Santa on the Square

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I love our neighboring city, Carrollton. The city has done a great job of preserving the small town feel of Downtown. Yesterday they hosted a FREE (I love free!) Christmas event. We met Santa, got a printed picture with him, saw some elves, ate some cookies, got a balloon animal, and pet a reindeer! 

"We're basically in Star's Hollow" -Gavin

November 2016

Day by day, life feels pretty mundane. I'm currently looking through all our November pictures to write this post and realizing that even though sometimes it feels like all I do is dishes, we really are having an adventure out here in Texas!

Arbor Hills Nature Preserve
This is a pretty area with running and biking trails, lots of trees, and is apparently a very popular place for family pictures! We found a little stream off trail and hung out there for a good amount of time. I think Owen's favorite thing to do is throw rocks into water. Seriously whenever there's an opportunity, he goes at it for as long as I will let him!

The Arboretum...again!
We get six people in whenever we go, so it's nice to bring new friends every time!

White Rock Trail
We got Owen a little ride-in bike trailer for his birthday, and the past few weeks Gavin has put a ton of work into tuning up our bikes so that we can start this new hobby. We've biked on this White Rock Trail a few times and plan to take it all 7 miles to a lake here in the near future.

Grapevine Lake

This is one of the closest lakes to us so I wanted to check it out. There wasn't much to do there besides boat and fish. O was in Heaven because, back to the throwing rocks in the water thing, he got to do his favorite activity for a whole evening.

Dallas Zoo

A few times a year, the Dallas Zoo only charges $1 to get in! I'm not a huge fan of zoo's, but I do love Owen's animal excitement. The weather this past "dollar day" was perfect, and it wasn't even too crowded. I'm glad we went! You can buy lettuce here to feed the giraffes. It was cool to be so close to them, but Owen was pretty traumatized when him and the giraffe bonked heads!

The weather this month has been perfect for playing outside! I am loving when our friends in Utah post pictures of the snow, but I'm enjoying wearing t-shirts in November!

Thanksgiving

It was very different being away from family on a big Holiday. We really missed the celebrating at home! However, friends came up from Houston, and having company is so fun! We ate our dinner with two other couples, plus the babes. We did a ton of cooking in order to incorporate all our favorite Thanksgiving foods and it was worth it!

We have so. much. to be Thankful for. I frequently wonder how I got so lucky. My heart and my stomach are both pretty full!

Owen Turned Two Yesterday!

I could go on and on about this babe of mine. He is so funny and so smart and so bossy! 

He can sing a few songs like "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", "Sunbeam", and "Love is Spoken Here." He loves to dance, shoot his basketball, play with cars, and throw rocks. He is super friendly and will give anyone and everyone a hug. He knows most his colors and basic animal noises. He knows some numbers but never counts in the right order. He recognizes about half the alphabet. He can Facetime family without help from his parents! 

I need to do a better job of documenting his funny phrases like "Hey mom, what are you talkin bout? You talkin bout Daddy?" He said that a lot and I have no idea where he got it from!

Every day Owen asks Gav if he works at "WC".

He is definitely our greatest blessing and adventure. Love you so much Owie!

October 2016

As usual, I already posted pictures from the bigger events of the month, but here's what I left out...

 Exploring the cute Farmers Market downtown,

 and visiting Gav's work to enjoy the lookout. 

 I finally tried an $8 juice just because I've been wanting to try and $8 juice for a while. This may be politically incorrect, but it wasn't worth 8 dollars! Not bad though, and it was pretty. Next time I will just make my own!

 The restaurants here are so cool! I rarely see a chain restaurant. All these authentic, family-owned places are so fun and usually decorated in a cute, unique way. The truck bench above is at Babe's Chicken. Also, Owen's new sense of independence sometimes causes him to deliberately stare right at the camera with a straight face when I tell him to smile.

Being a stay-at-home-mom to this kid is great 90% of the time. This selfie was taken in the middle of a tantrum when he realized I was taking pictures.

Weather here is still pretty warm. Leaves haven't changed yet, so I love it when people from Utah post pictures of the colorful canyons. The bridge above is where I run a few times a week, so I'll enjoy this scenery until Texas catches up with the season.

And, of course, Halloween...

Within the week, we had a church trunk-or-treat, a work party, and a friend's party. By 8:00 that night we were watching Curious George's Halloween and we continued to watch it until 11:00, when the sugar had finally worn off Owen and he fell asleep! We are party animals!

Mama Sue and Papa Rick in Dallas

Gavin convinced his parents to fly back to Dallas with Owen and I. It was so fun to have them here! We stayed pretty busy while they were here. It's safe to say they had a real good Texas experience, full of barbeque, tacos, homecooked meals, and fried food. These are the crowd-pleasers we shared with them...

The State Fair

The Texas State Fair is a big deal here. We were all first-timers!

Fried food galore here! We tried a good variety- including fried Reeses, fried Oreos, fried Jello, and my favorite- a fried Pop-Tart! Our hearts hurt by the end of it!

This guy behind us is the iconic Big-Tex. The ribbon on his chest was a new addition this year to honor Dallas's fallen officers. 

There was a huge Taylor Swift exhibit at the Fair! You all know I love Taylor Swift! It was cool! On display were some of her baby pictures, guitars, hand-written lyrics, her piano, her awards. My favorite displays were her dresses and her music video outfits! These were the actual clothes she wore! It was so fun to see! This picture is the outfit she wore in her "Blank Space" video while standing on the horse (mom), and the cheer-leading outfit she wore in her "You Belong With Me" video.

