Monday of Vacation

We did a whole lotta nothing on Christmas eve. We ate way too much junk food and laid around on the couch. We played Frisbee golf. That was fun. The weather wasn't too cold like we had expected to it was good weather to run around outside. We really had to trick Daddy into watching Lily because he swears up and down that he doesn't know how to babysit! We put her down for a nap, quickly told him that he was in charge and ran out the door.
I must admit...I am TERRIBLE at Frisbee golf. See, we even have it on video...

All the holes are par 3 and just like regular golf, getting a higher score than 3 is bad. Well, we shot 11 holes. I got a 6, 8, 2 9s, an 11 and the rest were 10s! As you saw in the video, I only could get the stupid thing to go about 5 to 10 yards at a time.

That night we went to the Opryland hotel to wander around and see their Christmas decorations. I don't have any pictures from that either so I'll have to wait until Daddy downloads his camera. At the end we let Lily loose in a hallway of the hotel and she ran and ran until she fell over.

Forgot to post these from the Parade

I just realized when working on my laptop that I had downloaded the pictures from the Candy Cane parade to this slow computer rather than the desktop wher I usually put my pics. So, these are from the Candy Cane Parade that Lily and I went to before Christmas. It is on the beach and was very fun. I don't have any friends with babies so Lily got to hang out with the adults. Tony held her the whole time and we took a bunch of pictures of them together to try and convince his wife (she wasn't there...she had to work) that they should have a baby too. I hope it works.

More Vacation

Once we got to David's house we had a hard time getting Lily to sleep so she slept in between Ross and I. Ugh. I hear about people who sleep with their babies all the time and cannot fathom how they do it. Neither Ross nor I got any quality sleep.


So, the next morning, Sunday, we went to church at Denton's Chapel. My family has been going here for generations and generations. The sister of my great great grandmother Lillian whom Lily is named after, was the first child ever baptised in this church and everyone in my family since has been baptised there too. So, it was really special that we got Lily baptised there as well. Both of my dad's sister came too. We were called up to the front at the beginning of the service and Lily did the funniest thing. She saw the baby Jesus that was set up in the front of the church and kept saying "Bay Bee, Bay Bee" over and over and then started to fuss because I wouldn't let her get down to play with him. Once the minister put the water on her head she froze. She looked right at him in such a serious face and looked as though she was understanding what he was saying. The whole experience was really nice except that Lily was so squirmy and loud during the service that I had to take her out. The church is teeny tiny (42 members!) so there weren't many places to go. We wandered around the big room that they use for banquets and such and it was really neat to see that they still had pictures of my Grandparents on the wall there. They were really active with the church and I know they loved it so it made me smile to see their pictures on the wall even though they both passed away over 10 years ago.
(that picture of the church here is an old one but it looks exactly the same at that)





After Church we drove down the road to see my Grandparent's house. My dad and Aunts sold it after they died and now it is up for sale again. The realtor happens to know my dad and Aunts (everyone knows one another!) and she goes to Dentons, so she offered to let us in to look around. It is the house that my Dad & Aunts grew up in and I have quite a few memories there too. The people who are selling it did a bit of work to the place. they added two bathrooms (there was only 1 before!) and cut out a bedroom. Added a porch and re-did the floors. We went into the basement and saw a beam that had markings of mine and David's height when I was 11 and he was 6. And Brandi, Richard and my height when we were 18, 16 and 6. So, we got a marker and marked Lily's height too.

Then we went across the street to take a look at what my dad calls "the home place" which is the family property that really is still in the family. We lived there when I was 4 but I only really have memories of the place from the outside. All the years growing up when we would go up to visit Ganny & Grandad there were people living there that were renters so we never went in. It is pretty run down now. It needs quite a bit of work if someone were to want to live in it. The funny thing is that I always thought the house was brick but it turns out it is faux. What a let-down!


We got a picture of Lily standing next to her Great Great Great Grandma Lillian's grave


Then on the way home we picked up food from a yummy fattening place called Fat Moes. Mmmmm

