All Photography was taken by J. Bell Photography of Austin, Texas.

The home we rented was amazing! It was a great home away from home. We brought our nanny, Adrienne, so we could get some R&R as well. The girls had the best time and it was nice to just spend quality time together as a family for a week without a ton of work-related distractions. Avery and Olivia are growing way too fast and I really cherish these special times with them where I can just focus on them.

Flying a kite:

We went to Cabo with Dawn and Matt for Spring Break in early March. Avery came along with us and Nana and Papa offered to keep Lyla and Livy so they stayed behind. We had a very memorable and wonderful trip from start to finish. If Livy was with us, we sure would have loved to stay there a lot longer than a week. We always enjoy it there so much! I certainly look forward to going back soon!

Waiting for our flight (which turned out to be very, very, very delayed due to weather):

Once we finally arrived, it was all about being in the water for this little fish:

That Daddy is always being so silly (those glasses look fabulous on you):

She found lots of friends to play with:

Avery was so worn out she couldn’t even keep her eyes open to eat her “Christmas” treat (Rice Krispy):


Headed to Morgan’s Encore…my favorite restaurant in San Jose:

We have lots of these blurry pictures because we didn’t use a flash



Dancing:

More dancing on the terrace:

Beach time:



Hilarious!




A Night at Nick San’s:

First time for Avery to use chopsticks:

A Day at the Marina:


Tableside Mojitos:

I think we kept her out too long! Can you tell?

Saturday was another “outside” day so we took the girls back out to the new house to the neighborhood swimming pool for a little fun and met some new friendly neighbors.  Then we headed to our friends house up north to meet their beautiful new baby boy and have dinner.

She didn’t like the sand so much…

Sunday we decided to make another outside day because I couldn’t get enough so we went to eat lunch at Shady Grove, walk around Town Lake, and to the Domain for the splash pads (which seem to still be off due to water restrictions) so we shopped the Art Fair instead.


Starting to make a silly face at Daddy:



She is waving at the big bird statue (off to the left):

P.S.   This is totally off topic but I can’t forget these things so I must journal them. I need to do this more often.

-Avery asks at least every other day after I pick her up from school if our new house is ready yet.   I guess she doesn’t understand how long months are.

-She says funny things and really is at a very imaginative stage.  We tend to eat out a lot and she makes her forks her princesses, kings, and queens and talks to them.

-She asks Why?  about everything.

-Note to myself…..don’t ever forget the funny thing she said about pancakes going “slap, slap, slap” (flap) and the big and strong pizzadillas.   This is a family joke that I cannot forget.

-Every little girl and boy in the world is her fraannd…said with a Texan drawl.  She loves friends and anytime she sees a child, she wants to go talk or play with said child.   She is such a social butterfly.    For example, we could be going to the mall and she will say, “Look Mommy!  There’s a girl.   She’s got a beauuuutiful dress.   She’s my friend!”   or  “That’s a boy.   What’s his name?  He’s my friend!”

Olivia:

-She says “Dada”, “Mama”, “Daw” (Dog), “No-No” (with the shaking finger), “Hi”, “Moo” when you ask her what a cow says, and Agua for water though I think she is trying to say “WaWa” and it comes out as Agua

-She is such a lovable, cuddly, kissing, baby!  Oh, I could just melt every day because she is soooo loving.   She is especially fond of her big sister.

-Livy loves to eat, if you couldn’t tell from the pictures.   She still giggles with her billy goat laugh, especially when food is involved.

-She is going to be my little jokester.   She makes funny faces and does all kinds of silly things to try to get you  to laugh.  Yesterday, while in the car, she was mad because she was tired and hungry and she told me “NO-NO” in a really loud, mad voice and I looked at her and said “No Livy!” in a flat, stern voice and she knew she wasn’t supposed to do that and started making clown faces at me…..at 13 months.   I don’t know  how you can even try to keep a straight face at something like that.

Supplies:
Canisters from Container Store:

Spray Paint (forgot to purchase the white so I used what I had):

Cute Animals from Michaels:

I have to go to the hardware store to pick up some epoxy because apparently super glue, hot glue, Gorilla glue and liquid nail do not work well on metal to plastic. This project was very easy except that one snag.

I love how cute they are and Avery does too   I didn’t realize she had so many markers!!   The finished product ended up costing about $15 for each to make with all supplies.  It would have been less if the animals didn’t cost $5 each.   I was picky though and wanted the cute ones.

I love this La Cornue Stainless Cornufe:

The LaCanche:

or

My Old Standby (the old DCS Range that I had and loved but has to be found from a dealer who has the old design).  Though it isn’t quite as fancy as the two ranges above, it’s spot on in cooking/function and I like the clean design so it’s a safe option:

What to do?   I’m stuck!

On Sunday, we went out to Carlos ‘n Charlies for lunch by the lake and then headed back into town for the kite festival. This is our first time experiencing anything like it and I can honestly say, I have never seen so many kites in my life. It was really cool and the girls loved it!

Outside Carlos ‘n Charlies (we are still in need of lots of rain because usually the water comes up to the top of that limestone across the lake):

This little turkey didn’t want to take a picture:

Riding in her new “big” girl car seat:


Once a video is on, she tunes everyone and everything out!

I took these pictures with my new Nikon Coolpix P7000 because my big one is a little much to haul to places like these. I love the picture quality. The one thing I wasn’t able to show in these pictures was the sheer volume of kites. There were thousands and thousands.



That Black Kite was really ginormous:

We didn’t get many pictures of Olivia because she was afraid of the photographer.

Meanwhile, this little princess was hamming it up for him:



Livy isn’t so sure here:

I’m so grateful for my new friends here in Austin. It can really be hard when you move to leave old friends. We don’t get to see our friends from Houston quite as often and that does make me sad. My first few months here was a little lonely but I forced myself to put myself out there to meet other mamas with small children and now our schedules are jam packed. The ladies I’ve met over the past few months here have been wonderful and such a supportive, fun group!

I met with our landscape architect yesterday to share more of my vision and drawings and was happy to see the framers have half our home framed so things are moving. (Unfortunately and fortunately, we caught two boo-boo’s by our architect that are major so we are trying to get those fixed.) Our roof is coming in from Spain so I worry it will not be here when they are finished framing but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. My window guy (aka my husband) dropped it on me yesterday that because I chose a custom color it’s going to take an extra week for those to arrive as well. Argh! On the bright side, I’m so happy we are making progress.

This picture is a view of how we had to cut our lot to get the flat yard I wanted. We have a large number of huge limestone boulders behind that big pile of dirt that I’m trying to figure out what to do with. I’d love to use them but my landscape plan is more formal and clean so not sure yet if we’ll be using them. We are considering making a play pad area in the back right of the wall on top of the hill. It would be well-hidden and not take up space in our immediate yard. The wall will run parallel with the left side of our home and I’m excited to see what it will look like after being landscaped.

This is what working at the “job site” (which is what we call it) looks like.

P.S. I probably shouldn’t have worn my pink sequined Elaine Turner flats out to a muddy job site. I took one step in what looked like hard ground and sunk 5 inches (not kidding) into the limestone mud which turns to a cement like material when dry. Nice! I guess I should have worn rubber boots since it has rained quite a bit this past week.