The Arboretum

The Dallas LDS Temple

Carrollton

Trinity Groves BBQ and Walkway

Babb's Brothers BBQ. Owen wouldn't leave the band alone! They were really nice while setting up, and let Owen come test their drums! When they started playing, Owen started dancing, which turned into legitimate twerking. Holy hilarious and embarrassing. About 10 people (including the singer of the band) whipped out their phones to start filming him. We were DYING! 

A fun little walkway with the Dallas skyline view.

This is one of those "A picture is worth a thousand words" things. Papa Rick was collecting acorns at Owen's request, while Owen is riding his new bike in his pajamas on our porch, wearing his sunglasses because he won't go outside without them!

We loved having them out here! Come visit us again!

Utah in October

Yup, I've only been in Texas a month and I already headed back to Utah for a week! I had this trip planned before we moved, which made it a little less hard to say bye, since I could say "see you next month."

Some girls I played lacrosse with years ago were participating in a women's tournament in Idaho last weekend, so it was the perfect excuse to go back. Owen and I flew in to Salt Lake on Tuesday; Friday night my sister and I drove to Boise, played a few lacrosse games on Saturday, then drove home Saturday night. We flew back to Texas the following Tuesday. The whole week was so fun, and hard trying to pack in everything I wanted to do! Here's what it looked like...

Cornbelly's with Maddy cuz it's tradition. I love and miss this girl!

"Sister lacrosse is the best lacrosse."

Lacrosse with the sister and old teammates. Surprisingly, we won all our games. This was such a random, funny tournament, but it was so fun! Yes, some husbands helped us out. Some girls on another team told us we looked intimidating and we were like "hmm, was it the car-seats we carried in, or the DI tags on our jerseys?" haha!

I left Owen with family when I went to Idaho. He spent a day with each of our families... I'm so grateful for them and their help! Sue took Owen and the other two grand-kids to the pumpkin patch to pick out some pumpkins. I love this picture of Owen trying to push the wheelbarrow there!

 Carving the pumpkins that the babes picked out. We kept ours pretty simple!

 Owen and I took a quick hike up to Bells Canyon Reservoir. I had to get to the mountains since we don't have anything beautiful like this in Dallas. This hike was so awesome. The weather was PERFECT, and the scenery was gorgeous. The hike is long enough for a workout, but easy enough to pack Owen and keep him happy. The whole hike, Owen was saying "Yay, we can do it!" and "There's the trail! Keep walking mommy!" He also loved talking to other hikers. Also, it was so nice just to sit by the water up here and let Owen play with rocks and dirt, and not worry about having to be home in time for anything. It was the most beautiful, peaceful experience I have had in a long time.

We went to Gardner's Village with my mom to see the pumpkins and witches. The perk of having one kid is that we can pay a stupid $5 for a 5 minute horse ride. This horse experience ended much better than the last!

Being in Dallas is good for us. Coming home frequently is also good. I can't wait for Christmas to be in this beautiful state again!

Lewisville Safety Open House

The city of Lewisville hosted a free "Safety Open House." It was honestly the best public, free, family activity I have ever been to! There were free hot dogs, lemonade, and popcorn for everyone, plus gift bags for all the kids- with a bouncy ball, fireman's hat, stickers, and coloring pages! Heroes of the city put on demonstrations with helicopters, CPR, police dogs, and fire hoses. They had SWAT cars, police cars, fire trucks, helicopters, and ambulances all open for kids to go look inside. We pet the police dogs, and a firefighter helped Owen "put out a fire". It was a great opportunity to thank them all for their service. Police officers can be painted as such bad people, so it was an awesome "uniting" activity! Every town should do this!

September 2016 pt. 2

We've been trying to get our bearings by exploring not only Dallas, but the surrounding cities.

Carrollton is winning so far! Downtown Carrollton has rock climbing silos, an awesome playground, a hilarious candy shop, free movies at the town square, and beautiful Texas-homestyle restaurants. Thank you Carrollton!

A minion in the candy shop!

We went on a date to Babe's chicken. I obviously haven't gotten the hang of humidity hair yet.

Mary Heads Carter Park

We talked to some employees at the silos, asking for adventure ideas. They told us about Ray Roberts Lake, about an hour north of Dallas. We took the drive and it was worth it! The "hiking"  had us gaining about 7 feet in elevation, but the flowers were pretty.  The beach and lake were awesome! We took a nice swim and we definitely plan on going back to spend more than just a couple hours there!

September/October is Texas's fair and festival season, so we came at a good time! A friend told us about Lewisville Western Days (Lewisville is another surrounding city) so we went and had a good time!

Owen and "baby Kinley". This is our friend's daughter and Owen is so cute to her! On the shuttle to the fair, O kept saying "hold on tight baby Kinley!"

We pulled some volunteer's teeth to get Owen on this horse (whoops!) and the whole thing was just a good experience gone bad for him haha

Owen has been loving jamming to live music! There's lots of that here!

 This is the park across the street from where Gav works. There's always live music here. Owen was jamming to this band when he started running in circles. 140 circles later I stopped counting but he kept going!

We still have a lot to learn about this place, and I'm more excited about it now than I was a month ago, but I still miss Utah. 

Stay-at-home-mom life is interesting. I don't get bored- the boss keeps me super busy, but it's with stuff like building train tracks and feeding breakfast to Winnie-the-Pooh. There are things I miss about working, but not having a job has it's perks too. Perks like...

I love having him as my adventure bud.

And in case you're wondering, our apartment still looks like this: