Six Months, Toy Aisle, Tennis and James

Grace is six months old this week.  

Can hardly believe it.  

She's eating baby food and getting cuter all the time.  

She's not crawling yet, but is awesome at turning around while on her tummy.  

She also sleeps like a CHAMP!  

Love her!

Took the boys (and Grace) to Target last week while the girls were at Spanish class. 

The results:

Terrorizing the toy aisle!

Wrestlemania!

Last weekend there was a little tennis activity at the neighborhood tennis center. 

Andrew was there.

And Jon too.

Notice the construction in the background.  Apparently we're finally getting a new playground and splash ground put in.  Can't wait until it's finished.

Grace and I sweated it out in the shade.  

Wonder why they don't have this tennis activity in January . . . 

James is having a big week too.

First day of senior year at LSU. 

Getting his photo for his driver's license at the DMV.

Yes, he's officially driving now.  

He's doing really well and it's nice not having to shuttle him back and forth everywhere!  

Stay tuned . . . 

A Baby, A Birthday and a Bean Burger

Gracie got a fancy dress from a nice lady at church.  

She was all dolled up last Sunday.

Gracie and Daddy

After church we celebrated Jon's 9th birthday.

We had presents and cards.

And a strawberry cake.

Nice face - her gums have been bothering her - poor thing.

A few months ago one of the boys got a clown nose at the party store.  So some of us decided to clown around with it.

This guy!!  What a cutie!

As a little adventure, I made some black bean burgers. 

No meat, avocado slices on top and chipotle mayonaise.  

They were pretty good.  I'll be perfecting the recipe in time for your visit next May, Grampa!  

And finally, Grace tried some baby food last week for the first time.  

A little bit of squash.

Seat belts taste good too. 

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more . . .  

Eye Doctor, Grace and Jon

So many eye appointments to make and so little time . . . 

The clinic only allows me to make three appointments per day - so I was at the eye clinic a bunch recently.  

Jon in the hot seat

Peter's turn.  

Everyone's exams went well.  A couple of prescriptions changed but otherwise uneventful visits are good. 

Recently Grace

Wore a new dress . . . 

Rode a firetruck toy . . . 

And had some apple juice.  

Stay tuned for this kid's birthday report.

Monday in Texas

Brian and James had some things to do at work in Houston so, we had to get up early on Monday morning.  

We headed down for our last HOTEL BREAKFAST.  

Matthew had a Texas-shaped waffle.  Actually I shared it with him - it was fun!

We checked out and drove toward Deer Park.  We took the ferry across again and dropped Brian and James off at work.  Because we weren't sure how long it would take them to finish their stuff, we wanted to stay in the area so we drove a little bit down the road back to the USS Texas to take a tour.  

Ready to board the battleship.  Faith volunteered to take most of these pictures for us. 

Peter was a little scared to climb up here, but he made it.

Hiyah!!!!

A short time after boarding and climbing around we found a supply of mops.  

I was telling them to Swab The Decks!!  

Ha ha ha!

Bunch o' sailors.

There were some places we couldn't go in. 

Andrew got on this gun and pretended to blow up the bridge so no one else would come aboard. 

Andrew volunteered to shoot down enemy aircraft.

Matthew pitched in to help.

Lifeboat

There was a picture of some of the sailors who sailed the USS Texas.

We went below decks to have a look around.

We need a chow line like this at home. 

And some bunks like this . . . maybe not.

Some of the kids wanted to climb up higher.

Andrew

Matthew on the way up and Jon coming down.

Pretty soon we had explored everything and it was time to leave.  

After our tour we drove around town a bit.  

Matthew likes to travel with the tablet.

We stopped at Target for some water.  Coke has a new thing with names on the bottles.  

We found one we liked.

We decided to go to IHOP for lunch.  

Mostly because the Chili's we were headed to didn't exist.  

Rogue GPS again.

I told the boys they had to HOP if they wanted to eat because it's called I HOP.

So they did, Ha!

Waiting for food.

I finally got to try chicken and waffles.  It was good!

The kids and their lunches . . .

There was egg yolk everywhere.

At lunch we got the call from Daddy that they were done, so one more trip across the ferry and we were headed back home to Baton Rouge.

Stay tuned for eye appointments!