Happy Birthday Rebekah!

Today is Rebekah's 19th birthday. She is my youngest sister and I can't believe that she is 19 already! I remember when she was born! Makes me feel pretty old. She is a freshman at UT and is doing great in the business school. We are glad that she lives close enough to hang out with Harper on occasion. Here's some pics from Easter weekend of Harper and her Aunt Beka!

Happy Birthday Sis! I love you!!

Easter Weekend

Warning: this post has a lot of pics. This was Harper's First Easter so I think I went a little overboard with the 150 pictures that I took. This weekend we made a quick trip up to Paris to spend time with my family. Jeff had a game on Friday night, so we left on Saturday morning. We arrived in time for lunch. It was pretty weather on Saturday and it was supposed to rain all day on Sunday so we enjoyed being outside while we could. Rebekah was able to come home from college for the weekend. Harper loved Aunt Beka's long curly hair. Harper loves the dogs. She would just giggle every time they came near her. Aunt Beka is determined to make sure that Harper is not afraid of dogs like me!Check out those leg rolls! Entertaining Great Grandaddy on Saturday night. After, we went to church on Sunday morning we snapped a "few" pics of Miss Harper in her Easter dress. She thinks her daddy is so funny!

Our attempt at a family photo Harper was more interested in looking at the dogs than the camera.

The girls - Aunt Beka and Mimi. We missed you Carol! My sweet little girl!

7 Months Old

Whew - it's been a hectic week. Jeff is right in the middle of baseball season and is busier than ever. Harper turned seven months old last Saturday. The time is flying by. She is getting to the age where her personality is really coming out. She babbles all of the time and loves to laugh. She has two bottom teeth that are poking through. I've tried several different times to get a picture of her teeth - but so far none of them have turned out.

Harper is still not sleeping great at nights. She normally goes does around 9pm - usually not without a fight. She loves to play games with Jeff and I around bed time! It's pretty frustrating actually. Motherhood is definitely the most challenging, exhausting, and rewarding things that I've ever done. The night time routine can be exhausting just to get her to go to bed. She still gets up twice per night to nurse.

When she wakes up in the mornings she is such a happy baby. Here's some video that I took one morning this week.

New Harper Videos!

I've decided that I don't take enough videos. I have this great video camera and I need to use it more. I captured a few fun moments today with Harper. She has definitely found her voice. We think that she says "da da" or at least it sounds like it.


Harper is getting the hang of eating. She normally eats rice cereal and a fruit for breakfast then gets cereal and veggies for dinner. So far she has tried apples, pears, sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, and green beans. I made all of her baby food buy getting produce at Sprouts and steaming and pureeing everything. I froze everything and just pop it out of the freezer when she is ready to eat. Pears are her favorite so far... can you tell?

Happy 6 year anniversary!

Six year anniversary? Wait - I thought your 5 year anniversary was just in January, you might ask. Well, today is our Engagement anniversary. Yes - I do keep up with fun dates like this. Six years ago today I was visiting Jeff in St. Louis and he decided to pop the question.
For those of you who don't know, Jeff and I dated long distance during college. He lived in St. Louis and attended Missouri Baptist University and I lived in Waco where I went to Baylor. He played baseball at MBU so he was very busy in the spring. We didn't get to see each other much while we were dating due to the distance (12 hour drive) and the fact that we were college students with not much of a "travel budget". When we did get to spend a weekend together it was such a special treat. We spent many hours talking on the phone late into the night. One fun thing that I liked to do was mail him random things to tell him that I loved him. Did you know that you can mail inflatable balls in the mail with no packaging around them? Jeff was a little embarrassed when he had to go to the post office and pick up this huge green "Love" ball that I mailed him. It was filled with lines from love songs. We still have this in the garage I think.
When I met Jeff, he had this crazy curly blond hair. Not sure if you can tell in these pics that I scanned in - but it was pretty much a fro!I had a lot of fun looking through old picture albums this morning finding all of these pics from 6-7 years ago! OK - on to the engagement story. I planned a trip up to St. Louis in March of 2003. Apparently Jeff bought the engagement ring back in December of 2002. He even told my three college roommates that he had the ring and he was going to propose. I can't believe that they kept it a secret for 3 months!! I had no clue! I flew up to St. Louis on a Thursday afternoon. One of his friends picked me up at the airport and took me to the baseball field where they were playing a game. Apparently, all of his friends knew that he was going to propose this weekend so they were all trying to keep it a secret. I remember sitting next to one of his friends at the game and we started talking and then he all of a sudden got up and left. He told me later that if he sat there talking to me much longer that he would spill the beans and ruin the surprise of the proposal. After the game, I think that we grabbed a late dinner. The next day he didn't have practice that morning but had another game that night. We woke up and decided to go to Queeny Park, one of my favorite parks near his house. We stopped at Einstein's to pick up some breakfast and then headed out to the park. I had just woken up and didn't take a shower before we left, because we were going to go throw the football around. My hair was in pigtails and I was in casual running clothes. We got to the park and I had our breakfast and he had a blanket and a football. He grabbed his Bible on the way out of the car as well. I didn't think twice about this either. Looking back I remember how Jeff didn't seem like himself that morning- I learned later that he was just nervous! We ate breakfast and then he opened up his Bible and started reading to me out of 1 Corinthians 13. I'm still not picking up on anything yet. The rest is kind of fuzzy, but I remember him saying that he loved me and he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me - then he pulled out the RING! We had never even talked about rings yet - so I was completely shocked! I remember him holding the box with the ring in it and after I said "YES" I had to say "well - are you going to put it on me?" We didn't have anybody there to take pictures of us so we reenacted it once we got back to his house.

Looking kind of rough - but so excited!!

That night we cleaned up and went to Olive Garden for dinner to celebrate.

Notice how my hand was stuck out there to show off my new ring!

The next day we went back to the same spot at Queeny park and took a few pictures.
What a great weekend! I can't believe that it was 6 years ago today that you asked me to be your wife! I love you Jeff!

Girls Night Out

Last night we took advantage of the 78 degree weather and met Sarah and Natalie at On The Border for dinner. Jeff had a game up in Sherman so Harper and I enjoyed some girl time on the patio.

Harper decided that if she couldn't have chips and hot sauce that she should eat her car seat!

Yum yum!

Fun time with Natalie!

I hope the weather stays this nice for the rest of the weekend!

Oh How I've missed you!

I figured out today that it's been 15 months since I showed this guy some loving!
My bike has been sitting in the garage gathering dust since I found out that I was pregnant - last December!! Today I decided that it was time to dust it off and take it for a little spin. I'm training for the Capital of Texas Triathlon in Austin on Memorial Day. I've been doing spin classes at the gym because it's been too cold for me to ride outside. Today it was 78 degrees so I had no excuse. Jeff was home this morning so I decided that it was about time. I rode for one hour - about 16 miles. I was pretty proud of myself that I "still have it in me"! It felt so great to get back on my bike on the open road. After I rode, I ran for about 15 minutes to try out my first brick workout since having Harper. It wasn't too bad but my legs definitely felt like they hadn't done that in a while.