Jaq and a Little Spice

As promised, here are a couple of pictures of Jaq. I guess he's about 4 months old here. He's SO active at this age that I couldn't get a great picture of him, but here's the best we could do.

Jes had to hold Jaq still to get this one. Yes, he does have a left ear!

Even though Jaq looks like some ferocious attack puppy here, he is really very sweet and LOVES Caleb!

My mom alerted me this morning that Starbucks has returned Pumpkin Spice Lattes to its menu, so this picture from times past is in honor of this very special day! :) (Don't worry, that's just milk in the cup)

Musings.

Whew! Where did the week go? It's already Thursday and I remember that I promised to post pictures. Of course, I've not done that, but will asap!
This past weekend, my mama and a bunch of ladies went to Women of Faith at the American Airlines Center here in Dallas. We had the best time. We laughed, cried, sang, and did all the things that girls do best when you get us together in a space. The theme this year was Amazing Freedom, so all the speakers touched on their own experiences with gaining freedom from certain situations. My favorite is Patsy Clairmont. She is a VERY lively lady who has the energy level of our son. I've decided that when I grow up I want to be like her. She challenged us to "live lively and love lavishly" which is now my new motto. Sandi Patti sang and blew us all away as did Nicole Nordeman. Of course one of the highlights of the weekend was my obtaining her new album, Recollection, which is in constant rotation in my CD player. I won't bore you with my professions of adoration of her music again!
Today, while Caleb was napping, I was catching up on all my recorded shows on our DVR. Last night a show called Crazy Sexy Cancer was on TLC and I have to recommend it. I, obviously, have no personal experience with cancer, but I have known many people, including my paternal grandmother and my good friend Amanda, who have had it. This show followed around a girl who was barely my age who had a rare, incurable form of the disease. She showed great strength, creativity and thought outside the box to find ways to live successfully with her disease. Many of you know that before I started this teaching gig, I worked in the medical field. For many years of my childhood, I wanted to be a cancer researcher and find the cure for the disease. I would tell anyone who asked that that was what I was going to do. I have great admiration for survivors of cancer and can remember vividly hearing about my grandmother being very ill and not being able to see her when I was a small child. Treatments are better now, so hopefully my grandchildren won't have to experience the same.
School, in most of our city, started back on Monday, as did I. I am teaching 4 classes so I'm a little overloaded this semester and will be up to my eyeballs in grading soon, but I will post pictures within the next few days. Hope all of you have a great weekend and happy and restful Labor Day!!!

Out

I got so tired of looking at Caleb with his tongue out, that I thought I would post a little. I am leaving tonight to go to Women of Faith with my mama and a group from her church. This seems to be a yearly thing for us as we have managed to score tickets each year for the past few years. I love going to these events and can't wait. It's a bonus that Nicole Nordeman will be there tonight and I LOVE LOVE LOVE her! I am even a member of her fan club. How silly is that? If you haven't heard any of her music, you should check it out. She has a very soothing voice with lyrics that sometimes just sneak up on you, they are so deep and meaningful. She will make you think. She is also a Dallas mama, so that is even better!
Tomorrow, Jes is taking Caleb out to meet some family of his that live nearby. They have some land and are out of the country quite a lot, so they have never met Caleb. It should be fun. I have, however, warned Jes to take along the Benadryl. If Caleb is anything like his mama, hay will do a number on him!
I will be back Saturday afternoon and am going to a spa thing at a friend of a friend's house. Anyway, somewhere in there I will update with some pictures of Caleb and our new baby, Jaq. I realized the other day that we hadn't posted the newest pictures of him. He is growing like a weed, as you will see.
I will leave you with a few of the most used quotes from Caleb lately:

"Hi Mama" (Constant...)

"Look, Mama" (I hear this one at least every 2-3 minutes)

"Me made mess!" (I guess we need to work on our pronouns...)

"Oh, Mama." (Usually said after falling or bumping into something)

"No Jaq, tired, night night, eat, Mama, Daddy, etc" (His favorite response to any question)

"I wuv YOU!" (My definite favorite!)

Hope you all have a great weekend!

The Tongues Have It

We don't know what has gotten into Caleb lately, but he's taken up a strange habit of licking things. Very often throughout the day you will hear me say, "Caleb, please don't/stop licking _______________." The blank could be myself, his daddy, the chair, his highchair, the cat (that's a fun one!), the door, the bar, etc. Anything that he can get his tongue on, you can guarantee that he's either tried to or succeeded in licking it. Hopefully this habit will pass!

I will leave you with the picture of Caleb that we get to see most often, now that he's in this phase!

