now you are on board with this new stuff. You like the spaghetti and tuna with pasta stars!

 I can't tell you how excited I am for your very first Christmas this next month. It's going to be awesome! So far you have completely ignored the Christmas tree, I have a feeling we wont be saying the same this next year!

I made a decission...

...on the theme for Sadie's 1st birthday party!

We are going with a sunshine and pink lemonade theme! I really got to thinking about the themes I had it narrowed down to and decided not to do the character ones (Dr. Seuss and sock monkey) because I figure at some point Sadie will stand up and say "I want a (Barbie, Dora, Dr Seuss) party!" and then I will be sick of character birthday parties. Also, by the time her birthday rolls around I imagine we'll of had our fair share of dreary winter days, with more ahead of us, so we'll all be looking for a nice dose of sunshine!

Sidenote: I remember the weekend Sadie was born as being the most beautiful weekend. It was bright and sunshiny, crisp and cool. Just the kind of weekend you wanted to spend outside. Let's hope Mother Nature gives that to us again, as Sadie's birthday gift!

I am so stinking excited about getting everything together for this party. I know she doesn't care about a party, but I do. Plus, let's be honest, this party is WAY MORE for Robert and I to say "hey, look! we kept her alive for a year!" than is it for Sadie.

As excited as I am about it, I am also a little stressed! I felt like I was really ahead of the game when I started thinking about all this months ago, but thinking about it and doing something are two entirely different things! With Christmas on the horizon I foresee January being very busy for me. Perhaps I'll try and take help where I can get it instead of trying to make and do it all myself.

I also hope I am good and keeping you all posted in the planning process!

The Witching Hour

"The witching hour is a the time of day when supernatural creatures such as witches, demons and ghosts are thought to appear and be at their most powerful..."

Wikipedia

I briefly touched on this in Sadie's 9 month post, but during the past month Sadie has decided to have meltdowns almost every single work night. Between 5:45 and 6:00pm it's just a mad dash to unpack the daycare bottles, spot treat any dirty clothes that came home, fill the humidifier up, get her dinner heating up in the microwave, go outside and holler at the dogs to stay on our property and not the neighbors, all without having Sadie LOSE HER SHIT! (yes, that did require caps and boldness) before we start dinner/bedtime routine. And if I'm honest with you guys it's actually been longer than a month. When it first started happening a few months ago I took it as Sadie being over tired and moved starting her dinner/bedtime routine up by 15 minutes and thing were great! So why don't I just move her dinner/bedtime routine up by 15 minutes again? Well, that's because I already start her bedtime routine at 6:00pm and remember, we get home at 5:45pm. There are a few things I just have to do as soon as I get home before I can start with dinner/bedtime, so moving that up by 15 minutes is out of the question.

Sadie will generally fall asleep on the car ride home and if I am lucky I can get her in the house still a sleep and let her nap for 5 more minutes. Maybe this is my downfall, maybe I should wake her up as soon as we get home. But, man, having her asleep for 5 minutes when I get home is awesome. It gives me time to do all those things I mentioned above without having Sadie flip-a-lid. If Sadie is awake when we get home, or wakes up while I am getting her in the house, I'll take her into the kitchen with me and sit her on the floor with some toys, sing and talk to her, swoop in for kisses and playing all while trying to do the above list of items. Inevitability I have to leave her line of vision for something, to grab the humidifier, to go check see what the dogs that are barking their heads off at (generally the llamas next door and not an ax murder, still gotta check though!), in those 5 seconds I am out of her site Sadie will start with the whine crying. I can usually get back to her fast enough before she completely loses it. I get it, she is with other people all day long, so when it's just the two of us and I leave her (for 5 seconds) it's scary for her. Oh, but don't worry, she can leave me for 5 minutes and it's nooo big deal, because she did the leaving!

