Halloween 2009

I'm a little late posting our Halloween festivities, but I have been sick with H1N1 for the past 7 days and I am just now feeling better. And by the way niether Grace nor Jeff got sick. I was a clean freak!

Here are some pictures of Grace's Halloween week.

We hope you enjoy! :o)

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P.S. I'm still working on making our blog private. Just in case you were wondering. I just haven't entered everyone's email addresses.

PRIVATE Blog

I just wanted to let everyone know that because of some recent privacy issues with Jeff's facebook account,

I'm going to make our blog private!

This means that if you read our blog you need to let me know via email so I can put you on the list. That way you can still catch up on what is going on in our lives. :o)

Please send me your email address if you would like to still be able to read our blog.

Send it to this email address:

Lauren_LaRoche@hotmail.com

Thank you.

First Dance Class

Grace had her first dance class yesterday at The Dance Gallery with Ms. Christine. She was sooooo excited! I put her leotard on and she started twisting her bottom saying "shake your boot`e!" I'm not quite sure where she got that from, but it was too cute! When we go to the dance studio, I couldn't get her ballet shoes on because her feet were too sweaty from wearing her crocs. So she just danced in her crocs, which was just fine.

She is taking the "Baby Boogie" class, which is a parent/child class that works on following directions, social skills and gross motor skills as well as laying the foundation for ballet. She had a blast! Can I say she "stole the show!"? ;o)

Her usual lately "No, pictures Mommy!"

Trying to avoid taking a picture!

Warming up to the idea of a picture. A dance pose!

Walked right in like she owned the place and took a seat in this chair.

Center stage!

Balancing the bean bag on her forehead.

Balancing the bean bag on her finger.

Trying to figure out how to balance the bean bag on her ear. Instead she used it as a pillow.

Balancing a bean bag on her knee.

Hmmm....what color do I want?

Dancing with the scarfs.

Hopping up and down.

She was exhausted afterwards!

HERE COMES THE RAIN!

Here comes the RAIN,

Here comes the RAINbow.

Go put on your boots,

Go put on your RAINcoat.
Listen to the RAIN falling down,
watering the flowers,
watering the ground.
Sing it again now,
HERE COMES THE RAIN!

(This is such a cute song we sing at Spicewood.) :o)

We received some much needed RAIN over the past week and we are so very thankful for it as we know our grass and plants are too. Grace decided she needed to test out her new RAINcoat and boots. So here she is dancing in the RAIN, which by the way lasted over an hour! :o)

ENJOY!

2nd Day of School

Well, Grace didn't make the 1st day of school because she had a fever virus that mirrored the flu virus. However, she did make the 2nd day of school!

Here's how it all went down...

