Parrish-Hare Visit

Touring Pops Hare's Parrish-Hare Dallas office.

Artists

Avery was one of a handful of students recognized for their artwork at school. They got to go receive an award at the Bee Cave City Hall. They each drew a really cool Frankenstein. 

Avery's first tennis tournament

She lost her first singles match and won her second. Then she had to play doubles against Avery Rose and lost. Such a fun night!

Avery, Olivia Marcus and Avery Rose

Dead asleep

Austin Soccer 2013

Austin took his second year of soccer very seriously. He so looked forward to his Saturday morning games and we loved to watch him. Every time he scored he would turn around and show us how many goals he had with his fingers. He was also a pro at stopping the other team from scoring. He can't wait until he gets to play again next year!  Great job buddy!

Avery's Soccer 2013

Avery was the sweeper of all sweepers in soccer this year. She stopped dozens of goals and made lots too. She was able to run down the other team's players no matter there they were and she loved it. Such a fun season and we LOVED watching her play. So proud of you girly!

Halloween 2013

Mason's 37th Birthday Cake

Polar Bear Club

The Hares' pool was 58 degrees but the kids decided to take the plunge, then run back up the the hot tub. 

Guys Night

Mason and Austin went to the lake for a night with Dixie to do laundry. They had a blast. 

Sleepers

Avery woke up this morning griping that Austin was bugging her last night before bed at the Hare's house. I was able to show her this picture in the middle of her griping and she laughed. 

Mason is Famous Again

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fsb/0804/gallery.rice_b_plan_competition_08.fsb/23.html

In an effort to not get completely out of order on my blog, I thought I'd go ahead and post this since I've been meaning to for a while. During the business plan competition Mason and Claudia were photographed for this spread. Way cool.

A Quick Trip to Galveston

One perk of Houston is our proximity to Galveston. Sure, it's not the most desirable beach in the world, but you can smell the salty air and pick up a few sea shells. Keep an eye out for those glass shards though. On this particular morning, there was a kind old fisherman who drove up in his pickup truck and told us to keep an eye out for the "ki-oats." That's "coyote" to those of you who aren't familiar with the accent. He said he'd picked up a dead one on the beach recently and didn't want one to get my dog or baby. Thanks, Mister. So sweet of you. Now don't let that mental image spoil these pictures and video of our morning in Galvatraz.

"Skip Skip Water" is Avery's version of "Skip to My Lou." She's just discovered this skill and is a skipping maniac. Notice how she gets freaked out when the waves come her way but she tries to play it cool.

Ahem

I've been really proud of myself lately for going to the gym at the crack of dawn on a regular basis. Clearly, I'm not missed. This picture is 100% legit...not one bit posed. Dang dog lifted her head when I walked back in the room like I was really getting on her last nerve for disrupting her beauty sleep.

Lemon

Have you ever been driving full speed ahead down the highway when this warning suddenly pops up on your dashboard? Did your car thrust and jolt and your baby was in the backseat and you panicked but your dad always told you the worst thing on earth you can do is pull over on the side of a busy highway so you just kept driving? I have. Lots. Way more than my fair share of times. The warning light and the thrusting wasn't the biggest issue. The part I was most disgusted about was that the dealership didn't believe me and my warranty is up in May. Mason and I were really sweating about what to do because we didn't want to buy an extended warranty(though we finally did), didn't want to pay for repairs out of pocket and didn't want to sell my car. I told them no less than 5 times that this warning light is a fairly common occurence. They said they saw no record of it in the car computer and blew me off. After the 3rd time they replaced my battery and told me that it would "definitely" solve the problem. Thank goodness the warning light came on for Mason last week. He blew a fuse, took pictures and stormed down to give the guys a piece his mind. Bingo. I got a brand spanking new transmission courtesy of BMW Midtown. Thanks, punkasses.

Avery's 2nd Birthday

For Avery's second birthday we headed up to the local elementary school park. The weather was perfect (but too windy for candles!) and the kids had fun playing on the playground.

Avery and Maggie patiently waited for a cupcake....

...and their patience paid off.

Avery found this technique much more effective.

We came home and opened up her presents. She loved her baby dolls (no surprise there) and all of their accessories. Look at how excited she is. She can hardly wait until I get it out of the box.

She loves this one even though it's clearly an obese newborn. The thing must weigh 10 pounds. Mason and I think she may throw her back out playing with this "Baby GG."

The end of a good day. We gathered up all of her charges and let her sleep with everyone.

68 Seconds of Fame

Good job, Mason! We are proud of you.

All Synced Up - It's a Google Miracle

I'm not a technology guru by any means but I thought this was so important that it may just reduce the divorce rate. So we all know that you need to be an Outlook user to sync with Blackberry. But did you know that if you don't use Outlook and have programmed your entire life into your Yahoo! calendar as I have, there's hope for you? Better yet, did you know that you can share a Google calendar online so that when your husband is at school getting candy out of airplanes (see previous post) he has no excuse about missing events because the paper calendar (that's so 2006) is at home? If you have not already synced your life with that of your significant other, please do this. Blackberry syncs with Outlook. Outlook syncs with Yahoo! Yahoo! syncs with Outlook which syncs back to Google. See? Round and round your calendar goes. If you're sitting at a stoplight wondering what you're doing later in the afternoon, you can check your calendar on your phone because you've automatically synced Google to Outlook which has magically synced itself to Yahoo! which has then transferred all of your information back to Outlook and onto your Blackberry. AND YOU NEVER LIFT A FINGER. I'm offering free syncing advice to all 4 of my readers because it has no doubt improved my life and I want to improve yours too.