I can normally hold off these mini-meltdowns until one of two times: she finishes all of her dinner or the pajamas go on. She eats sooo fast and if you don't have a spoonful of food ready and waiting to go in her mouth when she is done swallowing it's like you want her to starve. Oh and then when the food is all gone you can clap and say "yaaaay Sadie!" till the cows come home, she's still pissed it's all gone (...we have discussed upping her dinner). Then it's time to put the pajamas on...and it's like the pajamas are made of hot searing fire and I'm going to scream my face off until you put a bottle in my mouth.

I really don't think she is flipping out because she's hungry. Generally she has her last bottle at daycare between 4:30 and 5:00pm and then 5 ounces of food at 6:00pm (how she fits another bottle in her belly at 6:20 is amazing to me!), but like I said we are considering upping her dinner amount.

I've tried changing things up and instead of immediately going into the kitchen with her, we'll have some cuddle time on the couch and play on the floor a little and then move to the kitchen. This method works great for the separation thing, I can leave her and she will generally be totally fine. But by that point we are about 10 minutes behind where we should be and we still end up with a sad Sadie by bedtime.

I'm 90% sure that all of this is related to being tired. Monday's are generally great! I love Monday's! I have my happy, happy Sadie for 45 minutes and it's awesome. But by Friday? Not so much. What changes between Monday's and Friday's? Her naps. Remember back when I talked about how Sadie would not nap at daycare? Well, when she moved up to the next class and started crawling her naps got better. Monday's she generally has a 2-2.5 hour nap, by Friday I'm lucky if she naps for 45 minutes.

Maybe I need to let her take a nap when we get home. Perhaps that would solve it all. Lay her down as soon as we get home and let her nap for an hour and a half and then wake her up for an hour or so, feed her dinner, give her a bath and then put her down for the night. But I worry she will be every bit as grouchy, if not more so, because I work her up. I get so worried messing with her like that though. She is an awesome sleeper, she sleeps for 12 hours straight every night and on the weekends it's close to 14 hours!

Y'all, it sucks. I love working and I love Sadie, but it totally blows when the small fraction of time I get with Sadie during the week is spent trying to get her to not cry. I'll sit down after she is in bed and feel wiped out. Not to mention when 85% of the time it's me doing bedtime by myself and the 15% of the time when Robert is home she is happy as a clam, it's hard to not take it personally and go to that place where I am mad at Robert for not being home in time for bedtime because if he was home every night she would be happy every night, or the even darker place of thinking she looooves him and screams at me.

So, if anyone is still reading this, got any words of wisdom, suggestions, brand of wine to buy while drinking suffering through this stage? I'd suuuuure appreciate it.

This Texas Baby: 9 Months

Sadie, Sadie, Sadie, what a month this has been! I left you TWICE this month. I managed to survive both. The first time your daddy and I went on road trip to New Orleans to celebrate our anniversary. Your Gigi came to stay with you and from all accounts everything went swimmingly well! The next time I left you was just a week after we got back! Your daddy is a HUGE Oklahoma Sooner fan and are trying to go up to Norman every year for a game, this year we went to see them play Texas A&M and we dropped you off in Arlington to hand out with your great aunts and 2nd cousin (? still not sure if that relation is right.) Again, you did great!

With all of this leaving you I am looking forward to the next few month full of holiday festivities!

Here is my fun bulleted list of your accomplishments:

