Fabulous awesome England trip

Boy have I lost my gusto for blogging. But I can't bring myself to delete it either, cause I'm sure I'll come up with something really awesome to blog about the moment I do.

I do have one excuse however- I've been in England with my mama for a week and a half. Boy that was an amazing trip. But boy I get really tired when I'm pregnant and walking most of the day. It was a little discouraging to not have the energy to immerse myself as fully into exploring like I wanted to. I'm at the beginning of my 7th month of pregnancy and my baby is taking up all my energy. But I was able to enjoy everything a lot still, and tried my best not to think of Ross and Ethan while I was gone... Yeah right like that was possible! Every little baby boy I saw was Ethan. Anyway. It was an awesome trip.

So because I didn't really have a lot of energy to spare, I didn't get a whole bunch of pictures (creative or otherwise) like I wanted. I brought my big camera. Which is so heavy! And my little baby point-and shoot doesn't really allow you to do much. So that was another small dilemma.

Day 1:

- Rented car at Heathrow airport and drove West towards Bath (scariest thing ever, but my mom only grazed the curb like 5 times. Those roads are so stinkin' narrow!)

- Wells




- Bath


- City centre
- Royal Crescent
- Royal Circus

Day 2:

- Roman Baths



- Longleat House

- Stourhead


- Bradford-on-Avon

Day 3:

- Stonehenge

- Petworth

- Hever Castle


To be continued... hopefully I'll get some of my mom's pictures to supplement here too. Sigh. Now it's back to reality with 100 degree weather and 1,000,000 percent humidity.

Houston!

Well so we returned from our trip to Houston to see Phil and Kathleen over a month ago... and here're some pictures from the trip!

Ethan did surprisingly well in the car for 12 hours. We made multiple stops, and I think we had braced ourselves for the worst. So when he only screamed twice for extended periods (like 10 minutes) of time it felt like we were doing great! We stopped in Oklahoma City and Dallas on the way down and on the way back.


It POURED rain all the way from Wichita to Oklahoma City. But we had made plans to see the Myriad Botanical Gardens in Oklahoma City, so we stopped there anyway. We couldn't see any of the gardens outdoors but luckily they had an indoor arboretum that was pretty dang cool too. The rain was dripping through the ceiling and off of the plants anyway so we got pretty soaked after all. (I used the point-and-shoot almost the whole trip. I LOVE the macro feature on that camera!)






Of course I demanded that we go to IKEA while we were there. It was only a few minutes away from where they live! Lucky. And we went to the park, and we went to Galveston, and we went to Kemah boardwalk... and some other things too. But this is getting too long.

Ethan slept the whole ride. He was exhausted.

I couldn't help paddle cause I was wearing a skirt.
Good thinking Lauren! Got outta that one.

And Ethan knew just what to do at the beach.

He loved the fountains at Kemah boardwalk.

Stolen from Kathleen's camera:

And it was a looooong pretty ride home.

Thanks Phil and Kathleen! It was lots of fun. We'll come visit you at the next cool place you live too!

Oh and another thing that was super cool was that we got to see my grandparents who were traveling down from Manhattan (we missed their visit there) to Austin! We just both happened to be in Oklahoma City at the same time, so they treated us to dinner. It worked out so nicely.

Oh- AND!

Duh! I totally forgot to say on this blog.... that.... we are having a GIRL!! I announced it on facebook, but I must do it here also.

I bought this dress before I even knew it was a girl. Cause it's super cute, and cause it was on sale.


I am SO excited to have a girl! I'm a teensy bit nervous too. To go through all the drama/self-esteem issues and all that that entails... I grew up with younger brothers. I don't know what to do with girls. Of course, I am a girl. I should be ok.

I'm excited to see Ethan be an older brother. Is it possible that my heart can hold more love than it does now?

ALSO- We are officially moving to Kansas City this summer! We're going house-hunting this weekend. Ross got a couple of scholarships to UMKC (University of Missouri Kansas City) and will do the year of graduate school before he can sit for the CPA exam. After that he may work for KPMG (one of the 'big four' accounting firms where he has interned), or he may work for someone else. We just feel like Kansas City is where we should be right now.

So lots of changes coming up! If anyone is in Manhattan and wants to move into the Prairies this summer let me know!

Playing with the lensbaby

The wonderful thing about having a professional photographer for a father is that you can play with his lenses any time you want! He has a lensbaby (a tilt-shift lens) and I thought I'd play with it for a while.

This one is pretty much all blurry but I
liked the movement and color in it.

Also it's nice to have a professional photographer for a dad cause he takes awesome pictures for free!

Here are a couple of pictures from Ethan's 1 yr session.



And soon I'll post pictures of our Texas trip. I'm gonna catch up-- really!

He's diggin' the shades

Cause it feels good to check things off a list (and to tell people about it)

So while Ross was gone I wanted to get a few little projects done. Didn't get as much done as I wanted to (always), but still had fun with a few.

Finally finished this cross-stitch that I've
been working on for over two years. Mostly while watching General Conference.
It is a Frank Lloyd Wright design purchased near Chicago.

I know you can't tell, but this is a skirt I bought
(because it was on sale) and it was HUGE!
So my mom and this other lady in my ward helped me shrink it to size.

And I caught up with Ethan's 'scrapbook.'
I decided not to do a big elaborate thing for him,
cause I don't think I'll have the energy
to do that for all of my kids. So it's really simple.

Worked on the family scrapbook. Still way behind!

Made a camera case for our point-and-shoot camera.
Using this tutorial.

And for a future project: we found this retro shelf-thing at
the salvation army for $2.
I love the colors and design, so we got it.
I'll clean it up and figure out something to do with it.

Also on my to-do list:

• Learn to knit well. (Like adding and dropping stitch!)

• Make a quilt for new baby

...hmm I can think of a billion things I still want to do. But we'll leave it at that for the immediate future. Happy crafting!

Hoo boy! It's been pretty boring around here! Ethan decided to give up his afternoon nap this week. He now has two extra hours in his day that he spends with his mom. I'm pretty sure he's bored with me, since his daddy isn't here to divert his attention after 5. It's just me. Only one more day though! Ross is done tomorrow. And then we're gonna PAR-TAY!

Ethan and I have been having some fun though. It's his favorite game:

And then we were playing with his blocks in his bedroom and there was lots of light coming in from my room so I got out my camera. This was one of those pictures where he started to attack me so I held it out, closed my eyes, and clicked. It's more flare than baby but I still like it.



Oh and I do have some more stuff to post. So stay tuned! Ha ha.