Thankful and Turning 30...

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, our last one here in Richmond, and my parents came to celebrate. Mike and I ran the turkey trot that morning to get ready for our feast and Kate stayed in her Christmas jammies most of the day...an all around great day :). I celebrated turning 30 as well on Thanksgiving and was treated to a very fun birthday weekend with family and friends. Kate still thought it was her birthday I think as she helped me blow out candles :). She continues to have an obsession with birthdays and likes to sing the song daily. Our time here in Richmond is drawing to a close as Kate and I will be moving in with my parents while we wait for our house to sell, and Mike will be working in Dallas and Richmond a little. We pray that someone will find a "home" in our house soon. We sure will miss it and miss this gorgeous place. Here are some pics of Kate painting (a favorite of her's) and then our holiday weekend. We are gearing up for Christmas and talking a lot about reindeer, Santa and the baby Jesus...Kate likes to say Happy Birthday baby Jesus :)

Yes, this was our only way of making it thru dinner at a not-kid-friendly restaurant ;)

A little late in coming...

I realize Kate's Halloween costume is a little late in presenting itself...

She was a very adorable TCU cheerleader and she loved trick-or-treating! She even talked about it this morning and wanted her Halloween basket. She also grew to love doorbells, which evolved from pushing so many :). She likes to push our's as we walk in everyday. She continues to be quite a character in every way... :)

Pumpkin Patch

Happy Halloween! I love this time of year and will miss this beautiful season here in Richmond. We loved going to the pumpkin patch with Kate again this year. I hardly got a picture of her in the patch because she was entranced with everything around her and wouldn't look at the camera. She loved the hayride we went on and is still talking about it. Its been fun sharing all of these fall festivities with her!

Apples!

Yesterday we drove up to Charlottesville and visited Carter Mountain, an apple orchard and peach farm. We had no idea it would be so packed with people. We had fun though tasting apple cider donuts, picking our own apples and Kate loved hanging out around all the big 'punkins'. She had fun walking in the orchard eating her apple. It was a fun 'fall' activity to share with her. She even got to wear her apple dress which she absolutely adores and Mommy does too! :)

Moving Back

The last month has been a bit wild as we have found out that we are going to be moving back to Texas. We are excited about this change as we have always hoped that at some point we can move back home. However, we wouldn't have traded being in Richmond for the world. It has been a wonderful 5 years (6 for Mike) and has truly made us form "our family". We also have loved our home, neighborhood, friends, and the weather and scenery here. For anyone who ever travels here in the future, you will love it. Our house is on the market and we only pray that someone will love it as much as we have and that they will make this choice sooner rather than months from now :). I have had the joyous opportunity to stay at home with Kate though since we found out we were moving shortly before school started and we chose for me not to return. Every morning I wake up I am grateful for the time I have with her again. However, it is a bit hard having to constantly pick up after a 2 year old and scruffy old Tucker! We will be moving somewhere in the DFW metroplex and pray for guidance as to where that place may be. We are happy to finally share our news!

Happy Birthday Kate!

It was a happy, happy day for Kate! Hard to believe she has turned 2! We celebrated with a birthday breakfast, a trip to Maymont with her friend Ellie, her first ice cream cone, and a very fun party with friends! Kate LOVED her birthday and asked to be sung to two times! :)

Animals Animals

We went to Maymont yesterday, a wonderful nature reserve right around the corner from us. She loved seeing the sheep, deer, teddy bears (black bears), eagles, owls and most of all the peacock. She was fascinated with him and then equally terrified as he chased after us trying to get away from the crowd! She is an animal lover and has continued to talk about the peacock and the pictures we took of him. I can't get her to smile normally at the camera, she just gives me her silly face, oh well, it is very funny :).

Its been a while...

Its been a while since my last post and we have been having a fun summer! We just got back yesterday from our trip to TX. Kate and I made the trip and were gone almost 2 weeks. She was a trooper as I dragged her around to see all of our family and as many friends as we could fit in. As always though, you never have enough time to see everyone. Kate is pictured here on our flight home yesterday. We are expert fliers and this was her first time to have a seat to herself. No, she still flew free, but we got open seats. It made a HUGE difference. Having an almost 2 year old on your lap is not easy. Her flying free days have come to end though..hard to believe that she will be 2 in a month. Here are some of our pictures and I have included some pictures of our trip to California earlier in July that we took to celebrate our 5th anniversary. It was wonderful! Oh and Kate stayed at home! :)

At the Aquarium in Houston...she wasn't so sure at first, but then she loved the fishies as she constantly called them and referred back to them for days :)

With our good friends, the Hewes

At the Ft Worth zoo...hot hot hot!

She loves to try on Mama's shoes as she calls them :)

Poor girl got a bug bite on her eyelid and it was swollen shut. Damn Mosquitos!!

Playing on the stairs with Ppaw (he was going to go by Grandpa but she starting calling him this instead, very funny)

Oh my gosh, she looked sooo cute in her TCU dress!

This was taken before our trip to Cali, and I had asked her to go stand next to Tucker so I could take a picture. I love it!

This was a great way to celebrate our anniversary. San Fran and Napa, and thanks to our friend's suggestions, we did it up quite nicely! Happy 5 years Mikie! Love You!