• You have graduated from the ducky bathtub to having the whole bathtub to play in. I think this freaks you out a little still so you tend to sit in one place instead of trying to climb out of the tub like you were in the ducky tub.  
• You're pulling up on EVERYTHING. So far you're not doing much traveling once you pull up and you don't walk with us holding your hands, but you'll get there. I think you might be a late walker, just because you were an early crawler and can get wherever you need to by crawling.
• We had to lower your crib mattress all the way to the lowest setting. You weren't really in danger of falling out (yet) on the second setting, but we figured better safe than sorry, especially since we have wood floor and not even a little carpet for padding.
• You decided your crib tasted delicious while your daddy and I were on vacation! So, now there are great teeth marks on the side of your crib. It's ok, we bought these awesome tie-on cover things to help prevent that. Lowering the mattress helps too!
• You still only have your 2 bottom teeth, although I think your top ones are coming. You've been extra drooly the past few weeks and you have been chewing everything in the front of your mouth.
• You are still loving he baby food I made for you, you start whine/crying if daddy and I don't get it in your mouth fast enough at dinner. 
• You have NO desire to feed yourself. You'll hold your mouth open all day for baby food/puffs but if we try and hold one out to you on the palm of our hand you wont touch it. In fact, you've been known to lean over and try and eat it out of our hands!
• Oh! We took you to the doctor since I started this list and you now weigh in at 18.3 pounds and 28 inches long.
• We celebrated your 1st Halloween by doing nothing. Please don't hate me for that later in life. I have no problem spending money on you but for some reason I just could not justify spending $30 on a costume that would probably be too hot for you to wear and we weren't even going to go trick or treating! I did make you a pumpkin onesie and tutu to wear to daycare and to the pumpkin patch, you hated the pumpkin patch though so we don't have many great images of that.
• During the past month from the time we get home till the time you go to bed is a mad dash of making sure I get all your pre-bedtime stuff done all while keeping you from having a major meltdown. I'll delve more into this later.
• Your allergies are still terrible, but you're such a trooper and never let it get you down. Could just be because you've been like this since you were born! The Zyrtec does seem to help though, sometimes I'll forget it on the weekends and by the end of the day I can tell you are more snotty etc than normal.

Holy cow baby girl, you have some exciting months coming up! Your first Thanksgiving! Your first Christmas! Sniff sniff, then it'll be your first birthday! Just between you and me, can you make these next few months of holidays go by slower than normal? Ok, thanks, momma loves you for that.

EARTHQUAKE!

Y'all.

I experienced my first (and hopefully last) earthquake on Saturday night.

It was nuts.

We were in Norman, OK for the Sooner game, the epicenter was about 60 miles east of us.

It was about 11pm and we were already asleep (because what else is there to do when you are baby free besides catch up on sleep? Go see a movie? Go have a few drinks? Nope, we sleep!) and I woke up to EVERYTHING SHAKING side to side.

Again, it was nuts.

I reached over and woke Robert up with "EARTHQUAKE! It's an earthquake! I think we're having an earthquake!" Great way to wake up right?

It lasted for all of a minute.

But, it was a scary minute.

I always said I would never want to move to California because the idea of earthquakes scare me. That fear was reaffirmed.

Who knew I would have to worry about earthquakes in the middle of Oklahoma!?

I survived...

...but work is kicking my ass this week.

Suppose that's what I get for taking a week off.

We are gearing up to leave on Thursday night for another out of town trip.

We're going to Norman, OK and we'll being staying here:

Be jealous, haha.

So, as much as I want to tell you all about our trip, there is simply no time this week.

Plus, I need to sort through the 1000+ pictures I took.

I will leave you with this one photo, oooohooh, I'm sparkly.

5 Pins for Friday

Today I am showcasing 5 things I have pinned that I want to eat/drink while on vacation next week!

Source: google.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Beignets at Café du Monde

Source: google.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Hurricane at Pat O'Briens

Source: kevinandamanda.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Snowball at Hansen's Sno-Bliz

Source: google.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Sazerac at The Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel

Source: acookwalksintoabar.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Muffuletta from Central Grocery

Have a good week!
 Linking up with Kat!

I'm leaving mah baby!

Guh, is a mother ever ready to leave her baby for the first time? Oh, I mean I am more than ready to be baby free for a few days. More than ready to have it be just Robert and I for a few days. More than ready to be Meredith for a few days and not Sadie's mom for a few days. But I am less than ready to not see a two-tooth smiling face at me in the morning for a few days. Less than ready to not get to snuggle that little baby against me at bed time for a few days. Less than ready to not get to ruffle her soft blond hair and smell her sweet baby cheeks for a few days.

Perhaps this is why I have been slacking on preparing for this trip. Y'all I have yet to start typing up instructions for my mom next week!! Now, I know my mom would be perfectly capable of taking care of Sadie sans-instructions, but I figured it would be helpful to type up some for how many bottles to take to daycare etc. At the rate I am going I'll be handing Sadie over to her and saying "check ya later'.

