Our holiday getaway begins tomorrow

We are taking Summer to the Opryland Hotel tomorrow for what I hope will be a magical experience for us all. The hotel is all decorated up for Christmas and there is a lot of stuff to do and see while we are there. I am sure we will all be dead tired by the time we retire to our hotel room tomorrow night. I can't wait! Neither can Summer. She has been talking about it all day because we get to go swimming and ride a train!!!

I gotta go finish packing and get ready for bed. I hope I can sleep tonight. :)

The following morning...

she woke up and came to my bed and said, "Mommy, you are so beautiful!"

Man, am I lucky or what? :)

Picking names

We had the little bundle of joy, Lexie, with us again tonight. I still can't decide on a grandparent name so I decided to run them by Summer and see what she thought would be best. I asked her if she liked Lolly, Grandmama, or Nana better. Her reply, "Mommy." She likes Mommy best. LOL So, I guess I am no better off than before I asked her.

I just tucked her into bed after reading a few books, including two "Chica chica" books. She likes the number one better because it has a part which she can remember. She was actually reading them to me while I was crocheting. The only part she would say is "Chica chica 1, 2, 3...will there be a place for me?" It isn't even in one of the books, but she remembered it being part of the book from when we read it the other day. She remembers so much. I just hope that along the way she is starting to recognize some numbers and letters. I know she knows a few numbers, but the only letter she probably knows is G because it is a button on our elevator. :) She also definitely knows 1, 0 and 5. She can almost count to twenty, but sometimes she skips some of the teens. She can pretty much count to ten in Spanish....when she wants to....which is not usually when I want her to.

She is getting so independent, but at the same time she is dependent. I never know what to expect. She wants me to feed her more now. She also wants me to help her potty more than she did a month ago. Maybe it is because she sees me helping Lexie. Maybe it is just because she is two and it is her perogative to change her mind when she feels like it. Either way, I love her to death. Well, not to death, but forever.

She asked me today when she was going to go to Memaw's house again. I guess she is lucky I had already made plans for her to go there tomorrow afternoon. Not sure what we will do with the night off, but I am sure dinner at a restaurant will be involved. I just love my time away from her. It makes me appreciate her even more when I get her back. Although I enjoy my "free time," I love her hugs and kisses even more. She gives me lots of them and at random moments too. Its like she knows how much they brighten my day and every so often she just comes up and gives me a big bear hug...out of no where. Those are some of the most precious moments of my life, receiving love from my little girl. I guess I am reaping what I sow. At least I hope I am sowing seeds of love with her. It is sad all the people that grow up and never learn how love. I don't want her to be one of them so I shower her with hugs, kisses and kind words as often as I can. I see her doing it too so I think we are headed down a good path. Now I've just got to make sure to stay on it.

Another day, another dollar

Not sure what that means, but it just came to me. Sometimes titling these posts is a little hard and make me use my brain a little more than it is used to, so I just go with the first thing that pops into my head. Now that you know my secret, you can use it for your blog too. LOL

Summer is finishing up her nap while I am busy uploading new pics to myspace. Between that and facebook, I believe I have plenty of new family pics posted. There are so many good ones, it is hard to choose which ones to put on my blog now that I am limited to a few. Thank God for digital media!

We went to the library today to return our books and left with two more than we came with. :) So, we have eight new books to read over the next month. We have already read 4. I let her pick a few and I picked the rest. She really loves her reading time, so I like to go out and get new books that will hopefully be a little educational. Or, if not that, that I think she will enjoy. It is nice to be able to keep them for almost a month before returning them. It gives me plenty of time to get sick of them. LOL She usually has one or two favorites and the rest she could take or leave.

We also made a stop by the bank so I could make a deposit and she could get a sucker. Guess what? They were out of suckers!!! Yeah that was a bummer for her even though they did have SMARTIES instead. When we were leaving she said, "We will have to go to a different bank." She is so funny sometimes.

Tonight she is going to spend the night with my mom so Clint and I can have a night out. I can't wait although I'm not sure what we will be doing yet. I hope we have as much fun as she does. :) She always loves to go with Memaw and Nanny. They will be bringing her back in the morning though so I can take her to Playgym. We definitely don't want to miss that!

Check out this cute clip of Summer holding Lexie: Auntie Summer

Halloween and stuff

My little monster

Summer got a lot of candy on Halloween and we have been busy trying to eat all of it ever since. Well, today we have actually been gone all day, but now that we are home we will get back to the candy eating. LOL We went to a few of our friends houses again this year and trick-or-treated in their neighborhoods. Summer and Katie were some of the first trick-or-treaters in Hidden Harbor. We got an early start to try and beat the cold. It worked in the first neighborhood, but by the time we reached the other it was dark and getting chilly. About two blocks into the walk, Summer was ready to go back to Jeff and Lauries. We went a little farther though to see a house that we saw last year. They really go all out and it is pretty spooky. Summer did NOT go to the front door of that house and get candy. I happily let her skip it since she was ready to go back to Jeff and Lauries. At some of the houses, she would get two of one thing. Sometimes she would give me one of them for my basket since I was just using it to tote the camera. I thought it was really nice of her to share, although I had already been stealing candy from her basket all night. :) That is what I had for supper that night. CANDY. Summer had some yogurt, grapes and a pb&j after we were done trick-or-treating. Her sister stopped by her aunts house with Lexie while we were there. So we stayed and visited with her and Lexie. Lexie was a little bunny rabbit. She was precious! We took Amanda and her back to Amanda's truck on the way home. Summer was very upset when she realized Amanda was going to take Lexie with her. I guess since Lexie spent the night with us the night before, she assumed she would be doing it again. It was cute to see how attached she was to Lexie even though she acted a little jealous when Lexie was here. She wanted to be held and cuddled like she saw me do with the baby. I wish she was doing that now.

Today she is a big girl again. She didn't want to hold my hand at the zoo. But, she did let me carry her a little bit. When she started getting tired, she was ready for my arms. Holding her in my arms is one of those things I don't think I could ever get tired of -- at least emotionally. I might physically get tired of it. :)

She just brought up Lexie again while we are here on the bed watching Barney - Everyone is Special. I was asking her what her sister's name is because they were singing this song called "I Love My Sister." She didn't answer me so I asked her a few more questions. The last one was: Do you want a sister? Her reply was something along the lines of this: I thought we were going to bring baby Lexie back with us. Is that a yes???

She has such a good memory. She really is a smart little girl. I think she may have gotten my ability to remember things and pick up things quickly. I sure do hope so because it will make studying so much easier (and shorter) when she is in school. Of course that is still a ways off, but it is probably closer than I realize. I never did really have to study hard which made school pretty easy for me. Clint had to study a lot I think. I guess if Summer is like him, he can be the one to help her. Just kidding.

I finally have all my pictures uploaded to my computer. Time to go through all 384 of them. :O And that is just from the past two weeks. We really had a busy month and I took a lot of pictures (approximately 550 as opposed to about 150 last month). I better get to sorting them.

We were all smiles on my 31st birthday!!!