Shrimp & Crab Boil

  This past weekend was amazing.  I had been blessed with a work week of only 27 hours, which is all I am suppose to work.  Plus, Kennedy is a rock star and has started taking decent naps during the day, which means that I actually got all the laundry done, grocery bought, and house cleaned over 2 days.  That was extra impressive since Kennedy is at the stage where you can't be out of her sight and she only wants to be sitting up, which means you have to stay by her side constantly.  This weekend was also extra needed as Kennedy had MAJOR stomach issues last week.  Solid food has not been kind to this little one whose tummy is only use to breast milk.  I will spare you the details but she was in agony and I was worn out.  I was emotionally drained, tired from my 3-4 hours of sleep a night at 30 minute increments and well enough said.  But, then came Friday night where she slept all night long and then a relaxing weekend at home just the 3 of us.  It was funny because this was really the first weekend since we had Kennedy that we didn't have a list of a million things to do.  Of course we still had a list of things to do, but at least we were caught up on what had to be done for once and not drowning trying to keep up.  Barrett could hardly take not having to rush around all weekend so he wanted to start a project.  He began researching different backslashes to install in our kitchen; however, we didn't get to start the yet and now I think we are booked every weekend until May.

Here are some pictures of the weekend and Kennedy loving her new swing set.

 Look at that double chin

 Saturday night we had a shrimp and crab boil with our friends Tammy & Craig and their girls Brylee and Brooklyn and Randy.  It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious as always.  We try to have a shrimp boil with them every few months and it is always delicious.  here are pictures of our sweet girls.  Brylee just loves "baby Tennedy" and kept saying how they were "friends".

 Can I just say that regardless of the mess that teething biscuits cause they are worth every second that I get to cook in the kitchen.

 Brylee having a tea party with Kennedy.

 Brooklyn also enjoyed Kennedy, but she also enjoyed being outside with the boys so I didn't get as many pictures as her.  I love how Brylee is patting Kennedy and talking to her, she was also about to read Kennedy a book.

 Brylee loved teaching Kennedy how to play the piano, but didn't want Kennedy to actually play it.  She kept telling Kennedy "no, baby I'll do it". ha ha ha

 The feast!

 Brooklyn cheesing

 Just documenting that Randy was there, he is such a sport always having to hang out with us and our crazy kids.  His comment after the girls left and Kennedy was down was, "man that was loud".

 Brooklyn loves her "B" and loved looking through the pictures on his phone.

 I promise the moms were there too but are never in the pictures.

 Brylee enjoyed using the real baby stuff (which is actually all hand-me-downs from Brylee) with her baby dolls.

Tree

We bought a Red Oak Tree.  I think it is so sad all these neighborhoods without trees, it is just not right.  Growing up in SA in a gorgeous neighborhood, it is hard for me not to have trees.  It makes me sad that we have to buy a swing set for Kennedy because there is not tree to hang a swing from or the fact that Kennedy won't be climbing any trees in our yard.  But, that is not just our new neighborhood, that is tree-less Corpus.  So, we finally bought a tree and are excited that in 20 years it will be big.  I know Kennedy will be excited to climb it when she goes off to college.

 Barrett highly enjoyed digging this hole in our clay/rock soil.

 And now we can measure Kennedy's growth with her tree.  We officially call it her tree.

 Check out this outfit that daddy came home with from Academy.

 Cutest butt I have ever seen.

Bible Class

 Kennedy is such a big girl that Sunday March 18th she went to big girl Bible class.  I was your typical first time mom and stayed to take some pictures of her in class, plus I wanted to see her reaction to it all.  Barrett and I stayed for about 5-10 minutes and she was loving it.  They were singing songs and Kennedy thought it was so cool....for about 30 minutes that is.  As I was leaving her class to go to class, my shoe broke.  I contemplated going barefoot in church, but decided I didn't really want to go that route so headed home to change me shoes.  (I had been meaning to buy new shoes since Christmas and just never got around to it) I text Barrett that I have gone home and race to make it back.  I get back to our class and literally am there for 5 minutes when Barrett and I hear our child screaming in the hall at the same time someone comes to get me.  Her teacher said that all of a sudden she looked around and realized that momma wasn't there and got upset.  It didn't help that she hadn't had a morning nap either.  You can tell class was a packed house that Sunday.

 Kennedy kept trying to touch Ethan and he was not having it.

 Kennedy loved the cars.

 She is just so big.

 This is the family car headed to Bible class

 Her teacher zoomed the car across the table to Kennedy and Kennedy just laughed.  She thought that car moving was so funny.

 Look how excited her face is for that finger puppet.

 She was digging those finger puppets.

Since this weekend happened, Kennedy had her second Bible class.  She cried while we were leaving, but they said she got over it quickly and enjoyed class.  Kennedy we are so excited to share stories of Jesus with you and can't wait until to see how He molds your heart throughout your life.

Aquarium

As an early Easter Bunny present Grammy and Pa bought us season passes to the aquarium.  Barrett gets a discount from work and we were going to buy the pass when my parents informed us that they were planning on buying us that for Easter.  But we had already planned to go on my Spring Break because it fell on Barrett's Friday off.  So we bought it and ruined the Easter surprise, whoops.

  It was packed, literally a line from the door to this whale's tail, which was about a 45 minute wait.  Luckily if you are a season pass holder we walked right in to the madness that was the crowd at the aquarium.  But, it was worth it because Kennedy was in heaven.  She loved people watching and LOVED the tanks.

So, we get her ready after her nap to go to the aquarium and I have a bottle ready for her.  Barrett feeds about 2 of the 6 ounces to her in the car and then hops out of the car to see how long it would take to get in for season pass holders.  Well, he put her bottle in her carseat with her and somehow it got flipped over.  By the time I have parked the car she was soaked and the bottle was empty.  Which meant she had no more food and I couldn't nurse her because i was empty from just pumping. But i thought, ok I have lunch solid food for her and 2 ounces of formula for her cereal so she can eat that and we will go through really quick and then head home.  It is no problem right because i am a well prepared mom who has an extra outfit in her diaper bag.....not so much.  her outfit was for 3 months of age which was 2 sizes ago.  Great, she is soaked with 4 ounces of milk with no food...fun.  But I just thought that we had driven all the way out there and she was gonna see at least one fish.  So I took her in, poor baby with a soaked bottom.  But, she was happy as a lark and the 2 ounces of her milk snack held her over until she ate her lunch and the day was perfect after that.

I love this picture of daddy and Kennedy gazing at the fish.

We are trying to get better about being in pictures with Kennedy.  We take tons of just her, but are trying to get in the pictures with her so we have proof mom and dad were there.

This was her favorite tank, we stood there for about 20 minutes and she would have stayed longer but we needed to keep on going.  She was mesmorized.

This summed up the day...she had a blast.

look at those chunky legs, I can't get enough of them!

i am so excited to see the turtles

This turtle was fond of Kennedy for some reason and kept checking her out.

This is what she did the whole time at the aquarium.  You can't tell really this far away but she would kick her feet out, scream, and wave her hands because she was so excited.

This was our happy girl, even though she was up for 4 hours!  After the aquarium we concluded our family date with lunch at Barrett's favorite place, Drunkin Noodle.  Kennedy enjoyed her prunes and cereal and was one tired girl.  Barrett tried so hard to keep her awake the whole way home so she could take a good nap in her bed and she almost made it.  When we got home she stayed asleep until i lifted her out of her car seat (which NEVER happens, she wakes up at the smaller bump on the road) but laid in her crib and slept for over 2 hours.  She was exhausted but happy!