I suppose this is what I have all day Saturday for. Well, that and packing.

I think I am also semi-freaking out about leaving Sadie because two weeks ago Robert picked Sadie up from daycare so I could go run some errands and he said he thought she was looking for me all night and she was super fussy for him. Sigh. How I can I leave her for a week when she will be looking for me the whole time?!?! My heart, it hurts. My brain knows that S is going to be juuuuuust fine with my mom. She'll spend the whole week eating peanut butter.*

And, because I need to end this post on a good note, here is a picture of Sadie wearing 32 (because she can't quite master the claw and antlers yet) saying "Let's go Rangers!"

*I have an aunt who mixes peanut butter into Hudson and Wade's dog food when they stay with her, although she will never admit to it. Robert and I just take the don't ask don't tell approach (since we don't feed them people food) so when ever they are going to stay with her we are always like "eh, they'll be fine, they get to eat peanut butter all weekend!" So Sadie getting to eat peanut butter all weekend just means she will be spoiled all weekend!

This Texas Baby: 8 Months

Holy cow, baby girl, you are officially EIGHT MONTHS OLD (well, officially a week ago)!

Is it bad that I want to say how tired I am of doing these monthly posts? I can just never seem to get my act together on time and they end up being late which make me feel bad. But I know in the future you and I will both enjoy looking back through these, so I'll trudge on!

Here are few bullet point worthy events that happened during the last month:

• You are a crawling machine little one. If I put you down in the living room and go to the kitchen to do something, the second I am out of your site I can hear that pat-pat of your 
• You are pulling up on ANYTHING YOU CAN, including the couch, cabinets, trashcan, the side of your crib. You're not really taking any steps yet but I imagine that's not to far in the future for us.
• You can get into a sitting position from crawling by yourself. You do this with one leg bent behind you and if I am not careful you will sit like that for too long and your little foot will start turning purple!
• Your daddy taught you how to give 5's while you're clap-claping.
• You started eating chicken and fish.
• We cut your bottles down to 6ozs (you were getting 8, but generally leaving a few ounces) which has resulted in me having to get up with you in the middle of the night a few times, but I think it's just an adjustment period.
• We took you to your very first concert! It was during the day on a Sunday and it was at Gruene Hall to hear Pat Green play acoustic. See, your mamma created a new logo for Gruene Music and Wine Fest (not the website though, eeehhh) and her company got free tickets to the Sunday show and since your daddy and I met while Pat Green was playing we decided to try it out. It went pretty good, but it was just too close to your bed time for us to stay the whole time

I know I look cute in my pearl snap and jeans tucked into my boot-socks, but I'm tired!

Peeking in on the show.

• You and your daddy cheered the Sooners on to another Red River Rivalry victory over the Longhorns.

 

This next month you get to celebrate your first Halloween and we all get to experience our first week apart (I hope I make it).

Two Years

Two years ago today I was doing this:

It was probably the best day of my life.

Well, that is until this day happened:

But this day would not of happened if it had not been for the first day!

We've managed to set a precedent for these two anniversaries of Robert doing some fun thing with his brother instead of hanging out with me! Last year it was a Rangers playoff game and while he is technically around today, he did spend the whole weekend on a guys fishing trip. Good thing we are going to get to spend all next week together!

On a serious note, this past year has been an amazing roller coaster of events, emotions and change and I can not imagine going through it with anyone else besides Robert. It definitely would not of been as much fun!

5 Pins for Friday

This Friday I am showing y'all my last big party theme contender:

Sunshine Party
I actually toyed with the idea of calling it a pink lemonade party, but I so love the idea of a "you are my sunshine" themed invite that I am going to call this a sunshine party with pops of pink!

Source: spearmintbaby.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Invitation
I am absolutely in love with this invitation. The whimsy in the writing is amazing. The envelope liner is awesome. Everything about it I adore. The wording is fantastic "bright at the sun our little zoe is turning one".

Source: etsy.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Invitation
Here is another invitation that is pretty awesome too. Bonus the wording is not depending on it flowing with sun!

Source: etsy.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Party Hat
I love the big yarn pom on the top of this party hat. You could even make some to hot glue to cheapo hats for all the guests.

Source: blogs.babble.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Balloons
Remember I said pops of pink? What's better than hot pink balloons?! A good idea would be to attache the streamer to the knot of each balloon.

Source: partiesbyhardie.com via Meredith Morton on Pinterest

Tablescape
Again, more pops of pink with the food drinks a flowers. Just a little to break up all the yellow.

There are so many things that can be done with this theme, just searching yellow and pink party on Pinterest brings up so much inspiration! For more on what I have pinned check out my full sunshine party board here.

So, now that I have shown y'all my big 4 contenders be sure to vote on your favorite theme! I added a poll to the side over there that will be up for a week. So, everyone vote! Even you lurkers out there!

Here is a list to the other 3 themes:
Rainbow Party
Dr. Seuss Party
Sock Monkey Party

 Of course I am linking up with Kat!

Epic Babyfood Making

This past weekend I finished what I would refer to as the week of baby food making. It was intense, it was exhausting, I'm so glad it's over with. I am also so glad I did it. I was having a really hard time getting creative with Sadie's food. I felt like all I was feeding her was one fruit or vegetable at a time. That's where this book came in handy:

Oh yes, I 100% felt dumb buying a book of babyfood recipes, I mean it's all just steam and puree, right? Well, yes most of it is steam and puree, but what I loved about this book is that it told me what foods to combine together. I didn't have to worry about if carrots and squash would be good together or not. I never would of thought to combine chicken, sweet potatoes and apples, but sounds pretty good, doesn't it? A lot of the recipes also use spices and herbs which I've read are good to introduce babies to so they do not have a hard time with them later, I guess something about it making for a less picky eater since it's stuff they have been eating all along.

I did get a little freaked out with how to plan my shopping list, so I picked out 8 recipe to double and wrote down all the ingredient just adding tick marks next to duplicate veggies. I doubled the recipes for several reasons:

• we were totally out of the last batch of food we had made so I knew I needed a lot
• most of the recipes I chose said they only made 4 servings
• I needed to make food to last to the middle of November, the next time we will have a free weekend with both Robert and I at home

I could never find how much one of their servings was but after reading a few of the recipes I  decided each one was probably around 2 ounces. WRONG, at minimum we got 16-2.5oz servings out of each recipe, several were up in the 20's. I have not done an exact count on how many servings we ended up with but I'm sure it's easily over 100. I am totally ok with this, hopefully by the time we run out Sadie will be onto finger foods!

The Saturday that we started all this, we woke up early loaded up in the truck and drove down to the Farmers Market to buy most of what we needed, I even bought chicken! I've never bought meat at the farmers market before, I felt so fancy! $60 later we headed to the grocery store to pick up the rest of what we needed and headed home.

Only part of our bounty (sigh, yes my countertop extends UP my wall, it's lovely)

 Our process went like this:

• Meredith peels, chops and cooks the food while Robert plays with Sadie
• Robert dumps all the food into the food processor, purees it up and portions it out into our freezer containers while Meredith plays Sadie
• Robert washes dishes while Meredith drys and Sadie plays on the kitchen floor
• Repeat until out of freezer containers (we only have 32 containers)
• Once frozen, Robert runs a little hot water over them so Meredith can pop them out into a labeled ziploc bag and return them to the freezer 
• Robert washes all the containers while Meredith starts prepping for the next recipe or playing with Sadie
• Repeat until all recipes are done!

I had to make chicken stock, people! I'd never made my own chicken stock before, it was pretty easy just took a while. Store bought stock is full of sodium, even the low sodium kind, and babies are supposed to avoid sodium until a year or something like that.

We introduced Sadie to chicken and fish during all of this. Out of the 8 recipes I picked out 2 had chicken and one had fish, so far she seems to love them, but Sadie is a fantastic eater, we have not found anything yet that she does not like.

