CaseyAndKelly.Com

I have been terrible at taking pics since my parents have been here. Luckily, my mom has grabbed my camera a few times and gotten some cute pics. Hopefully we’ll be able to get more before they go home and another family shot of Casey, Brady, and I too!

My parents left Colorado after my dad got off work on Friday and got to our place around 8 on Saturday morning. Since they were still recovering from the long drive, we stayed at home and Casey grilled burgers and corn on the cob for dinner – yum!

Sunday, we ventured out for an early dinner after Brady’s nap. We hadn’t tried Iron Cactus yet so we opted for the Galleria location for dinner (I’d only gone there for drinks when we had our Girls Night Out). The weather wasn’t unbearably hot so we were able to sit outside in the shade with an occasional breeze bringing the water from the misters over to keep us cool. After dinner, we walked next door to Amy’s and tried the ice cream for the first time. The Mexican vanilla was SO good! My dad flirted with the ice cream scooper and she hooked him up with a huge bowl for no extra charge! I was happy we were able to try 2 new places instead of falling into going to the same places!

Casey smoked four slabs of ribs for Labor Day. It was really good and way too much for 4.5 people so he took the rest to work to share yesterday. Casey and I also went yesterday to get our Texas driver’s licenses and register to vote. I was hoping since it was raining that people would stay at home but the line was horrible. This ties with California as the worst DMV experience. We ended up waiting 40 minutes just to get a number and then another three hours before our numbers got called. Ugh, I guess it does beat the 4.5 hours they had estimated on our numbers (4:32 to be exact). Casey ended up calling his boss shortly after we got our number and found out how much longer the wait was supposed to be. He told him he was taking the day off but ended up only being an hour and a half late. Ugh, stupid DMV. Hopefully it’ll be at least another 6 years before we’ll have to do that again. They gave us a printout of our license information with a picture that we can use for 4-6 weeks until the actual ones come in the mail. I’m pretty content with both of our pictures but it’ll be interesting to see how they look in color. And we managed to get our licenses in time that we’ll definitely be able to vote in November (cutoff date was 10/4)!

Today, Brady and I are sticking around the house as far as I know. Casey has video conferences on Wednesday morning so he left early for that. Unfortunately with the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine and the flash flooding there was tons of traffic and road closures. It took him over an hour to get in today. Booo! My parents took off to San Antonio for the day so it’s pretty quiet around here. Right now all the kids are sleeping and it’s still raining. I should probably take a shower before I fall asleep myself.

Don’t worry – I haven’t fallen off the posting wagon yet. My parents are visiting this week so I’m taking the time and enjoying their company. I can’t say I’ll definitely post soon, but most likely will. I hope everyone is enjoying their long weekend with family and friends!

Yesterday I decided to take Brady to story time at the library. I was nervous taking her since it started at 10:30 and she usually goes down for a nap about that time (it varies from day to day but I’d say 11 is the average). We got there 15 minutes early since I wasn’t sure how many people would be there and to get Brady familiar with the environment. We also were able to pick out some books to check out before story time so if we needed to leave in the middle of it, we’d be ready.

Brady ended up doing pretty well considering it was her first time. There were eight kids total and the librarian leading it all. We sang songs and pointed out body parts before the actual story was read. Brady had lost interest while the singing was going on and starting wandering around the circle pointing out the frog and different things in the book she was reading. Then, she got up and starting hucking books over her shoulder. She bumped her head while she was doing this and after a brief freak out she was able to sit still for the rest of the time. While I was cleaning up her mess she laid her head on the bench and said nigh nigh. We quickly made our way to the checkout and out the door.

Since we were right across the street from Randall’s (Safeway), I popped in to pick up a few things that were on sale. While in there, Brady dropped her Cookie Monster and I didn’t notice til I was getting ready to put her back in her seat again. I swear he has a death wish because a couple of months ago he ended up “jumping” out of the cart at CVS and it wasn’t until we were at another store that I noticed. So I had to double back over to go and find him. This time after checking at customer service first (where I had to explain what Cookie Monster was and that no it is not a type of bear but it is a small stuffed animal), we retraced our steps and I took a shot at asking the produce stocker and sure enough, he was found on top of the oranges. Whew!

When we got home I gave Brady some lunch and changed her diaper. I figured she was exhausted and put her down for a nap at 12:15. She was already up again by 1 (I think due to our inconsiderate neighbor and him throwing crap against our fence). I tried to soothe her and laid her back down where she slept for another 15 minutes before waking up again. I tried laying down with her and laying her down for another nap later in the afternoon and she wasn’t having it.

Last night was Wonderful Wednesday and we had dinner at Jack Allen’s. Fortunately, Abbey was able to make reservations for our group of 24 so there was no waiting involved. Except for drinks. And food. Brady did ok at first and was pretty docile and then just decided she’d had enough and we had to start trading off walking around with her and letting her play with sticks and rocks. Such a little tomboy! Casey was watching her at one point and two ladies that were leaving (we sat on the patio and it was pretty hot and humid still) asked if we were part of a daycare or babysitting group and Casey told them no and explained Wonderful Wednesday. She said they were surprised we were all around the same age and had kids all around the same age and that was unusual. I think people generally have friends that are around the same age and I love that they have kids around the same age as us because we’re all going through the same thing and can relate when there are melt downs, etc. We ended up being some of the first to leave at 8:30 because Brady was just not sitting still for anything at this point. Sesame Street on Casey’s phone wasn’t keeping her interest for long since she was so tired. Even though Brady got a little fussy in there, we both think she held up pretty well and we had a great meal and a great time catching up with friends! I think for October’s Wonderful Wednesday, we might skip story time that day just to ensure Brady’s sufficiently rested before staying up past her bedtime (although that will all be for not if our neighbor decides to “work” on his property).

