Photo Catch Up

I know all I post these days are random photo catch ups, but it’s such a great place to keep a backup of photos and share with family far away at the same time! So here we go!

Mother’s Day weekend with my girls…

Mimi and grandpa were here then, too – grandpa had to get in on the photo-op!  Harper is doing her trademark “I hate pictures” pose.

Mall playdate with friends… this is literally the best picture I got of all 4 girls. 

Harper couldn’t hang for shopping after all that playing… love those long lashes of hers!!

After-nap walks with the wagon are our favorite :)

Matt has been taking Hadley to Home Depot on the first Saturday of the month – they have a kids workshop, a bounce house, sno-cones, etc and this was Hadley’s first completed project.  She hammered the nails in, painted and glued it all together!  (ignore the mess around her, and the fact that daddy let her choose what she wore which meant leggings, pj top and patent leather ballet flats)

My littlest blue-eyed-beauty doing some coloring with friends on our favorite texmex patio

Matt and our friend Corbett decided to do a daddy-daughter double date and took the big girls to a Frisco Roughriders (minor league) game.  Hadley was so excited!

While Hadley and daddy were at the baseball game, Harper and I took a nice long walk on the trail by our house to look for bunnies.

This picture of Harper cracks me up… everytime we put a hooded towel on her she tried to look at it like this. ;)

We love when aunt Courtney comes over to play.  We took a trip to the mall and Hadley convinced her to ride the escalator up and down a few times for fun. ;)

Hadley and I took a road trip down to Austin just the two of us to throw aunt Katie a baby shower!  I’ll post the shower pictures in a separate post, but here are a couple of Hadley exploring (in her pjs, boots and princess backpack) nana & poppie’s backyard…

 

More pictures to come! 

San Diego: Part 3

I really didn’t mean for this to turn into three parts – apparently I took more pictures than I realized!

So after the zoo, we had dinner in downtown San Diego with Matt’s “line of business” – meaning the head of corporate banking and everyone within the group who was on the trip (each of the groups had their own dinner).  Our dinner was at Donovan’s, a delicious steak house in the Gaslamp quarter.

Because we are super lame were exhausted from the zoo, we called it a night after dinner.

On Friday, our last full day, we were able to meet up with some good friends of ours (shout out to Kaylan because I think she’s one of the only people who actually reads this!) who just happened to be in San Diego for their anniversary trip at the same time as us!  They live in Arizona so we don’t get to see them as often as we’d like – we were so excited to find out our trips overlapped! 

After lunch, we had a catamaran ride scheduled for the afternoon.  It was a little chilly, but such a fun way to see the bay!

And last, but CERTAINLY not least… the dinner party the last night was out.of.this.world.  Considering this was technically considered a “business trip” we were expecting a banquet hall with typical hotel food, run-of-the-mill décor, etc.  Wrong.  The theme for the last night was “There’s no place like home…” and they went all out.  The Wizard of Oz was written at the del, there’s a whole section of one of the shops in the hotel with memorabilia, but this party took it to another level.  I’ll share some pictures, but let me just say that they do NOT do it justice!  (Please note the projected image of the tornado and house on the back corner of the hotel in the aerial shots.

From the outside dinner/cocktail party, we moved inside where they had completely transformed one of the hotel ballrooms.  There was an amazing live band, ruby slipper chandelier, a balcony where Dorothy, the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow all danced, a giant ice sculpture filled with desserts, a “yellow brick road” running throughout and so much more… it was jaw-dropping.

 

The company also hired a sand castle creator for the week we were there and every day there was a new design.  This was the last night’s castle (Oz!) – it has a wagon wheel (the award Matt won was called the Golden Spoke) and a “Thank You” to the girl who planned the whole week (what a job!).

Such a fun trip!  And the girls had a blast with their nana & poppie (although I have never seen Harper happier than the moment we got home – she literally ran to me with open arms and a giant grin on her face!).

San Diego Zoo

As I mentioned in my first post, we had excursions to choose from each day while we were in Coronado/San Diego.  We tried to find a balance of resting/relaxing and still seeing some of the sights.  On Thursday we had a few different options but we both had no trouble deciding on the San Diego Zoo visit.  It was a full day trip that included a private tour, catered lunch and a behind the scenes “encounter” with some surprise animals.  It was definitely a little tough at times because we kept thinking about how much the girls would have loved it, but all it took was walking by one little kid melting down and I was happy to be on our own again. ;) I have about a hundred pictures from the zoo so bear with me here…

This elephant below made me laugh… we passed them on our tour and there was a group of 5 or 6 that our tour guide said were all females and about 50 yards away from them was this dude.  The guide said that he doesn’t like the female elephants and despite their efforts to get them to all “mingle” he comes and sits over here at the fence every day instead.

These next few animals were a part of the animal encounter after our lunch.  I can’t remember most of their names but it was fun to see them up close regardless!

This little guy was a baby sloth and was probably the cutest little thing ever!  It just kept snuggling with the zookeeper while she was talking!

Most people probably already know this but there are only 10 (I think?) pandas in the U.S. and they are all “on loan” from China.  There were two there that we were able to see.

One more post to come with pictures from the rest of our trip (I had more from the zoo than I realized – this post is long enough already!)