By Sunday evening we were totally done with 6 recipes and I had one that was done but just needed to be separated into the freezer containers. Thankfully Robert was home last week so we were able to knock the rest our pretty fast after Sadie went to bed.

Now you are totally wondering why, if I had 7 made last weekend did I just finish over this weekend. Well, I had a bunch of random stuff left over. Some I over bough (butternut squash) some came in large packages (carrots, spinach) so I used what I had left and made up two of my own recipes! There was no way I was going to let any of that produce go to waste.

I might have to make a fruit or two for Sadie's breakfasts to last us through the middle of November, but those are pretty easy, other than that we are all set!

I know I wont always be able to feed Sadie local or organic foods, but it makes me feel good that at least the first foods she is getting aren't chock full of pesticides or have been sitting in a warehouse for a week.

Anyone else out there making their own baby food and have any recipes to share?

A Big Easy Vacation

Remember a few months back when I posted about Robert and I taking a vacation for our anniversary, but couldn't decide on where to go? Well, as if the post title doesn't give it away, we decided on New Orleans! So, here's the plan, Monday morningish we'll load up the truck and drive 6 hours to Lake Charles and stay here:

L'Auberge du lac Casino Resort

We decided on this pit stop for many reasons; Robert has always wanted to take a trip to Lake Charles to go gambling, so we thought this would be a good test to see if it would make for a fun long weekend trip sometime, it looks really pretty to me, we didn't want to start our vacation out exhausted from driving 9+ hours, they have a lazy river! You can see where my priorities are.

Tuesday morning we'll get up and drive the rest of the way to New Orleans, a little less than 4 hours, and arrive at our destination for the rest of the week:

Hotel Monteleone

I was torn on whether or not I wanted to stay in a hotel near the French Quarter or in a B&B/guest house in the Garden District, but after lots of travel website browsing, we ended on the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. We decided that we did want to be close to all the action and explore all that the French Quarter has to offer while maybe taking a side trip over to the Garden District. I am so excited for our stay here! The best part might be that they have a bar that looks, and moves, like a carousel!

Again, you can see where my priorities are.

We'll be in New Orleans from Tuesday until Saturday morning. Saturday morning we will drive the whole 9+ hours back home just in time to make it to Gruene Hall to see these brothers:

Bruce and Charlie Robison

We have funny priorities, don't we?

We're not really planning out anything to do while in New Orleans, just making a list of things we would like to do. We don't want to stick to any sort of schedule or "have to be here or there at this time". We really just want to take this time to hang out and enjoy being with each other for a while.

Here are a few of the things on our would like to do list:

• Eat beignets at Cafe du Monde (duh)
• Drink a Hurricane (maybe more than 1)
• Take a cemetery tour (not sure if we want to do guided or not)
• Visit Bourbon Street (after 10pm to get the full experience)
• Ride on a riverboat (after reading terrible reviews about this online, this one might get scratched)
• Take a swamp tour
• Visit a plantation
• Tour the Abita factory
• Eat dinner or brunch at Commander's Palace

Alright, now it's time for reader participation!
Have you ever been to New Orleans?
If so, what should we add to our list?
Got any other suggestions for our trip?

This Texas Baby: 6th Month Pictures

Before Sadie was born I booked this whole "baby's first year" package with a local photographer. It's good for newborn, 3, 6, 9 and 1 year pictures, plus all the images on dvds, a few canvas prints and 2 books. Well getting together with the photographer for her 6th month pictures was a little challenging, so we actually did not take these pictures until right after she turned 7 months old. I LOVE THEM. They are probably the best pictures yet out of our sessions, she was awake the whole time for her newborn session and she did not smile at all during her 3 month session, the smiles were still few and far between during the session but when they came out it was just perfect!

You want me to sit on this bridge and do what?

Perfecting the side-eye.

Don't make fun of my white, white baby.

Clap-Clap

Only one picture in the tutu I made, she thought it was a tasty treat for her!

Do what?