Our Fun Weekend

This past weekend what quite fun and very busy for Caleb and I. Jes worked the weekend away, so the kiddo and I did our thing, just the two of us. On Saturday, we got up bright and early and drove to Tyler for a wedding of my former college roommate, Amanda.


















Caleb was so excited to be out of the car and just had to have his picture taken.

















Here's Amanda looking beautiful, as always, in her grandmother's wedding dress. It had not been worn since the '50s and was just perfect on her. Amanda married a wonderful man named Ken who loves her and her little girl, Eden, like none other!

Caleb and I drove back home after the 2pm wedding and crashed!

















This evening, Jes, Caleb and I went to a baseball game in Frisco. For our non-native readers, we have a minor league baseball team in Frisco, our neighboring city. We originally bought the tickets to see the Veggie Tales characters and Caleb talked all week and day about seeing Larry. When we got to the field, we were told that Larry went on sometime before 4. It was after 5:30, but don't despair, he was coming back. We waited through an incredibly loud concert and no Larry. We were so worried that Caleb would freak out, but lo and behold we had a closet baseball fan!

















Caleb LOVED the baseball game and probably had more fun than anyone in the whole place! He danced, cheered, jumped up and down, yelled at the batters and umpire, waved his arms to catch a t-shirt, and anything else you do at a game. I guess we know where we will be when he can start playing sports!
















All in all, it was a busy but fun weekend. I have the next 2 weeks off until fall semester starts, so Caleb and I will be playing and running around doing all the things we couldn't when I was in school!

One thing of note that we would like all of you to remember. Jes went for a job interview on Friday at a company in Farmer's Branch. While he is not particularly looking at leaving his current position, there are some very disturbing things going on in the company and he just might have to go elsewhere. So, the hunt has begun.

It's Done!

As of last night my classes for the summer are complete! I am still waiting on a lab grade from another instructor, so I can't post the grades and am not completely detached from the classes, but I don't have to grade another paper or give another lecture until August 27th, when fall starts. That makes me happy!
Caleb and I will be heading out of town tomorrow to Tyler for my friend Amanda's wedding. I will update with pictures when we get back. Today will be spent getting caught up on everything that I neglected while I was buried in paperwork!

Austin

Finally I am getting around to posting pictures from Jes and my trip to Austin. We had the best time and tried to do all kinds of things that we could never do with Caleb. We even worked in a movie, my first at the theater since I was pregnant! My mom got us a fabulous deal at the Radisson downtown, through her employer, and they even upgraded our room to a suite that overlooked the river.
Ok, on to the pictures!

















Cheesy, but we have so many of these pictures from our single days and I guess lack of things to take pictures of that we just had to do it on this trip. I think this was within the first hour of the normally 2-3 hour trip. We arrived in Austin over 5 hours later, mainly because of horrendous traffic and the non-ending rain that followed us the whole way.


















For our non-Dallas residents, this was a site of a huge gas explosion on the Wednesday before we left. It was right off the side of 35, and I couldn't resist taking a picture. This picture doesn't really do it justice, but the devastation of the business was amazing.

















Saturday morning, Jes and I went to the capital. We wandered around for a good while before we decided to move on. After we left here, we walked back to the hotel (most everything is within walking distance from downtown) and got the truck. It was just so humid that we couldn't stand another moment and drove around like the rest of the tourists!

















We went onto the UT campus and toured the LBJ library.

















We live on Fillmore Drive, so we had to get a picture of President Fillmore. Many people we know don't even remember him being a president, but this proves it, as much as a print from an old painting hanging in a library can!


















On the other side of campus was this museum that holds one of the only Gutenberg Bibles. We hotfooted it over here just to see it and we weren't disappointed! Now we can say we've seen one!


















Most of you know that I received my Master's degree from a UT branch, so I'm a HUGE UT fan! All you have to do is look in my closet to see that. All my t-shirts are either grey and orange or just orange. While we were on campus we stopped at the co-op (bookstore to you non-Longhorns) and picked up more UT paraphernalia! We tried to get tickets to go up in the Tower (they just reopened it after being closed for years), but they were sold out for a few hours past what we wanted to hang around for, so we vowed we would go back to go up.


















Our last morning in Austin, we drove to this restaurant that we saw on the Food Network. It is called Taco Xpress and they didn't disappoint! The breakfast tacos here were so great that we decided that when we do come back for that ride up into the Tower, we would have something other than breakfast here!
All in all, we had a great trip and were both sad and excited to get home to Caleb. He stayed with his Mawmaw and Pawpaw (my parents) all weekend and came home with new tricks that we are still discovering even now.
Next week is my last week of summer school and that means more grading than I will probably be able to do in those 24 hour periods. With that being said, don't expect to hear from us next week as I will be up to my eyeballs in papers, tests, etc, praying for a few more hours in the day. Have a great week!