Hiatus

Sheesh. We apologize to both of our readers for the long wait for a new post. Nothing in particular was keeping us away from the blogosphere. Well I guess two visitor weekends and sweating out child care was part of it. But we are ready to recap the missing 21 days. 21 days later! No wait, 28 is the movie, right? Whatever. Nobody in the household is a zombie, OK? But Kelly did have a birthday . . . on the 21st -- whoa! the numbers are telling us something . . . so we're both now closer to looking like zombies. Kidding. She's as beautiful as the day we met. Speaking of which, here's a photo a friend recently passed along from our youthful college days. I swear that tie is supposed to be a joke. It has to be.

But I know the real draw here. Little Grace! Here's a stunner from early one morning.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, you are correct, she pooped all over it later. Anyway, three weekends ago our ole ("ole" -- not old) pal Megan was in town visiting up the fam in hot, hot July. What a saint. We even hiked on an especially humid day.

But Megan's lasting contribution to the family was cluing (is that spelled right? the blogspot spell checker says so . . . just looks weird) us into Shamus the Sheep's ability to make Grace laugh like a crazy fool. As we captured:

Well done Meg! We've been riding that trick for, well, 21 days now.

Two weekends ago we had an informal gathering of young parents to trade secrets, shoot the bull, and take obligatory cute photos. Such as,

and


Our buddy Jack here is clearly a quick learner. He's already learned to stop short with Grace. Watch it pal!

And it being summer and all we have been taking proper precautions with Gracie to keep her safe from the sun. Including sporting fun hats


and her new shades!


Oh yeah! Looks like she's ready for her first tanning bed. Speaking of bed, it's getting time to hit that bed. Last weekend Papa Bob and Yaya Kathy visited but we'll save that for the next post after we collect their photos. But it won't be 21 days from now. Promise. So, like I said, off to bed.

Eight is Great!

Today's our anniversary; and first as parents. 8 great years and counting. Looks like the forecast for today in steamy Austin won't be nearly as hot and muggy as it was in Independence, MO where we partied and sweated the night away at our reception in oppressive humidity. Whew. I need a hanky just thinking about it.

Anyway, here's a salute to our past 8 years together with all the memorable moments! Well, all those that are digitized and easily dropped into iMovie. You could also title it "Watch Kelly and Jason Age!"

Today, We Celebrate Our Independence Day!

Well . . . yesterday we did. Today we celebrate celebrating Independence Day! Yeah! Anyway, 4th of July is all about images, not words. Like fireworks -- over and over again. And I'm not feeling particularly clever (are you ever clever wise ass? Shut up Richard!), so let's just review the images of our 4th of July and enjoy shall we? Yes indeed, let's.






And then, just for good measure, let's check out some miscellaneous pics that we took recently. Cute, funny, whatever. Entertaining stuff and scenes of our life in Austin.


And there you have it. Grace! Kelly! Jason! Obama! America! @#&% Yeah!

Summer's Bounty

I am so excited, I just had to brag. We just bought a CSA (community-supported agriculture) share, and we got our first basket straight from the farm today. Check out the loot! Plus six farm-fresh eggs I forgot to include in the photo.

Here's the list:
green beans
okra
cucumbers
zucchini
yellow squash
pattypan squash
eggplant
onions
garlic
slicing tomatoes
roma tomatoes
grape tomatoes
hot pepper/sweet pepper/bell pepper
basil
melon

Mmm... here's some ideas... BLT's, ratatouille, pasta sauce, green bean & tomato salad, melon & prosciutto, fried squash, fried okra, pesto, frittata, okra & tomatoes. Any other ideas???

Uno, Dos, Tres...Catorce!

Well, not catorce. Cuatro! Gracie is 4 months old and she's officially as skilled as Jasper at 4 months. She's got all the dog tricks down now so I suppose it's on to stupid human tricks :) She can definitely "sit" (although she's still working on the whole unassisted "sitting up"), as shown here in her Memorial Day outfit care of her great grandma in Sacramento.


We've know for a while now that she can "speak" (although it's not intelligible by any means). And recently she's discovered how to "rollover" like Jasper can barely do. Witness :

But did you know she could "fly" too? Like Underdog, I guess. Although she prefers a different theme song. Turn the volume on for this video.

So she's got the basics down! And she's taken her second foray into swimming on a fabulous father's day. I called it "organized relaxing" as we scheduled up a full day ... to just chill. It was fabulous. We got all the dad varieties together for a picture (and apparently managed to all wear light blue).
Then we chowed down on some fine meat and hung around the pool on a not-so-miserable summer afternoon in Texas.