Grace woke up at 4:30AM and thought it was time to go to school. I told her it wasn't time to go to school and rocked her back to sleep (by the way Mommy couldn't go back to sleep). I went back into her room at 6:30AM to wake her and to turn her lamp on in her room. Grace got out of bed and decided like all morning that she wanted to watch "toons" (cartoons). She watched a little Handy Mandy while I made some homemade blueberry muffins. When it came time to eating breakfast, Grace decided she needed to sit in Daddy's chair since he wasn't home. At first I thought this was a little strange because is very adamant about everybody's seating arrangement at the table, but I soon realized she wanted to sit in that chair so she could watch "toons." Smart girl! Daddy watch out you might have just lost your chair at the table. :o) After breakfast, we got dressed loaded the car and went outside to take some pictures. Grace did not want her picture taken, but I insisted because it was her very 1st day of school. She soon lightened up and started acting silly. After our little photo session, we were off to school. Arrived at school, took a little walk to say "good morning" to all the animals at school. We have horses, miniature donkeys, peacocks, chickens, and rabbits at Spicewood! Then we proceeded into school where I signed her in, put away her lunchbox in her cubbie, placed her snack in the basket and hung her backpack up. Then I dropped her off in the music room to play a little bit while I got my room set up for the day. Around 9:00AM, I took Grace to her classroom where she went right in without hesitation. After greeting all my kiddos, I decided to sneak into her classroom to take a few pictures of her playing. A slight mistake on my part, she almost had a little meltdown because she wanted to come with me back to my classroom. (Sorry, Ms. Jeanette for the almost meltdown. I was in Mommy mode instead of teacher mode!) I was just trying to capture some moments for Daddy to see since he was unable to take Grace to school on her 1st day. While I was in my classroom doing our morning routine, Grace was having so much fun with her class. We finally met up on the playground and she went right past me and headed straight for the swings. She tried very hard to to swing on her tummy by herself, but soon realized it was a little difficult. So, when all else fails go get Mommy! I pushed her a little bit and then she was off to do something else by herself. She ended up finding Tyler (he's in her class) and holding his hand. It was too cute! And of course I didn't get a picture of it. They were walking with each other for a while and then they decided to start running while still holding hands. Not such a good idea...they ended up falling down and then the tears came. Mommy came to the rescue and we went inside to wash up, but that didn't help either. By this time she was exhausted from crying and ready to take a nap, except it wasn't nap time it was music time. I thought to myself this is going to be a looong music class. We both got through music and then Grace was happy because it was lunch time. She ate all her grilled cheese sandwich, a few bites of strawberries, absolutely no veggies and of course she had her peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that I packed for dessert. After lunch, Grace decided she was still tired and crawled into the doll bed that's in her classroom. She laid on the pillow and covered herself up with the blanket, but did she go to sleep...NO. She decided she was going to watch all her friends in her class and make sure they were doing exactly what they were suppose to and if they weren't she would pop out of bed and tell them so. Finally the day was coming to an end, Grace headed to the nap room to watch a little movie while I put my kiddos in their car to go home. When I was done I went in to get her from the nap room and she was almost asleep. I told her it was time to go home and she said she wanted to stay at school. I proceeded to pick her up and take her back to my room to give her a little sponge bath before we got in the car to go home. I knew she would fall asleep in the car on the way home and I didn't want to put her in her bed dirty. And boy was I right...she fell asleep about 2 minutes into our car ride home.

Grace had such a fun day at school and I'm so lucky that she can come to work with me. It's such a wonderful experience for both of us! :o)

Sorry for such a long post...I just had to document every minute of her 1st day at school! :o)

P.S. When I was putting Grace to bed that night, she prayed the sweetest prayer for her teacher, Ms. Susie, and all her friends in her class.

Here are a few pictures from her day at school:

"No pictures, Mommy!"

Trying to to tell me to turn the camera off.

Happier times.

Making silly faces at Mommy!

(I know this looks like a mad face, but it's not. I promise!)

Waving to some "friends" getting out of their car. Such a social butterfly!

Playing with the Groovy Girls.

Filling the school bus up with rocks.

Pretending to be asleep.

Sleepy Head

This is what happens when Grace wakes up at 5:45AM.

She falls asleep at 10:30AM.

This was a God thing because Grace has a hair cut appointment during her regular scheduled nap time. I was wondering how it was going to go, but now she will be well rested! :o) YEA!

News! News! ... READ all about it!

Today, Grace was eating lunch and decided towards the end of her meal that she would line up all her cheddar cheese cubes on the table and count them.

She counted all the way to 12 all by herself.

Normally, her counting consists of 1, 2, 6, 7, 6, 7,...you get the picutre.

Needless to say I was so extremely proud of her! :o)

5th Wedding Anniversary

Jeff and I celebrate 5 wonderful years together on July 24th. We started the weekend out by dinner at Jasper's, in the Domain. I started out with a heirloom tomato and mozzarella salad and for my entree I had blackened flouder with a lemon garlic shallot sauce with shrimp served on top of a bed of rice pilaf with andouille sausage. Jeff had a full rack of baby back ribs served with a baked potatoe salad. For dessert we had rocky road ice cream sandwiches which had chocolate cookies filled with gooey marshmellow creme chocolate and caramel rolled in candied pecans. The food was fabulous!

Saturday, we slept in and then headed out for our couples massage and foot relexology at Viva Day Spa down on 35th street. We both desparately needed it and enjoyed it tremendously. Then we headed for Trudy's for lunch and a quick stop at a Dance shop to look for Grace some dance clothes for the fall. Now, the biggest task of the day...looking for bedroom furniture! Jeff and I have different thoughts on this, but what couple doesn't. ;o) We first stopped in at Star Furniture and looked around and found a bedroom set that I liked. The only problem was that the price for a 4 piece set (king bed without mattress, 1 night stand, and a dresser with mirror) was about $6000. We still needed a matress and box springs, 1 more night stand and a armoire. So needless to say we decided to look at other furniture stores.

