Sneak Preview

I'm pretty frustrated, because our internet at home is not working and I can't do much on my computer at school, but I wanted to post a few pictures from BJ and Ashley's wedding!! My mom let me borrow her "real" camera, and I literally took 300 pictures on Saturday!! :) So, here's a few, but you can count on seeing some more soon. It was the perfect day for Ashley and BJ to become Mr. and Mrs. Williams!!! I'm so glad we could be a part of it- CONGRATULATIONS GUYS!!!

trying to read a letter from BJ without breaking down...but she didn't get too far :) Check out the GORGEOUS dress!!!

on the way to the church

First dance as husband and wife

BJ and his mom

check out my hot date!

This picture sums up why I love this girl so much!! :)

singing some Journey

Ashley and her sweet daddy

off to Mexico!!

Colby Tree

is in FULL BLOOM!! I LOVE SPRING!!!

1 year stats

WOW! In the past week, I've been reflecting on what we have experienced in the past year. There have been moments of PURE JOY, many tears, laughter, excitement, hours of studying, early mornings, bright smiling faces, hundreds of diapers, selflessness, teamwork, prayers and praises, frustrations, milestones, and much much more....name an emotion and I'm sure we've hit it in the past year!! :) We are learning as we go!!

Colby has taught us SO much. He has pushed us to our limits, and he has brought a deeper love to our lives. We know that God has given us this perfect gift, and we can only hope and pray that we will raise him to be a strong christian man someday. I cannot wait to see what God has planned for his future- I know it will be GREAT!!

My favorite times with Colby are getting him out of his crib after he's been sleeping and then putting him back down again. They are such sweet times of our day. When we go into his room after nighttime or a nap, he gets the BIGGEST 8-toothed smile I've ever seen in my entire life!! He bounces up and down and makes his sweet little noises. When we pick him up, he gives us the sweetest and slobberyest kisses in the whole world. I LOVE IT!! Then when I lay him down for a nap or at night, I will rock him, feed him a bottle, read a story (usually I love you through and through- thanks Maceys!!) and say our prayers. It's so nice for him to just be still and in my lap...I'm not sure how long this will last so I'm soaking it up as much as I can for now.

Colby is still eating everything in sight. He has now decided that he DOES like bananas. He even says "na-na". We have made the big switch to whole milk. It was not a problem, but I do warm it up, because he's not a huge fan of ice-cold milk. I've already had flashbacks to my mom buying 3 jugs of milk at a time for my brother. That gallon doesn't last too long around here anymore.

He's also eating tons of finger food. Pretty much anything soft that he can pick up, he will eat. I learned last week at Coronas Mexican food restaurant that he REALLY loves french fries and bell peppers!! (thank goodness!! We were in the middle of a meltdown!!)

Speaking of meltdown...Colby's newest thing is throwing a HUGE fit if we will not hold his hands and walk him around. ALL he wants to ever do is walk, but he is not confident enough to do it himself even though I know he is capable of it. He would walk ALL DAY LONG if we would walk with him.

He is clapping his hands, giving huge open-mouth kisses, making funny faces, feeding Buddy from his high chair, pulling up on everything, opening and closing all doors, drawers and cabinets, fighting naptime (for hours...he literally cries himself to sleep and it takes forever...I'm praying this is just a phase)

He goes to bed around 7, and wakes up sometime from 6:30-7:30 usually. He is a GOOD nighttime sleeper. He is down to 2 naps...but like I said, that has been a struggle. He's a fighter!!

I LOVE Colby Lee sooooooooo much. I don't know what I did without him in my life. I must have wasted ALOT of time doing nothing...

Wednesday was his big 12 month appointment!! Go figure, it was at 2:20- RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of what should have been naptime. Long story short, Travis was supposed to go with us, but he got STUCK at the lake fishing (pretty convenient, huh? :)) So I was by myself with a sleepy little boy. Of course he wanted me to walk him around and around the little room....as I tried to fill out all of the paper work. Thank goodness for the funny mirror in the room!! Colby was cracking me up as he tried to figure that thing out!! All in all, considering how tired he was, he did a great job and Dr. K said that he is healthy as an ox! WHOO HOO!! He did have to get 3 shots which really put him over the edge, but he fell asleep as soon as I got him to the car. Poor baby!!

