This Saturday was a big "run errands" day for us. Since Lorelei wants to walk around the parks and everywhere we go (with my help of course), we decided she needed some shoes! We decided the kind from Target would be great because it wouldn't really interfere with her walking with a hard sole. We checked out her shoe size and it didn't seem that size 5 was too far away...then went over to our shoes and picked out a large pair that we love! And they were even on sale! After we got home home and she tried walking around in them a while, we realized they were too big. Later we ended up making a second trip (really wanting to get this shoe thing checked off the list) and got a medium. We are keeping the large pair for when she grows out of them in a month or two!
The first picture is Lorelei proudly riding away with her first pair of shoes. I should also mention that she loved shoe shopping but was not to thrilled that we didn't give her every pair we picked up...I'm trying not to imagine the shoe fetish she will have when she is older. The second picture is our next trip, after she has not had good naps (this is becoming a habit) and we are out around 6:15...she is wearing down. :)
The shoes
We also have a few fun pictures and clips from the car...she loves the head rest for some reason. :)
And of course bath time - hilarious! We can't decide if she is hyper because she is sleep deprived or just having way too much fun. :)
Well we have been keeping busy this week again, enjoying the summer weather. Some of the days this week even had a bit of a cool breeze, so we have really loved that! We have also been recovering from our exciting week and weekend past and trying not to be too depressed that no one else is coming to visit us for a while.
Monday: Mostly got Lorelei caught up on some more sleep (she took three naps each day instead of two Sun, Mon and Tues) and made a grocery store run! So glad we can just walk over there. :)
Tuesday: We also live very close to a little outdoor shopping area which has a big pet store called Animal Jungle and also one called Puppyville. Animal jungle had pretty much everything except puppies and kitties. Lorelei loved the fish, guinea pigs and bunnies. They even have a little monkey there, which is also fun to watch. Then of course Puppyville was a huge hit as that seems to be her favorite animal of all at the moment. She was thrilled to see the puppies and some even came right up to us. She says "da" every time she sees a dog anywhere we go and gets very excited. Then that afternoon we went swimming in the big pool.
Wednesday: MOMS Club meets every Wed for playgroup. This trip was conveniently the park right next to our apt complex. I was very thankful to have a walking buddy with my friend, Sara, and her daughter, Lily. The girls even try to hold hands as we are walking with their strollers! We enjoyed meeting up with some other ladies there. Lorelei of course wants me to walk her everywhere, but it was fun having her interested in the playground equipment. It will be a great place for us to go more often in the fall when she can walk and I wont roast so much on the walk there!
Thursday: Here is where the really nice breeze came in so I just had to take Lorelei to the park again. We drove to a different park (realized in amazement it had been almost a week since Lorelei had had to ride in her carseat! and boy is the car a mess from our history day) Lorelei enjoyed the swings, as usual, as well as walking!
Friday: This time we went to the Botanical Gardens for MOMS Club. (That kinda counts as a park right?) We had a water day at the children's garden there. There are small fountains that kids love to play in. I, of course, got to play in them as well this time! Lorelei especially liked playing with the leaves there...something about anything you are not supposed to put in your mouth right? We had a good time with our usual friends, Sara and Lily (what would we do without them!?), and one other lady who came with her two kidos. We also took a quick trip to the butterfly garden before the girls were totally out. Then Lorelei fell asleep on the way home and naturally seems to think that a 20 min nap in the car ride home is enough sleep! I think she is finally fading though. :)
Oh I should mention we also had another sad moment when we sold Brad's pickup. We love that thing but just realized how much gas it was eating up! He now has a small car that he is taking to work which gets GREAT gas mileage.
Lows: visitors being gone, goodbye to the pickup
Highs: beautiful weather, getting the lost DVD in the mail so we CAN watch Ross say PIVOT (Sara you need to borrow that one), getting excited for Amanda's wedding in less than a month!, accidentally giving Audry the number to a petting zoo/pony farm for her to call for a carriage for Amanda's wedding...glad she got a laugh out of it though!
This is the quote I had handy that Heather and I saw in a store: "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to dance in the rain."