After, such a full day we decided to go pick Grace up early (meaning Saturday evening, instead of Sunday morning) from my parent's house. We went to eat with them at Five Guys down on Guadalupe and then headed to ride the train down at Zilker Park. Big mistake! The hillside theatre was in full swing and there was a line of cars on Barton Springs just to pull into the park. We decided to find a playground for Grace to play at and ended up at Amy's Ice Cream off Burnet Road for ice cream and a little play time. Such a GREAT ending!

P.S. Mom & Dad - thanks again for watching Grace for us! :o)

Happy Anniversary to my husband, my soul mate, my best friend, my one true love, my rock, my confidant. I love with you with all my heart! ~ Lauren

Birthday Festivities!

This week we celebrated my brother and sister-in-law's birthday. They both turned the BIG 25 on the same day! We celebrated Chad's birthday on Monday by cooking dinner at our house and watching "The Bachelorette." We ended the night with an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins. So yummy! Then on Wednesday, I took Tracey out to McCormick & Schmick's in the Domain for lunch. The food was great! Then, we spent the afternoon at a teacher store. We had such a wonderful time!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

to both of you!

We wish you many, many more.

Love,
Jeff, Lauren & Grace

Calling all modeling agents...

This morning my mom, Jeff and I finally took Grace down to Zilker Botanical Gardens to take her 2 year old pictures. I think they turned out pretty cute if I might say so myself. I see modeling in the future! LOL Just kidding! See what you think...

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Wordless Wednesday: Shaving Cream Delight

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Fourth of July in Rockport, Texas

We decided since we had so much fun in Rockport on our beach vacation...we would go back for the 4th of July!



As a kid, my family spent many 4ths down at the coast. Some of my BEST memories as a child!



We had a little bit of a difficult time finding a place to stay in such a short time period and the fact that it was a holiday weekend, but thanks to Jeff and all the traveling he does...he was able to find a hotel room for all of us!



We arrived, ate lunch a deli called Apple Dumpling (Great little place...reminded me of The Kitchen Door here in Austin), checked into our hotel and attempted to get Grace to take a nap before we headed out for dinner. 30 minutes went by along with a couple of spankings...still not asleep. 1 hour went by more spankings...of course not asleep. 2 hours went by and 1 more spanking...I decided at this point a nap for the day was a no go and decided to let her get up. Boy, was she excited, but I was dreading dinner because I felt like she was going to be a bear. Little to my surprise, she was the BEST little thing at dinner. We ate a place in Key Allegro called Paradise Key and it was fabulous! I highly recommend this place to anyone going down to stay in Rockport. It's such a hip little place!



The next day, we went to the famous Art Festival they have every 4th of July weekend. We walked half way through the booths and Grace decided she had to go to the bathroom. Against my better judgement...my mom and I took her to one of the Port-o-Potties. Thankfully, my mom had brought some Lysol wipes and used those to sterilize the bathroom as much as I could. Leave it to my mom to think of everything! ;o) At this point, Grace had about enough. It was extremely hot and the breeze was not able to blow through the tents because the sides were down due to the vendors set up. So, Jeff and I decided to take Grace back to the car while my parents went through the rest of the art booths. Once we got to the car and got cooled down, Grace was a happy camper. We grabbed some BBQ sandwiches for lunch and then headed to the hotel pool. After swimming for a good while, it was time for Grace to take a nap. My mom gave her a bath and put her down for a nap. This time nap was breeze.



After a little nap for Grace, we all got dressed and mosied over to a Mexican restaurant to eat dinner. The food was not that good (we've eaten here many times before and the food has been fabulous) and the air conditioner was not working very well. We ate quickly and got out of there. We won't be going back to this place to say the least. We drove around town looking at properties for sale and then decided we better settle down for the firework show. Once the fireworks started, Grace decided she did NOT like them. She started to cry and ended up in my lap asleep for the rest of the production.

We had such a terrific time! There's something MAGICAL about fireworks over the bay! :o)

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