Some new Sears Photos..

We had some new professional pictures of Luke taken last weekend, and thought we'd share with our blogging community.  Enjoy!

Our Trip to San Antonio

We took a long weekend trip a couple of weekends ago to spend some time in San Antonio with Drew's side of the family.   We had a wonderful time and the resort we stayed at--Hyatt Hill Country Resort and Spa--was amazing!   There was enough to do there that we didn't even have to leave!  But, we decided to go to Sea World on the first day we were there--Friday. 

Mitchell conquered the 2nd roller coaster of his life...:                       

and Drew and I rode with him.

We loved the penguins...                              

Luke found some new friends.

Here are Mitchell, Mimi & Papa at the end of the log ride:

Drew and Luke watching a water skiing show.

Drew and Mitchell AFTER a river tubing ride.

The dolphin exhibit was my FAVORITE exhibit there.  We got to feed them and I couldn't believe how close we were able to get to them:

We had a GREAT time at Sea World and are looking forward to going back in a few weeks with my brother Jeremy, sister-in-law, Brandy and nephew, Traber!

Here is a group picture at the end of the day:

On Friday night, Drew and I had the pleasure of playing a round of twilight golf with Papa, Andy & Mitchell.  The course at the resort was AMAZING:

Then, on Saturday, we went to the San Antonio Zoo.   It was very warm, but blue bell ice cream always makes the heat ok.  :-)

Here are some cute pics of our nieces, Lauren and Audrey, playing in a really cute childrens' area of the zoo. 

The children's area of the zoo even had a sandy beach and pool area where kids could play.  It also had an indoor interactive area with an air-conditioned nursing room (this, I have found, is a very rare thing).  That definitely came in handy around Luke's lunchtime.

 I thought this picture of Erica was cute!

We spent the rest of the weekend at the Hyatt Resort Grounds.  There was SO much to do there and the grounds were beautiful. They also had many family-oriented planned activities, such as a photo scavenger hunt, and, my favorite, smores at the fire pit nightly!  As a matter of fact, on Friday night, when we played twilight golf, our round finished at 8:59p.  I was very concerned, as I knew the smores fire-pit was going to shut-down at 9pm.  But Drew saved the day--he drove the golf cart VERY quickly over to the fire pit, so that I could make sure I got one.  :-)  YUMMY! 

One of the best features of the resort was their lazy river.  It was so relaxing to float at night--the entire "river" was tree covered and really did seem like a river--so peaceful!  Below is a picture of one of the pools, which is connected to the lazy river, during the daytime.

On Sunday, before we headed home, we checked out the pools at the Hyatt's sister time-share resort across the street.  Here's a picture of Andy and the kids having fun in the sand on the beach of its lazy river:

Thank you to the Sugar Land division of our family for a wonderful time in San Antonio!

Happy 4th of July & Happy 9-month birthday to Luke!

Happy 4th of July to everyone!  We have lots of reasons to celebrate today.  In addition to being thankful for our freedom as Americans, we are also celebrating Luke's 9-month birthday.

We are pleased to say he is officially a crawler now.   He has been pretty mobile prior to these crawling days; but, we were beginning to wonder if he would just go straight to walking.  He would roll over to where he wanted to pull up, and then pull up.   We have begun baby-proofing the house, as we realized that these stages are started to go by faster and faster.  Drew moved the crib down to the lower level after Luke tried to escape one morning.  We also bought some edge-protectors for our fireplace, but they don't work very well.  We're sure he'll pull those right off and, in fact, they actually seem to attract him to the fireplace.

Here is a video of Luke crawling:

With these new stages, we are finding that Luke is very similar to his mommy in that he always wants to be on the move.  He wants to be in on all of the action.  So, on Saturday, we bought a Sherpani backpack baby carrier that was advertised on craigslist so he can join us on hikes.  We also thought this would be very handy on our upcoming vacations.  We tested it out on a short hike near Lake Georgetown on Saturday.

We also visited a great restaurant while we were in Georgetown, called Monument Cafe.  Everything we ate there was DELICIOUS and we will be back soon!  We even splurged for the freshly squeezed cherry limeade and the coconut cream pie--YUMMY!