Brady’s a budding little artist (she gets it from her Daddy).  I usually just let her draw with the big crayons she can grasp in her palm but found some cheap crayons with 24 colors and have tried those out with her a couple of times.  The first time she wasn’t really interested and wanted her usual crayons back (they have faces on them) but yesterday and today she’s been all about the new ones.  She created quite the masterpiece yesterday and for those that have seen her earlier work it has definitely evolved.  Ta-da!

[Show as slideshow]

Anyone that’s still reading this has I’m sure noticed that I’m trying to post more often.  Our domain name is coming up for renewal in October and I’m trying to decide if it’s worth the money to renew.  If I’m not posting regularly, then obviously the answer should be no.  We’ve had our domain (caseyandkelly.com) for eight years now and I’m sure readership is at a low because of our infrequent postings and other social networking keeping us all connected.  I can’t find a counter on here to tell how many hits our site gets, so if you do still read can you leave a comment on this post (if you’ve commented on my last few posts since I’ve been updating then I’ll assume you’re still reading and you don’t need to comment again unless you want to)?

I’ve been messing around with the times for publishing on here.  So for those of you that don’t have our blog in your Reader, I added a couple of new posts from this weekend.  I inserted them in the days that they occurred so you’ll have to scroll down to read.

Apparently I worry myself over Brady’s eating for nothing. I was on the scale this morning and she walked over and I put her on there (all by herself for once) and she clocked in at 28 pounds! I want to get the measuring tape out and see how long she is since people have been asking if she’s had a growth spurt. It’s hard for us to see as much of a difference since we see her everyday.

Brady had her first bloody nose this morning. 🙁 She was walking around with an empty cup in each hand, slipped, and used one of the cups to break her fall and ended up landing on the lip of the cup. The bleeding has stopped but she has a red scrape across her little nose now.

Saturday afternoon we drove down to San Antonio to visit the Williams Family.  Adele won a Hatch contest sponsored by Central Market and as her prize got two bushels of Hatch peppers, a cooking class, and $1,000 cash!  We keep saying we need to take her with us to Vegas because she always has luck like this.  The party wasn’t supposed to start until 7 but since it’s a two hour drive to their house, we left the house around 3 so we could get down there and give Brady some swimming time before she turned into a pumpkin.  Casey took Brady out back and joined Kevin and Emma and they all swam for close to two hours.  I offered to be Adele’s sous chef and ended up chopping/mincing/dicing a ton of veggies for all the tasty dishes she was whipping up.

Brady started fading as the guests started arriving (close to 8) so I took her upstairs and put her to bed.  Obviously the theme of the party was Hatch and there was Hatch in every dish – including a cocktail, which I think was called a Siberian Donkey (a Moscow Mule with Hatch).  Adele made gazpacho, New Mexico baked corn, enchiladas, pulled pork, guacamole (served with Hatch chips), apple pie, and her award winning Banana Potato Hatch Bread with Goat Cream Cheese Frosting.  I think I’m still missing one of the dishes but that gives you an idea of what all we had.  It was all so good!  We were able to eat and hang out for 3 more hours after Brady fell asleep but at 10:45 as the crowd was heading upstairs to play Rock Band, we decided we’d call it a night since we still had to drive home.  Thanks Williams family for another fun party and for all the Hatch and pears as our door prize!

Before we left for San Antonio, Casey turned Brady’s car seat around so she was forward facing.  I tried keeping her rear facing for as long as possible but she is just so long now.  I was feeling bad for having to cross her legs or making her contort to fit comfortably facing the back.  Also, we had taken her car seat out a few weeks ago and put it forward facing for a few days and she seemed to like that much better and was very vocal in the car pointing out the things she saw.  I think that facing forward is what kept her awake the whole ride home from San Antonio – she didn’t go back down in her own bed until 1am.  The good news is she slept til 7:30 but I was still tired waking up then and I know she was too.  While I feel kind of guilty for turning her seat around, I’m hoping that she enjoys it and won’t get fussy in the car too much.

We’re still going strong with our Fajita Fridays.  I don’t even know how many weeks we’ve doing it now but it’s still a highlight.  James and Lana came over this week to join us so I made up a batch of salsa to go with some chips as an appetizer.  Unfortunately our tomato plants are suffering a bit with the heat so we’re not getting very many tomatoes and the ones we do get are small (I blame the variety we chose on that) so the salsa only had two small tomatoes from the garden and two large tomatoes (over 1 pound combined) from the store.  I forgot to buy an extra habanero when I was at the store so there was a hodgepodge of peppers from the garden (Serranos, jalapenos, Kung Paos, cayennes) but it turned out OK I guess.  It still wasn’t as spicy as I would have liked but there wasn’t much left over so I guess that’s a good thing.  I hadn’t seen Lana in almost four months so they ended up staying over til midnight chatting and drinking beer.  It’s kind of sad that we live less than a mile away and don’t hang out that often.  Casey and James work together again so they see each other almost every day but it’s not exactly social and relaxing.  But we had a great time hanging out and hopefully it’s not quite so long before we do it again.