Mystery

Someone was playing in Bella's water bowl and made quite a mess. I wonder who it could have been?!?

Too bad they didn't leave any clues...

A Birthday Party

Josiah attended his very first "peer" birthday party this past weekend. A little girl in our church, who is exactly 1 month younger than Siah, was turning 1 and had a Baby Einstein party!

The birthday girl and Siah, chowing down on treats (goldfish and craisins)

Baby Einstein bowling

Baby Einstein cupcakes made by the birthday girl's momma - aren't they awesome?!?

Singing and blowing out the candle

Josiah actually stuffed an entire chicken nugget in his mouth when I wasn't looking...yikes

These 3 are nursery buddies - they were all born within a month of each other! I can't wait until they're a little older and really running around & playing with each other.

It's hard to get a decent picture of 3 one-year-olds...

In case you thought we left...

We're still here, just covered in paint! I realize I haven't blogged in a while, we've been busy making this house our home...

Our house is 25 years old...and came with some original wallpaper :) The dining room had a lovely layer of tan paper with tiny red flowers

And the kitchen had 2 layers - top layer was green, then under that was some red wallpaper that had been "primed" over before the green was put up.

I'll spare you the details and cuss words, but the wallpaper was AWFUL to take down. The builders had glued it straight onto the wallboard/drywall with no primer or anything. Therefore, I was ripping drywall down with the wallpaper. We tried every trick in the book. One of the Home Depot experts finally told us to take the wall down and hang new sheet rock. Seriously...that was his suggestion. Regardless, it came down and my mom came to help paint while Andy was in Florida with the youth group (lucky guy). So, we conditioned the walls, mudded, sanded, primed, and painted - 2 coats in the dining room and 3 in the kitchen.

Now, the dining room is a lovely "Smokey Blue"

And I finally have my red kitchen! "Daredevil" red, to be exact.

We even put Josiah to work! Not really, but he loves to walk around with the paintbrush now and pretend to paint the walls.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Okay, so it's a flower, not a sparkler and he's not quite dressed in red, white, & blue...but, Happy 4th of July!

I was pretending to be a photographer one day in the backyard (truth: it's my parents' backyard, ours isn't quite this fabulous) and snapped these pics. The lighting is a little off, but other than that I think they turned out pretty well! Josiah is now walking all over the place on his own, so here are a few still shots of that...

Josiah's 1-Year Portraits

A friend and member at our church is a (rock-star) professional photographer and she took some portraits of Josiah on his first birthday. You can see some of the pictures by clicking on the title of this post. Season was great with Josiah and we love the pictures she took!

The Real Party

On Sunday, we drove to Richmond to celebrate Josiah's 1st Birthday with our families. We had a cookout, opened presents, ate "beach" cupcakes, and had a great time hanging out with everyone!

Josiah loved opening his presents, and Campbell loved helping!

The lawnmower - a big hit! Soon he'll be helping Daddy cut the grass.

I decided to get creative (with the help of Martha Stewart) and made "beach" cupcakes for our summer beach baby!

And now, the fun part...eating the cupcake! I told everyone to lower their expectations for cake-eating, since Josiah hadn't really done much with his first birthday cake. He, of course, took the opportunity to show off and dive in head first!

Look y'all, no hands!

Maybe I'll pick it up now...

Woohoo! I like birthdays!

RAH, RAH, TCU!

Last week, we traveled to Texas for a PCA conference & to visit some friends. I didn't take a single picture at the conference in Dallas, but we had sweet time with some great friends from Covenant. On Friday, we headed over to Fort Worth! We stayed with "Uncle B", walked around TCU, ate yummy, authentic Mexican at Joe T. Garcia's, and had a fabulous time.

TCU is doing massive renovations on campus - they've added quite a few new buildings and are updating others. You can see some of the new dorms in the background. Here is Frog Fountain, one of the centerpieces of campus.

I tried to teach Josiah the "Frog" sign and he laughed at me. One of these days...

Campus legend says that students rub the nose of this Horned Frog statue for good luck...I never did, but we definitely spent lots of time hanging out in the courtyard around it. Josiah was fascinated.

With Uncle B at Joe T.'s

A famous margarita

A bad picture of me, but very cute of my good friend & roommate Cory. Can you tell how hot it is? We're glistening...

I miss Texas...I would definitely move back to Fort Worth in a heartbeat! Maybe we'll convince Josiah he needs to be Horned Frog later in life :) Thanks Brooks for your hospitality and Cory for hanging out - we had a great time and we miss y'all!