Felicity's Flowery Fourth!

We had a great Fourth of July this year! My parents came up for the day which started with our neighborhood parade. Here's Felicity posing before the big event by her wagon. We decided to go with a "Felicity's Flowery 4th!" theme and she loved it. It was a lot of work gluing all of those flowers to the wagon, but I actually had a really fun time putting it together for her. I even made her a little matching flower bow for the parade.

 I just adore little kids sort of awkward smiles, don't you? Love this one...

She had been practicing waving her flags for days, and I have to say, she did pretty good. She kept saying, "that was fun" all day. :-)

After the parade we came back and had coffee, watermelon and popsicles on our front porch.

Then we headed to our neighborhood pool for a big picnic and pool party. Fe just can't seem to get enough of the pool!

Then we headed back home to relax and have dinner together with this yummy dessert.

Felicity also dominated my parents in memory cards. It is her new favorite thing to do and between Justin and I, we literally spend hours a day playing it with her. I told my family how good she was, but I don't know if they really believed me until she smoked them fair and square. :-)

Flowers from Daddy

Justin brought home flowers for both his girls on Friday! Such a sweet surprise...I didn't get any pictures of mine, but here's Felicity, all smiles showing off her bright blooms. :-)

Front porch living

When we moved to our new neighborhood, I figured I would love everything about our new house, but there was one thing I wasn't quite sure about - the backyard. A lot of the houses out here, including ours, do not have big backyards. For most people in Texas, that is a big no no... and having always grown up playing in the backyard, and playing in our backyard in our old house in Dallas, I was afraid I would miss it. Now, our yard is definitely big enough to play in, but the vibe and feel of our neighborhood is a little different. They've opted for lots of public parks, gardens and spaces to encourage people to get out and about in the neighborhood. Also all of the houses are required to have front porches. Having been here about six months now, I can tell you, while I understand it is not for everyone, we absolutely love it. We honestly spend very little time in the backyard, opting to hang out at the parks, fountains, ponds, pool or our front porch. We have become total porch rats and sit out front almost everyday. Felicity and I like to eat lunch out here a lot and as a bonus, there's no mess to clean up inside! As it warms up I'm happier and happier we added fans to both our front and back porch!

Here are a few shots of Fe enjoying our front porch...

This is currently our view sitting on our front porch...I absolutely love it. I snapped this shot one day when the lighting was really interesting. That little park over there on the left is where you can find Felicity playing most days. She considers that "her park." Even though we could fit a swing set in our backyard, there's not really a need since this one is right there. We love to go over meet up with friends that are out playing too and of course, Fe usually wants to make a visit to the dog park, to see if she can spot any of the neighborhood pups she's become very fond of.

While we do spend most of our time on the front porch, we do enjoy our backyard and that porch as well. We eat out there when we grill and have lots of fun. Fe likes to drive her car down the breezeway between our house and our garage (which is detached).

Road trip - Big Cedar Lodge!

A few weeks ago we took a little vacation to Big Cedar Lodge right outside Branson, MO. We actually went there when Felicity was just two months old, so this was a much different trip with a two year old. She had a great time and was actually able to enjoy and experience everything. Justin and I agreed her favorite parts of the trip were ordering off the kids menu at the restaurants and watching Lady and the Tramp or "Yady and da Tamp", as she calls it, 14 million times on the 7 hour drive there and back. Technically, I guess we could have done both those things without leaving our hometown, but hey, what are vacations for?

Justin, I'm learning gets extremely giddy to go on road trips. I think its the maps, navigating, planning out the pit stops, etc., but he is quickly becoming king of the road trips. And I have to say, I'm on board. We were well prepared for the drive and hardly had any problems carting the toddler that long. We left Saturday morning at 4:30 a.m. I had a feeling Felicity wouldn't go back to sleep in the car and I was right. She was very quiet for a long time though, until...we had been driving about an hour and it was still pitch dark outside. All of the sudden the smell of skunk filled the car. She's never smelled a skunk before and from the back seat comes her little voice, "Ugh!! What's that smell?!" I agreed with her that it stunk and asked her - "Do you know what that smell is, Felicity?" She said, "Yea! Poop!" It may have just been the early hours or how she said, but Justin and I got the biggest kick out of it.

Once we arrived they had our room ready early which was a nice treat. Felicity actually took a little nap and then we headed out to explore the resort.

Having spent at least 8 summer vacations here growing up, I thought I was really familiar with everything; however, I didn't ever really notice how much there was for little kids. Felicity spotted a park I had never even noticed before and had a great time checking it out.

Love this pic of her crazy-static-slide hair...

Then we enjoyed ice cream treats overlooking the lake...and then off to dinner. Nothing like spoiling your dinner with a little pre-dinner dessert on vacation!

Sunday was Mother's Day and we got an early start hiking through Dogwood Canyon. Two years ago we hiked all six miles pushing Felicity in the stroller, stopping to nurse, etc. This year we knew we would be lucky to get one mile in, since Miss Felicity has deemed herself too big to ride in the stroller. It is a battle to get her to sit in it at all...one that I'm not usually up for, so she generally walks everywhere. This can be very frustrating, as she gets into everything in the stores. We were checking out at Target the other day and I kid you not, she had snuck at least 10  things of cookies, toys, etc. under the buggy. I was like - where did this come from?! But I digress....

