Beach babe

Seriously, does it get any cuter than this?

Anna and I spent the day last Friday with some friends at "Palm Beach", a man-made (read: clean) beach that's part of the Moody Gardens resort. She had so much fun playing in the water and making her first sandcastle. Definitely a place we'll be frequenting all summer...

Pioneer girl

Anna was quite tickled with the souvenir I brought back from my recent work trip to Virginia. We went to Colonial Williamsburg one evening for some shopping and dinner, and I couldn't resist this little hat. Anna enjoyed wearing the hat while flipping through a photo album of pictures of her at school, and watching a little TV. Maybe she's not quite ready for the true Colonial life...

Picking blackberries

A few weeks ago we decided to venture to the north side of Houston to some farms that have "pick-your-own" blackberries and blueberries. Anna had a blast! She didn't quite get the concept of "putting the berries in the bucket"...the vast majority of ones she picked were instantly consumed. A little dirt never hurt anyone, right? I think she's a country girl at heart...

Even though us moms thought that the experience of berry-picking would be most interesting thing on the farm, the little ones had other ideas. After the novelty of the berries wore off, they had endless fun playing with pieces of rope hanging from some rafters. Hmmm...remind me why we spend such fortunes on expensive toys??

Goldilocks

These pictures are a bit outdated, but I couldn't resist posting them. I finally broke down and got Anna's hair cut in April. She had been sporting the toddler mullet for quite some time while we tried to let her hair grow out, and it finally got long enough to at least trim a bit off the back.

While a bit tentative about the whole process at the beginning, the race car + Elmo video certainly had strong powers of persuasion in making the haircut seem like a good idea. She was having a lot of fun by the end, and actually still talks about getting her hair cut (and pretends to cut her hair with playdoh scissors...eek! note to Mommy to keep the real scissors well-hidden!).

New digs

Ok, we'll admit it. Our rate of updating the blog recently has been nothing short of abysmal. We are bad parents.

But, we do have somewhat of an excuse...our new pad! We've spent the last two months moving out of our old house (much love to Island Breeze...you treated us well!), and getting settled into our new house. While the boxes seem to be never-ending, we're finally getting to the point that it feels like "home". And we love it! Anna especially loves it...she loves having stairs, and loves having her own playroom (instead of the entryway/playroom/living room/dining room hybrid she previously played in).

These pics are from our "first dinner" in the new house. It was the night after we closed....before the movers came to transport our stuff. Granted it was just pizza eaten off the floor, but it was wonderful!

We promise to get better about blog updates...look for lots of new "catch up" photos in the next few weeks...