For those 2 of my 4 readers who still have plain old cell phones, I'm afraid there's no hope for you. I bet you even still use paper calendars. Geez.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Avery Girl!

On this day last year our little girl was...

Sweet
Innocent

About 20 pounds

Just taking her first steps

Easy to distract
Easy to run errands with
Saying quite a few words like "Dissie, Owo, Dada, Mama"

Cupcake Breakfast on Her 2nd Birthday

This year our little girl is about 27 pounds, talking up a storm, testing out her new found jumping skills, bossy as can be and... too crazy to describe in bullets. I want Mason to come add some later but here are a few of my favorite memories during our second year of life with Avery.

She's in love with monkeys. Take her to the zoo and she doesn't need guidance. She'll take you straight to the monkeys. She's got the monkey noise down as well as most of the other everyday animals. Mason even made up a sound for what a camel says that she has mastered and it's hilarious. We've spent countless hours looking at our "100 Animals" book with Avery refusing to look at anything but the four monkeys. That leaves 96 others we ignored. She would show the monkeys to anyone who would look, including Dixie and her babies. Then she moved on to "Goodnight Gorilla" which Mason still says is his favorite.

When we're not at the zoo or reading monkey books, Avery is playing with her babies. Not real ones, but the lower maintenance kind that can be stuffed and tossed and strolled and shoved into seats. Too many adults have been fooled by what at first seems to be a sweet interest in a baby in a car seat. Wrong. What Avery is quick to clarify is that she wants the real baby out of the seat so that she can put her baby in. She's not apologetic either. Just get your baby out, lady. She'll say please - "Baby out, please." and she's pretty good at "Thank you" which has now turned into "Thanks." She loves babies with accessories. She will cover and uncover, take a pacifier out and put it back in, buckle and unbuckle, pat, shush, bounce and sing to her entire brood for hours on end. I can't take her for walks in the stroller anymore. She refuses to get in. The only way she'll go is if she puts her baby in the stroller and pushes it herself. Mason came home from a walk last week that took 45 minutes and they only went a few blocks because Avery was pushing "at 2 miles an hour" the entire time.

She still loves her leopard, hot milk, has learned everyone in the extended family's names and knows where all of the neighbors live as well. She knows that when we're near the "donut store" we're also right around the corner from home. She knows that at the "park" you "swing and slide" and can pretty much tell us what she wants to eat as her vocabulary is extensive enough to cover "ice cream, bread, sandwich, chicken, noodles, orange juice, apple juice (which she is not shy about asking for from waiters) cookies, candy, chocolate, fruit, apples, pineapple, grapes, crackers, cheese, mango." I could go on forever. My point is that she's got the talking thing down. She's starting to understand concepts like "tomorrow, later, in a minute, after, first, etc." which is helpful but we still have our fair share of fits just from her not getting her way and not understanding that we're on our way to do something.

She's still fearless. We took her to Schlitterbahn last summer and she absolutely loved it. We can't wait to go back again because this year she'll be able to do even more stuff herself. We went to the rodeo recently and she didn't hesitate to go down the big slides and she loved the roller coasters.

Avery has a memory like an elephant. She has only been inside Mason's school once and it was about 2 months ago. Today I said, "Where's dada?" "School." she said. "What does he do there?" I asked. Her response was "candy - airplane." I had no clue what she was talking about and I really wasn't even expecting a response. Mason and I figured out after talking about it that the night we took her up there, there was an airplane pinata full of candy during a festival. So, Avery thinks that school is a place where you hit airplanes with a colorful stick and candy falls out. Sounds good to me. We'll let her keep thinking that for a while. I have a million other examples of the same memory things but if I let myself go I'll write forever.

I may have to come back and add later so please excuse me for editing myself. I can't believe how much she's changed since last year and as you can see from the small number of bullets from her first birthday, I can't even remember what she was doing. I'm determined to use the blog as a way to document things for us. I had a friend in college whose dad would write her a letter every year on her birthday. It was a review of everything she'd accomplished and he'd tell her all the reasons he was proud of her. I remember her reading it and bawling. I'm trying to avoid the mush factor for everyone's sake but, Avery, please know that we love you more than anything in the whole wide world and we're so happy to get to play with you every day! You are one hilarious monkey! (There, I did it and I have to go to bed now before I really start crying!)

Here's to a happy, healthy, potty trained 3rd year!

$164 Bucks

I'm jumping on the fashion blogging bandwagon now because I love this swimsuit and I need someone to give me permission to buy it. I saw it at Nordstrom a few weeks ago and it's still stuck in my head. I'm over getting tan and I've come to terms with the fact that my gut is over a two-piece. This would require less sunscreen, provide more coverage and I don't think it's as matronly as some one piece suits. See how nicely the casually crumpled mid-section would cover everything? My last bathing suit came from the Juniors section at Dillard's. It's time to graduate.

There are some things I think are totally worth the money and others that are just silly. Fancy dinners that cost $200 and are gone in an hour? No way. Juicy bathing suits that I promise I would keep for years? Worth every dime.