We ended up hiking 3 1/2 miles and Felicity hiked for at least 2 miles! We were impressed...and her hiking by the way, is really running. She would not stop running and kept saying, "follow me, guys!!"

Here I am chasing after her...

It was beautiful....stopped here for a little snack.

Getting lots of hugs and kisses from my little lady on Mother's Day! Nothing better!

On Monday Felicity experienced her first theme park!! We went to Silver Dollar City - so much fun! It is set in the 1880's, which I realize might not sound too exciting, but it is super family-friendly, clean and has so much to do. Again, I have so many fond memories here. It was a little difficult to explain to her what a theme park was, so Felicity wasn't sure what was going on right when we got there -- 

After a few minutes inside though, watching a saloon shoot out, a train go by and eyeing the food, she started to sense this might be something fun. The excitement is building on her face...

 Starting off on the carousel --

She wasn't too sure about this boat ride...

But oh how she loved these frogs and caterpillar/butterfly things. We rode these lots! We had to ride the butterflies again and again until she finally got to sit in a pink one. I love seeing daddies crammed into these tiny kid-sized rides. :-)

It was a little annoying because she was 1/4 inch too short to ride a lot of things!!! 35 3/4" just doesn't equal 36"!!! :-( But there was still plenty for her to do and of course, she didn't even realize it. She loved the petting zoo -- 

One more attempt at a family photo...Fe was not having it.

Such a fun day we had. Our little hooligan is definitely a theme-park lover!

Tuesday was dedicated a little more towards Mom and Dad fun. We hit up the outlets in Branson and scored some good finds for all three of us.

As I mentioned earlier, she loved going to the restaurants every night and getting to pick what she wanted off the kids menu. We would let her have a few choices and then she got to tell the waitress what she wanted to eat. One night the waitress asked her what she wanted and she said, "I NEED pizza and macaroni (pronounced: mac-eeee-roni)." FYI - there are no "I wants" in Fe's vocabulary. She "needs" just about everything. Must work on that. Justin said, "Felicity, why don't you just pick one? Which one do you want?" She replied, "No, I need both, Daddy. Pizza and mac-eeee-roni and I will share." Oh  my, trying to work the system already!

We enjoyed every morning relaxing on our balcony with coffee and juice cups.

It really is such a beautiful part of the country I feel often gets overlooked. The Ozarks and Table Rock Lake are hard to beat in my book.

 We ended our time at Big Cedar down at the Marina collecting and throwing rocks in the lake. Such sweet memories...

Updated posts

I've finally gotten around to updating some posts:

Easter 2012

First baseball game

The pool is open!

Mother's Day Tea

First prayer

First prayer

I have so much blogging to catch up on it's ridiculous and I even did a really long post about Easter which somehow got deleted {don't get me started on that}, so I'm working on it...but in the meantime...

I just laid Felicity down for bed and she had one of those precious child moments that I wanted to make sure I don't forget. Like a lot of parents we have the same bedtime routine every night - brush teeth, read a book, say our prayers, put her in her crib and sing her a song while we rub her back. Justin and I take turns doing this and of course, we are usually the ones doing the singing, praying and reading (although there are plenty of occasions where she insists on "reading" to us and her stuffed animals). But tonight when I told her it was time to say our prayers, she folded her hands like she normally does, but then she said her own little prayer! "Thank you for Mommy, Daddy and Fe Fe and for go on vacation. Amen. Goodnight." I could not believe her little prayer - it was so simple, sweet and from her little 2 year old pure heart.

Then she pointed to her crib and said, "Get in the bed!" And that we did. :-)

Mother's Day Tea

Felicity's Mother's Day Out had a tea for all the moms to celebrate Mother's Day this week. It was my first time going to something like this and it was so precious. They had a slide show with pictures of all the kids throughout the year, the kiddos recited their Bible verse and they sent us home with an adorable framed picture of her. It was so cute - you could tell she was so excited to show me her classroom and her friends. As you can see, Felicity enjoyed all the food at the tea party. I don't think I got a shot of her without a mouth full of food. I thought it fitting for Mother's Day that she wear one of mommy's old dresses, so I sent her to school that day in one of my old dresses that my mom perfectly preserved. I thought she looked so cute in the little vintage dress with strawberries on it. :-)

So thankful to be this little angel's mama!

The pool is open!

Let summer begin! Felicity has been counting down the days till our neighborhood pool opens. We would literally walk up there almost everyday to let her peek through the gate and I would tell her how many more days we had to wait until it opened...but this past Saturday, the day arrived! We had a big pool party, cookout and concert at the pool and it was so much fun.

Felicity and her Cheetos-covered fingers eyeing the pool...I can't get enough of her little bikini body. Love chunky babies!

Justin was a very good daddy and got in the freezing cold water with her.

Her lips and fingernails were literally blue and teeth were chattering, but she refused to get out. She loved every minute of it. It's starting to warm up more now and I have no doubt we will be spending many hours at the pool this summer. Bring on the triple-digit heat!