Here are some pictures and stats from Colby's 12 MONTH dr. appointment...

weight: 22 pounds 13 ounces (just above 50th percentile)

height: 30 inches (just above 50th percentile)

AAAAnd we're done

ROADTRIP! (day 2)

After a fabulous night's sleep and sleeping in, we were off to Rathskellar for breakfast. It was so good! It's a little bistro down in a basement in the middle of mainstreet. Our B&B gave us a gift certificate for breakfast instead of actually serving us breakfast. We could choose between several local restaurants, and I think we chose the right one!

We walked up and down mainstreet and went through several shops, but thankfully we weren't really in a money spending mood. Travis decided that he really wanted to head towards home and stop at some fun places along the way. I don't think I REALLY knew what I was agreeing to...

First we stopped at the Johnson State Park to check out the living history farm. Travis was really excited to see the loose livestock and "customed interpretors" (he misread the costumed interpretor sign, so he called them customed interpretors the whole time!!) I honestly felt like Travis was my 5 year old son....it was hillarious to see him so excited about this farm!!! I loved it! Colby will fit right in with him soon...

Look at these fat stinky piglets trying to eat!! That poor mommy pig...

we finally got this photo after standing in line behind a group of children :)

A real live "customed" interpretor!

I was really excited to take a picture with a peach tree! I wish I would have gotten a shot of one of the orchards in Fredericksburg. They are all in full PINK bloom!!! GORGEOUS!

Next stop- Longhorn Natural Cavern. I can't even begin to tell you how excited Travis was about going into the cave...you would have thought we were going to see the Super Bowl or something! I must admit, I love that there is never a dull moment with this man, but I do wish I would have taken some tennis shoes for our 1 mile nature hike and then 2 mile hike in the muddy cave...I'll be more prepared next time.

Watch out for the squatting monkey!!!

On a nature hike...holding some real live nature...check out my non-nature-hiking shoes

The castle that you can see from the observation tower

on top of the tower- it was beautiful!

King of the hill country

going back down the STEEP winding stairs

my favorite picture from the trip

SO excited that the tour is about to begin! (we had to wait 1 and 1/2 hours for our tour)

Tour Guide Mike...back to work after knee replacement...he LOVES this cave

:)

bat hibernating in the cave!!

the largest stalactite in the cave....don't forget! Stalactites hang tight to the ceiling

Hall of Gems

Thank you Travis for the perfect getaway- I LOVE YOU!!

Your guide to a ROMANTIC GETAWAY!!! (Day one)

This year for my birthday and Valentine's Day, all I really wanted was a trip to Fredericksburg! Spring Break was the perfect time for us to get away, because there would be no rush and no pressure for Travis to be studying. It was WONDERFUL and totally relaxing!! Sunday morning, we dropped Colby off at Travis' parents house and were on our way. We decided that day one was going to be all about winery hopping. We went to a few new ones and a few of our favorites from before. I decided that for each winery, I'd write down our favorite things about it and our favorite wine, so here it is!!

#1 Pedernales

First stop- Pedernales Cellars. It's a little ways off the main highway (right next to Rose Hill Manor where several of our friends have stayed before) and the scenery is beautiful! The wine tasting room is very nice and new (they just started doing tastings a year ago) We split the 9 tastings and really liked all of them. Our favorite was the Merlot.

We didn't spend much time at Pedernales. It was early in the day and a little awkward because we were some of the only people there, but the wine WAS good and they had a really cute porch where we could have stayed to enjoy a glass if it had been later in the day.

#2 Woodrose

Woodrose Winery was our FAVORITE stop of the day for so many reasons! They may not have had THE best wine, but it was very good, and the atmosphere made up for it.

Here's what we loved...

1.It was the most relaxed place we stopped

2. instead of standing at a bar and chosing the wines you want to taste, you sit at a table and they come to served you

3. the back porch scenery is beautiful (tons and tons of trees),

4. Our server, Scott, was SO informative. He told us about all of the wines in a non-stuck-up way. We learned alot of new info about wine!! (grapes grow best in really cruddy soil because they have super deep taproots, and the longer the grapes sit with their skins on, the darker the wines will be...interesting...)
5. SOL PATCH, a bluesy jazz duo was playing on the back porch and they were AWESOME! I could have sat and listened to them all day!

We actually decided to buy a cold bottle of Texas Rain wine to enjoy an glass while we listened to the music and soaked up the beautiful weather. It was perfect!!

Our favorite wine from Woodrose was actually the Red Zinfandel, but we chose to purchase the Texas Rain because it was more refreshing for us to drink on a sunny day.

#3 Becker

Becker Vineyards is definitely the biggest and busiest of the wineries, and they had done some remodling since we were there a few years ago. It was beautiful and the wine was really good. Our favorite was a sweet wine called Gewershtemeiner (similar to Riesling).