Later, Gracie took a rather huge dump in a rather small diaper that we were trying to get rid of because they were too small now. Bad combo. The outfit she was wearing was approaching too small too and while we don't usually just toss those out (save them for baby #2? or give to other expecting moms), I decided the process of pulling her heavily soiled outfit over her head was too fraught with problems and visions of her own poop on her face. So I did the dumb man thing -- just grabbed some scissors and cut off the lower part of the outfit that was soiled and trashed it. Again, I do not condone wasting clothing. But in a moment of panic and poop overload, you do what you have to do. She was sporting a nice cut-off the rest of the day. Perfect for these hot days.

The Little Mermaid

Our friend's parents were out of town last weekend. No, this is not the start of my screenplay about high school frivolity set in football-loving, brush-clearing, God-fearing Texas. This is actually the story of Grace's first swimming lesson. Our friend's parents have a sweet pad with a pool and so said friend was having a pool party. Family-friendly pool party without the parents-are-away-shenanigans . . . so we thought we'd toss Grace in and, you know, sink or swim. No, no. Of course not. But, we did strap on a baby swim diaper and let her wade around with mom for a while. I think she took to it:






As part of our all-American weekend of pool party BBQs and such, we had some corn-on-the-cob. Which reminded us of a compliment I paid Kelly long ago. Well, not so much that as a dig she made at me for my poor corn-on-the-cob eating style and her expertise at it. Look at how clean her cob is after a thorough, typewrite-style devourage:


Beautiful. While mine looks much more like our friend MK's:


Terrible. We'll see how well Gracie eats her corn. She's drooling enough now to convince us she's close to teething so it may not be long :)

Expanding our horizons (with Grace)

Well, we did it! Last weekend we took Grace on her first plane ride and we're still here to talk about it. We had a 4-day (ish) weekend in Kansas City to introduce Grace to two of her great grandmothers, her aunties and her cousins. And of course to see Yaya and Papa again for the first time in months.

But first we had to pack, and we knew it was nearly as hot & sunny in KC as it was in Austin. So, we had to find Grace an appropriate hat from our stash of hand-me-downs. Montage!

Oh yes, this is the one!

Adequately packed, we embarked on Southwest Airlines. It's a Texas-based airline that specializes in low-cost fares and you choose your own seat. You may have heard of them. Anyway, families board after the "A" group and when business travelers are the bulk of the passengers (which they were both trips), then you have a real time finding 2 seats together since all the busy-busy's pick all the aisle and window seats ahead of you. No matter -- Grace was dynamite on the plane and there were no long looks, eye rolls or laptop-closures-in-a-huff directed toward her. Here she is somewhere over . . . oh, sorry, just a second -- I just puked up a little . . . Oklahoma:

Kudos to all the folks whom I polled beforehand for their stellar advice. Perhaps you're reading this now and can pat yourselves on the back. Or does anyone even read this blog? Is this post still going? Huh huh . . . BOOB! Sorry, sorry. Back on track.

Upon arrival we were briefed on our breakneck schedule. Grannys, coach-pitch baseball, BBQ with friends and of course many, many meals both in and out of the house. We visited Granny Stew first. Afterward we had a big meal. Granny really enjoyed seeing her great granddaughter:


Then back to hang with Grace's Aunt Claire and her cousins Josh & Caleb. We horsed around the house, played with Grace and took her for a walk. Afterward we had a big meal.


Saturday was just another day at the park for Caleb as it was slow-pitch baseball gameday! Aunt Margaret joined the gang . . .


. . . while Mom & Grace cheered Caleb on as he went 2-for-2 with a single and a double.

Afterward we had a big meal. At the latest craze in Blue Springs, MO: Legend of Asia! A potpourri of Asian cuisine awaited us and our too-cool-for-school family hammed it up beforehand and at the restaurant.


We bookended the weekend with another visit to a great granny. This time great Granny K in Kansas City, KS. That's 3 states for Gracie if you're keeping track. At both facilities, Gracie was a huge hit with the residents. Including, of course, the great grannies.


Afterward we had a big meal (at a legit Mexican restaurant that I'm sure has no yelp page but if it did it would just be a link to the Pepto Bismol site . . . mercy!). Finally, we headed over to see our friends Katie & Bryan. They had their second kid 3 days after Gracie was born. The separated-at-birth pair made their introductions . . .

. . . and then we had a feast from the grill and enjoyed a much cooler and beautiful evening in their rad screened-in porch.

Then it was back on the plane Monday, which was cramped but we returned without incident. Huzzah!