Easter Weekend

What a long weekend!  We spent Thursday and Friday down in New Orleans.  Jeremy made his round of appointments, we ate good food (Joey K's, Superior, Caretta's, snoballs, beignets), took the girls to Audubon Park, I popped in to my office to say hi to everyone, and the girls had fun in the hotel (they are obsessed with hotels!). 

Friday afternoon we headed up to Hattiesburg.  Jeremy took Shelby and Joey for the night while I spent the evening with 28 of his female family members for the Gore Girls Night Out.  Lucy was oblivious to all the craziness going on.  As soon as I got back to the hotel (at 1:30 am), I told Jeremy his family was insane, but I meant it in the nicest way possible!  Haha!  Really, I had a great time and it was fun to catch up with everyone. 

 

 

Saturday we had the annual Gore Family Reunion.  It is pretty neat/great that they do this every year without question.  The weather was perfect and we had a great time eating, visiting, and the girls had fun on the egg hunt. 

 

 

 



 

While in Hattiesburg we stayed at a hotel because Jeremy's grandfather's house is still being fixed from the tornado that hit.  No worries though- the Easter Bunny still found the girls.  (Just a side note: I am probably the meanest mom.  I had a talk with the EB and told him not to bring a ton of candy.  The girls literally got 4 pieces of candy each.  I just don't think excessive amounts of candy are necessary, especially since they had already been to two egg hunts.)

 

 

 

After that we headed home.  We stopped in Bastrop on the way home and ate lunch with Jeremy's dad and grandmother at the nursing home, and then we went over to see his grandfather at the rehabilitation facility.  Of course it started pouring rain right before we went into the nursing home, so we had to make a run for it and I didn't grab my camera.  I think Jeremy has some pictures on his phone. 

 

We finally made it home around 9:30 last night.  I had to hurry and unpack stuff and try to get things in order because I started back at work today.  Fastest 10 weeks ever!!  Today went pretty well, I just hope things continue to go as smoothly!  (More on work stuff another time.)

 

Breakin' 2013

First, the good news.  Lucy's VCUG went well and there is no sign of reflux.  And her blood tests came back from the GI completely normal.  So, no info on why she was having issues, but that is better than finding out she had something wrong.

It worked out pretty well that I was on maternity leave for Shelby's first official Spring Break.  Jeremy had some business scheduled in Houston so we decided to make a trip out of it and join him.  Tristan and Jordan and their families met up with us there and we had ourselves a 1/3 McGrath clan reunion. 

No lie, the first day in Houston sucked.  Jeremy had appointments all day, and Roy was not with Jordan, so we wanted to pick a place to go where if a child ran off they wouldn't be running into a street or anything.  We THOUGHT the Children's Museum was going to be a good choice.  Unfortunately, so did about 5,000 other families.  It was so crowded in there that I couldn't really let Joey out of the stroller because if she had run off she would have been swallowed by a sea of people.  The kids had a hard time seeing/touching any of the exhibits.  We probably only stayed there for about 2 hours.  We looked at a map and saw that there is a huge park close by and decided to just go there so the kids could play.  Well, some not-so-smart people decided to place all the museums, and the zoo, and a huge hospital all within a few blocks of each other.  Traffic was ridiculous.  We drove 2 and a half hours (keep in mind this was all in like a 5 block radius) and never made it to the park.  The saving grace that day was Fudruckers, where the kids were able to play in the arcade while the adults visited for a while.

The next morning we went to leave the hotel and found a note on Jeremy's rental car.  Yep, somebody hit it.  Awesome.  At least they hit the rental car and not the van.  Jeremy left for his appointments for the day while the rest of us headed over to The Woodlands.  I wish that we had just gone there the day before.  We had a great time playing at the park, taking the water taxi, playing at the splash pad, and then at the mall playground.  The girls were wiped by the end of the day.  I am so glad Jordan and Tristan were able to meet up with us and the cousins all got to play together.  We sure had a rocky start to the trip, but at least it ended great!

We spent the rest of the week playing at the park, eating snoballs (not as good as New Orleans, but we'll settle for what we can get), playing with makeup, and of course, celebrating St. Patrick's Day.

The girls had dentist appointments before we left for Houston.  They were particularly impressed with how well Joey did!

Divas relaxing at the hotel.

Lucy was not happy with having her picture taken.

 

Pretty much how you will find Joey if Liam is around.

You can always count on Uncle Tristan for a ride.

Leighton (3 1/2 months), Owen (12 days old), Lucy (2 months)

 

Third Child

Friday was Jeremy's 31st birthday.  Since I haven't slept for more than 3 hours at a time in over 6 weeks I chose not to plan some big party for him and hoped he would get over it. :)  We had a nice little dinner at Cheesecake Factory on Friday night, followed by his requested ice cream cake from Beth Marie's.  We also got together with some friends on Saturday night.  We were supposed to go to Top Golf and then dinner, but when we got to Top Golf there was a THREE HOUR wait.  Really?  Three hours?  Sorry, Top Golf is fun, but not THAT fun.  So we all went to dinner and ended up having a great time and ticked off the waitress because we stayed there talking so long.

I love that I captured this.  This is his "vampire hiss" face that he does when he is trying to tell the girls to back off.

Sunday was a special day because we blessed Lucy in church.  We had kind of put off planning it because we were hoping to somehow figure out a way to do it with family present, but we finally realized that just wasn't a possibility.  But we have a great church family that participated and the blessing was beautiful.  I do feel bad that we didn't have some sort of brunch or lunch afterward.  Not that that is a requirement, but it is nice to have and we did something for both Shelby and Joey, so I just don't want Lucy to grow up and feel slighted.  Not that she will.  She will probably not care at all and Jeremy can rub it in my face that I worry about silly things.  I just don't want her to feel like such a "third child". 

Jeremy said, "1850 called.  It wants its bonnet back."

 

Her "staring at the fan" face.

Today was such a nice day so we took the girls to the park.  We ended up running into two friends from church there and then two more at Walmart afterwards.  Those are the things I love about living in smaller towns!