The best part about Becker was that we got a tour of the winemaking process- very cool!

#4 Torre Di Pietra

Torre di Pietra was a really FUN place the last time we were there. They have live music on Saturdays, frozen wine drinks and really sassy wine names like my personal favorite, DIRTY GIRL! On Sundays it's a little more low key, but the people working there were really funny and gave us a few of the extra "premium" wine tastes even though we were cheap and paid for the non-premium ones. Our favorite wine was the Black Spanish which was REALLY good, but of course, we had to purchase the bubbly dirty girl for our wine collection...it's a tradition! (we also got a frozen peach bellini- you MUST try one of these when you go!!)

#5 Grape Creek

Grape Creek was the last stop of our winery tour. It is a BEAUTIFUL tuscan style winery. It was pretty busy, but the wine was great! We bought a bottle of Merlot, and met a really sweet girl who played softball with a friend of Travis' in college. Grape Creek is probably the most "upscale" of all of the wineries.

After a full day of wine tasting, we went to check into our bed and breakfast and found out that Travis' sweet mom had already paid the balance on our room!!! The day just kept getting better and better!! (Thank you Kathy!!)

We would definitely recommend the Cherry Street Bed and Breakfast to anyone looking for a cozy and quiet spot in the middle of town. We booked it through Absolute Charm...I LOVE this booking service. They have tons of options in any price range depending on what you're looking for. The Cherry Street B&B that we stayed in was basically a room attached to someone's home. The owners happened to be out of town, so we had the driveway, backyard and HOT TUB to ourselves! It was very nice and we would definitely stay there again!!

For dinner, thanks to Rebecca's wonderful recommendation, we tried August E's. It's an extremely modern sushi/steak/wine kind of place and it was WONDERFUL! The wine that we had there was our very favorite. It was Axis Red Zinfandel- yum! I'll let you know if I find it locally because you need to try it. Thank you Rebecca for the perfect dinner spot!!

We ended our day in our private hot tub solving all of the problems of the world. :) It was nice to have a night without the day-to-day distractions of the tv, dog, baby, house cleaning, cooking, etc. We just got to relax and catch up, and I think that's exactly what we needed....

Colby's 1st Birthday Party!

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY BABY BOY!!

WOW...this was a huge wake up call that my little boy is actually not a newborn anymore. Part of me is sad, but part of me is REALLY excited because I realize that Colby just keeps becoming more and more FUN to have around. I'll post later on about what all he's doing these days...it's something new every day!!

Thanks to our parents, Colby's 1st birthday was a HUGE success. It was a blast, and it was awesome to have all of our wonderful family, friends, and their precious kids with us to celebrate Colby's 1st year of life!!

Since this blog's 2 main purposes are 1. for me to be able to document our family's memories and 2. to share our day to day life with loved ones who live far away, I had to post tons of pictures from the party! I have like 102 photos, so this actually IS narrowing it down. :)

THANK YOU to everyone who helped us celebrate! We love you all!!

gotta love that hairdo!

Colby looooooves his Nona (nah-nah)

the kids made bumble bee and ladybug bug jars!

loved seeing these sweet daddies rocking their babies

rocking my sweet little 1 year old boy

look at this big boy drinking water!!

I loooooooove the look on Ms. Jenna's face as she is wondering why Colby smeared green icing in his EYES!

sweet Smith family

these babies were tired from a long morning :) I love watching them grow up together!!

going after Pappy's hat

Stahls looking for bugs

making bug jars

sweet baby Rhett with his "Gi-Gi"

(Ashley's getting married in one week!!)

Lola loved all the babies!!

everytime Hope helped him "glue" on a piece, he wanted to pull it back off :)

eating crackers with Mason

LOVE HER!

hunting for bugs

listening to Jayci talk about her bugs

"I found one!"

Our one year old getting ready for cake

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

yikes...this is when it all went downhill...icing in the eyes

presents! Colby got some AWESOME presents!! Pool toys, cell phoes, shoes, cars and trucks, bath toys, summer clothes, bubble makers, etc... SO FUN!!

of course he gravitates to the cell phone!! :)

I hate having any regrets, but just fyi for all of my friends who will be doing this in the next year, I do wish that I would have taken some more group shots and more kid group shots, and I do wish that we would have done cake and presents before Colby got so tired, but I think sometimes with babies you just have to do your best, and that's what we did!! :) I LOVED this party and LOVED all of the people there...THANK YOU ALL AGAIN!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY COLBY!!!