Halloween... HILARIOUS

Justin left to go camping/fishing with the scouts tonight and Grace is napping so I decided to surf the web for a while. I got an email from diapers.com (I LOVE that website by the way) telling me they have baby costumes for sale. That got me thinking about what I want Grace to be so I decided to Google baby costumes and these are some of the funniest ones I found. I can't decide now if I want Grace's first Halloween costume to be something sweet and cute, or something absolutely hilarious like these. I think my favorite is the car air freshener. It doesn't get any better than that.

I'm afraid someone would sit on her...

...or eat her

If any of you out there are looking for some great costumes for your kids click here.

The Worst Thing

So the worst thing that could possibly happen to someone living in Texas during the summer has happened to us. Our air conditioner has died. I'm sure you can all imagine the grieving that is going on in our home at this time. We will miss you a/c... until we get a new one that is.

Pictures

While Grace and I were in Utah we caught up with Justin's sister and her kids to get some pictures of all the cousins together. Kelli's son Jaxx is almost a year older than Grace and it was difficult to get him and Grace looking at the camera with a decent expression at the same time. The kids were troopers though and we got one pretty good photo. I was also able to get a few shots of just Grace.

Grace just wanted to play with Jaxx's puppy the whole time so we gave her some flowers to distract her. They also cropped the photo to get the black part out of the background.

(Clockwise from left: Alix 4, Whitney 5, Jaxx 17 months, Grace 7 months)

Old Friends

The night before Grace and I headed home to Texas we met up with one of my best friends for dinner. It was so much fun to visit with Susan and her baby boy Brandt. He is such a cutie. We ate at Rumbi Island Grill and if you haven't had the chance to try it yet I totally recommend it. They have great food.

Thanks for meeting up with us Susan and Brandt. We sure enjoyed spending some time with you.

Summer Travels

I apologize for the lack in posting but Justin, Grace, and I have been busy so far this summer. In June, the morning Grace and I were getting ready to head off to Oregon to visit my parents for a week (Justin was at a welding seminar/conference in Georgia) my dad called and told me that my 16 year old brother was in a skateboarding accident and was sent by air ambulance to the University Hospital in Portland. We ended up spending the week in Portland taking turns visiting Spencer in the ICU. He suffered severe head trauma and had to undergo surgery. This accident totally changed our plans for the rest of the summer. We had originally planned a trip to Turlock for the week of July 4th, but with Spencer in the hospital we changed our plans and the whole family met up in Portland for the week. We had such a great time visiting with each other and Justin and I had the chance to meet Nathan's wife and new baby, Courtney and Karly as well as Sarah's newest baby, Brianna. Just before we left for Portland Justin found out that he was going to be traveling for work for the 3 weeks after our trip, so Grace and I decided to stay a little longer. Justin had to go to Montana for a week, then to Mexico for 2 weeks. Grace and I stayed with my parents for 2 weeks, then my mom drove us to Boise where we met up with Justin's mom and headed down to Utah for a week with the Nessen's. We had so much fun but it's good to be home and back together as a family. Below are a few of the pictures from our trip. I will post more when I get them downloaded from Justin's camera.

On the 4th of July we took some family photos. This is a 4 generation photo of my Grandma Ames, my mom, me, and Grace
Grace's first trip to the Pacific Ocean and first time putting her toes in the sand.
Grace's first time swimming. She had so much fun. She kicked and splashed and laughed the whole time. I can't wait until she is big enough for swim lessons!
The town Justin grew up in had their founder's celebration the weekend we were there. They had all kinds of activities. This was during the rodeo. As you can see Grace is thrilled to be there :)
This is a picture of me playing second base during the championship game in our softball tournament. Our entire team was made up of Nessen family members. We had a blast

I will continue to post pictures of our summer activities and hopefully it will get done in a more timely manner.

P.S. Spencer is doing really well for the extent of his injuries. He is home now pretty much for good. He will have to go back to Portland for surgery sometime soon, but he has truly been blessed and has had a miraculous recovery. We have seen the Lord's hand in our lives and answers to prayers and know that we are very blessed.