Is It Really August Already???

I can't believe I haven't blogged in so long! We've been fairly busy with some doctor's appointments and a visit to Arkansas in July. The best thing about August in Texas is that it means summer is on the downhill slide! Autumn is right around the corner and I can't wait! :) But we'll have to stick it out with some 100+ temps before we get there. Also, it means that football is coming too, and that always makes me feel cooler. I have attended some Razorback games in some VERY cold weather, and I just try to think of that and I'm cool all over! :)

Rachel and I visited my family for a few days last week, and she had a ball. She's getting to where she remembers people in between visits (I have her look at pictures of them a lot too and I think that helps her too). Here she is playing with my mom and dad.

...giving my mom hugs

Rachel loves to be spun around in desk chairs, but if she can't do it herself, she'll be happy to spin you around too! Here she is giving my sister a spin.

She is such an animal lover. Her new favorite TV channel is Animal Planet (although every animal is called "bah" except for dogs, and they're "gogs"). Here my dad is reading to her from a book about guinea pigs (must have been from when my sister had a pet guinea pig years ago).

Rachel got a Little People Airport last Christmas, but she's just now old enough to play with it. She really likes it, especially the toy taxi and plane.

Her new favorite discovery is balloons. A nice bank teller at WalMart gave her this one and she played with it really well. I was a little afraid she'd pop it before we got home, but she got to enjoy it for a couple of hours before something on the ceiling at home popped it.

I've been looking for free things to do to keep cool this summer, and I finally broke down and let her play at the kids' area at one of our area malls (those places always look like germ incubators to me, but this mall gets less traffic than some of the others and there was never really more than about 20 kids there). She had a ball! She was so good with the other kids, helping the younger ones climb up on things and sharing the slides and such. In case you're wondering, this one is diner themed. She's playing on a gigantic plate of steak and eggs here. In front of her are giant spoons and a giant cup of coffee.

A few weeks ago we took Rachel to Cabela's as a quasi-zoo type trip (it's much like Bass Pro Shops, with an aquarium and lots of stuffed animals on display). She really had a good time there, as did the rest of us! Here she is checking out some really big catfish.

Checking out some animals from the Serengeti! And yes, that is a full size taxidermied elephant!

This Alaskan moose was huge!

This area with all the deer and fall foliage made us all feel a bit cooler.

She's already closer to the ground than the rest of us, but she likes to squat even lower to check things out too!

Checking out some wild turkeys

This is her reaction to the polar bears.

My Baby Has Gone Crazy

Check out the evidence for yourself! :)

More Pool and Sand Play

Rachel and I visited my friend Crystal and her daughter Addie for a playdate a couple weeks ago (our original plan was thwarted by a park that closed for a private event, so pooh on them, we had fun anyway over at their house!). Rachel had such a good time! She really liked playing in her sandbox (her first time to do that) and enjoyed getting all dirty. Luckily the girls decided to play in the sandbox first and then "rinsed off" by playing in the pool second! Afterwards we had a really nice lunch and the girls played a little more before it became obvious they both needed naps! :) Thanks to Crystal for the pictures (I forgot my camera :P )!

I love Addie's curly hair! :)

Not sure why she's sticking her tongue out here!

Though she's not really into playing pretend yet, she did have fun playing in Addie's play kitchen. I think we'll definitley have to get her one of those when she gets a little older.

Pool Play

We got Rachel an inflatable play pool to help beat the heat this summer. We had a good time using it this past weekend. She especially liked the big beach ball and her bucket toys.

Playing with the hose while it was still fillilng up.

She wasn't sleepy at the time, but I had to include this one because she looks so funny, like she's about to fall asleep standing up!

One of the dogs was doing something funny on the other side of the yard here.

She loves looking for airplanes when we're outside.

Looks like she's plotting something...

Cool CIcada Pictures

I'm not a big bug person, but I have to admit these are some cool pictures. Joshua got these pictures the other night after noticing a cicada shedding its shell (I guess that's what it's called anyway!) while hanging on our grill cover on our back patio. I thought the wings were awfully pretty too. They must have abs of steel to stay horizontal like that for so long (it took about an hour for it to completely leave its shell).

Up To All Sorts of Things

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I hadn't realized how long it had been until my sister saw me on facebook and chatted to me, "hey...when are you gonna update your blog???" :) We've been really busy lately, not the least of which was spending a sweltering 4th of July weekend with no air conditioning! Fortunately we had family that kept us cool until we were able to get it fixed. I thanked God many times over that we were able to get someone in on Monday to fix it (we weren't about to pay someone to fix it over the weekend, much less a holiday). And we were more than thankful that it was also fairly inexpensive to fix (when compared to what it could have been).

Here's how Rachel has been keeping cool the past couple of weeks.

playing her new xylophone/piano

eating her first popsicle (my idea to have her do it in her diaper...I did not want to have to try to clean kool-aid out her clothes!
loving on Max...he's become much more tolerant of her lately, not nearly so skittish

She has a newly acquired interest in wearing my shoes
This just looked too good to leave out. I made my mother in law a chocolate mousse pie for her birthday and it turned out so good!

When she gets older she's going to love making forts out of sheets and chairs. This is her latest hidey-hole for her stuffed animals (which she has developed a new love for too...she's always carrying as many as her arms allow and hugging and kissing them all the time...lately her thing is taking them into the grocery store with us).

I had no idea a child of 19months could do the splits, but she does! It started the other day when her shoes were a little slick on the kitchen floor and now she's started doing it at least a couple times a day. When she gets a little older we may have to put her in a gymnastics class...good way to burn off some energy!

Dinner at Benihana's

Later that evening, once we'd finally cooled off from being at the zoo, we went to Benihana's to celebrate Joshua's parents' anniversary (37th I think? I'm so bad...I've forgotten!). Rachel had a good time watching the guy cook our food at the table, making lots of noise, and eating with chopsticks again! Thanks to Kathy for these pictures...they're all hers! :)

The diva waiting for her table.

The kids' menu turns into a chef's hat

I think she ate more edamame beans than anything else.

The little ceramic spoons they brought with our ice cream worked great for her.