Back from Vacation

I am going to have to write about our trip in several posts because I just don't have the time to do it all in one.
I am so behind on work and it just makes me tired to think about how long it will be before I get caught up. I think I'm going to hire a babysitter to come over one day just so I can work.
Anyway. We went up to Tennessee for Christmas making stops in Huntsville and Atlanta.
We left early Saturday morning and flew to Atlanta. Lily was confused about the early wake up but did great on the plane. We got to the airport way early and it was surprisingly empty so Lily had a blast running up and down the long rows of chairs and pointing at the planes outside.
She was squirmy on the flight but it was only and hour and a half so we got through it pretty easily.
Daddy met us at the airport and we loaded in and drove to Huntsville. Lily started saying "Joe" (my dad's dog that used to be mine) within the first half hour of the trip. It was so cute.
Once in Huntsville my whole family came over to Grandma's house to have a little Christmas celebration. It was so fun. It is so nice to be able to be somewhere that I can just put Lily down and know that she'll be ok no matter if I'm in the same room or not. We don't really have that here at this age. Lily ran around and tried to get into as many things as possible. My cousins and Aunts tried their best to kiss her and hug her but she is too much on the move.
Lily must have been very good this year because she got so many great things. She got two new baby dolls, a cool blinky noisy key, a dress and three hats!
We stuffed ourselves and Lily refused to eat anything. Aunt Gertie dipped ice cream cones for all the kids and Lily had her first one ever. She wouldn't eat it at first but then once Ross taught her to put her finger in it then lick her finger she discovered that she liked it.
After the party we got back in the bronco and headed to Nashville.

Lily's new boyfriend

I absolutely love the way Lily says 'baby'. It sounds like "bay bee" with the emphasis on the 'bay'. Any doll or stuffed animal, as well as real children are identified as 'Baby' along with a finger point. So, the other day when I was dragging my suitcase out from the top of the closet and had to move the Gigantic Raggety Ann & Andy dolls (all four of them... for some reason I have Brandi's too) I figured it would be time to let Lily play with them.
Well, Zelda ate the legs off one of them when she was a puppy, so that was the real reason they were in the top of the closet. And, because they are so old and are really really cherished toys from my childhood, I only gave her one Andy doll (Brandi's of course) to play with. She LOVES it!
Every night part of our routine is to pick out a baby from the basket and put it in the bed with her. I have been struggling for three days now trying to reason with a 17 month old about the size of the doll and how a smaller doll would be better to sleep with.
So worth it...
One of my Aunts made these dolls for us. I need to find out which one and see if she still has the pattern. I would LOVE to make these precious dolls.

Man am I irritated! I've either got some sort of bug on BOTH of my computers or all the crazed Christmas shoppers have taken to the internet and slowed my connection to a crawl. I've been trying to upload these damn pictures for two hours now (well not 2 hours straight, but while I work in a seperate window) and they are still not up. Hopefully I can get it to work in the morning.

Getting involved in Politics

I've been trying to decide which political candidate to vote for. I'm still undecided but I am really trying to narrow down my options. Because of the stupid way our system is set up, I had to pick a party in order to be able to participate in the primary elections. Although I still disagree with some of their party values, I've changed my affiliation to Republican. So, also because of the stupid way our elections are handled, I've only been paying attention to the republican candidates for now because I have no say in how the democrats narrow down their choices. I spent my birthday watching the YouTube debate and taking notes. I still need to look up a few more things online but I've pretty much narrowed my decision down to three.

One of those three is Senator McCain. Yesterday I met up with my Aunt and cousins down in Miami to go hear him speak at a town hall meeting. It was pretty cool because the amount of political things I've actually participated in prior to this has been very limited. I had a question prepared and was ready to ask it but someone else got my question before I could get the courage up to ask it.

The only un-cool thing was that most of the questions proposed to him were asked in Spanish. He had a translator in his ear to translate it for him but we just had to figure it out by the answer he gave. Maybe next time I should go to the English speaking one.

Senator McCain was a POW with my uncle and my aunt volunteers for his campaign so he came over and talked to us after the meeting.

We got our pictures made with him. There was some other weirdo in the pic too, but I cropped him out. In the pic: my cousin Sandy, Me, my cousin Pamela, Senator McCain, my cousin Christian, and my aunt Charlotte.

Getting so mature!

Lily's vocabulary is getting so big and she is learning things so quickly. She will say or do things that just amaze me every day. She has turned into quite a copy cat too. Yesterday she came in the bathroom while I was peeing and pulled off some toilet paper, wadded it up and walked over to the toilet and tried to reach in to wipe for me! I quickly stopped her from being so "helpfull" and then she decided to sit on her little toilet and picked up a magazine. I guess she thinks that is where you are supposed to sit to read!
She tells me when she is hungry by saying 'eat, eat, eat' and that she wants juice or a banana. And she tells me when she has pooped too.
They say that putting words together is the next step in learning language so I can now say that she is at step two because she says 'all gone' when she has emptied her cup or finished her plate. Ok, so it sounds more like "gon, go" but I understand it.