We had a wonderful 4th of July this year. We spent most of the day recuperating from our busy week and getting ready for our party. We were so glad that many of our friends were able to join us for the festivities. Our apt is ideal because we can easily walk to the fireworks display at Mt. Trashmore. After enjoying some delicious food we headed over to the park. Our friends, the Checks, even brought their wagon they had decorated for a parade for the girls to ride in over there! It was so fun and the girls loved it! We had been wondering how Lorelei (and Lily too of course) would do staying up way past their bed time and also hearing the fireworks. Amazingly, Lily fell asleep and slept through most of them. Lorelei was scared at first with the loud noise but then enjoyed watching them the rest of the time. She fell asleep right away when we got home though. Then we enjoyed a game of Cranium before calling it a night!
Where to start...Our planned "history day" was Thursday. We headed out fairly early because we had so much to do I wanted to get there as soon as everything opened, 9 AM, so we needed to leave around 7:30...well we ended up sitting in traffic for 2 hrs, only to find out we could NOT get through the tunnel to get to Williamsburg etc. There was an accident of some sort and a pipe that burst (guess its good they don't want the underwater tunnel filling up with water) There was one other tunnel we could have driven back to get through, but we decided by the time we made it there and through we would be way too behind to fit everything in. We decided to go Friday instead. We did get to sit in traffic again for about 30 minutes because one lane was still closed. We got to Williamsburg right around 9 and made our way around to all of the free places we could look there. It turned out to be a better day because the weather was a bit cooler and just beautiful for us. Then we headed to Shirley Plantation and ate our sandwiches in the car on the way. We enjoyed the tour of the house as well as looking around at the many buildings on the grounds. Then we headed to Jamestown Settlement. They have a wonderful set up there with a museum type building and then also a fort and Native American camp grounds, as well as ship replicas, all for you to go through. By this time it was 5 and closing time so we headed home, all exhausted, only to end up in one final traffic jam for about an hr. :) Who doesnt want to be stuck in traffic with Miss Lorelei the car seat lover! :) Lets just say we sang A LOT of B-I-N-G-O. We all enjoyed the day though!
In between our usual vacation activities we had some random fun! :) Heather was talked into trying out Lorelei's tunnel one afternoon. We also enjoyed Lorelei's first adventure with mac n cheese. Heather got Lorelei a State Farm onesie so we had to take a matching picture...neither of them were too pleased about this one. Heather and I enjoyed heading over to Texas Roadhouse for some yummy supper with our peach margaritas. Just love having family to visit! It makes everything more fun. :)
We went to the beach three days in a row this week! Heather had never been to a beach before she came here, so we had to make sure and get in all the beach we could. We went Tuesday Morning for the first big experience. Heather seemed to enjoy it and of course Lorelei was eating the sand as usual! Wednesday we went in to Norfolk to meet Brad for lunch and then headed out to the beach again in the afternoon. We did some shopping as well as hauled all of our beach gear down the boardwalk to see the exciting King Neptune statue! We were already exhausted and hadn't even hit the sand yet! Lorelei enjoyed helping with the umbrella and her usual sand toys. Then Thursday was supposed to be "history day" but we had a change in plans (read soon to be next post "history day" to find out more) so we headed out to Sandbridge, the less touristy beach, with Brad along this time because he took an extra day off to join in our adventures. All of us enjoyed the usual, with a few mishaps, such as our umbrella breaking (its more like a flag now) as well as our big sand bucket...time for some new beach stuff! Lorelei starts screaming and waving her hands with excitement as soon as she sees we are walking to the beach. She can't seem to get enough of playing in the water and sand, as well as eating as much of it as she can sneak in! We even did some boogie boarding as well. By the end of all of these trips I am amazed to say I DO need a break for a week or so! We are so thankful to be able to go any time we want to and glad we could get Heather's toes in the ocean. :)
We enjoyed having my sister, Heather, here for a six day visit! She arrived Monday afternoon and stayed until Sunday morning. There was so much that we did during her visit that I'm going to make it into several different posts with slide shows (she and I LOVE to take pictures so between both of us we have a TON) and you can see all the fun we had! Naturally Lorelei loved having her aunt around and of course Brad and I loved having another person along to make things even more fun and less work! We are already missing her and looking forward to seeing her for Amanda's wedding and over Labor Day Weekend.
