My birthday

Yesterday was my 32nd birthday. I feel so old! Since Kirk has been at K9 school, had the big branch in the backyard to remove, and went back to K9 school, we didn't do anything this weekend. My sister, Kate, will be in town this coming weekend so we will go out for our birthdays then. I did have a good birthday, though. Kirk and Holland had breakfast ready for me. Mom stopped by and had a lemon cake torte for me - it was delicious! Mommer came over to see me and drop off my birthday gift. It was nice to just chill out and relax.

13 months old

Holland turned 13 months old last Sunday, July 19th. She is doing great! She is almost running now and falls a lot since she is moving so fast and never watches where she is going. Holland still just has 4 teeth and it looks like number 5 is starting to come in. She can feed herself with a fork if we have the food on the fork for her.

Holland is saying a lot of words and learns a new one every day. It's so exciting! To recap, she can say mama, dada, gaga (Granny - my mom), nana (our sitter), Mommer (my grandmother), papa, puppy, kitty cat, hi, bye, baby, car, moo cow, Christi (our sitter's daughter), Precious (our chihuahua), I poopoo, diaper, and quit it. She plays great on her own and loves to be read to. We bought her some new books the other day and she is even looking at them right now. She blows kisses and waves bye bye. We finally got her potty chair. She has a house one that she will use here and a travel one to take to the sitter's and Gaga's house when she visits. She loves the potty! She hasn't used it yet so it's still clean. When we got it in, Holland wanted to play with it. It's hilarious! She put her toys in it and carried it around. So funny!

Holland still dances and has a new favorite song. Benny and the Jets by Elton John. Holland and I were out feeding cattle one afternoon and that song was playing on BOB FM. Holland and I had a blast listening, singing with, and car dancing to it. Pardon me talking in the video, but she was doing air piano.

Kirk's gone and my life goes crazy!

Kirk is gone this week and next week for K9 school. So.... that means all heck breaks loose for me at home. I found a dead bird under my hood on top of the radiator smelling up my car and garage. A baby calf has an injured foot and I'm on cattle duty. And, I woke up to this tree branch. It looks like lightening hit it because the top part of it is black. But, I really have no idea. Here are a couple of pictures of it. I'm sure the neighbors are tired of looking at this eyesore, but it will have to wait until Kirk gets home.

Shake a tail feather!

Holland has been dancing (shaking her tushy) for a bit now. I was lucky enough to catch her dancing to the music video Pop on the movie, Music and Lyrics. It's so cute!

Now here is a video of her dancing to her 1 year video we got from Dixie. Now, anytime music plays she dances. Love it!!!

Sunroom

We had our sunroom redone this past week. Woodbridge came out and installed new windows and siding. It looks great! On the sides of the sunroom, there were 3 separate windows. We wanted just 1 window, so they had to reframe and put up all new sheetrock in the sunroom. As it shows, we waited too long to have it redone, but it's done and we love it. It is so much cooler with the energy star windows and siding. Here is a before and after picture we took.

Holland cooling off

Kirk and I both had off from work on Friday so we went out and worked at Mommer's. We did some farm chores and fed cattle. It got up to 109 degrees that day. We were hot and exhausted. We got out the water playyard Cousin Catherine and Danny sent Holland for her birthday and she loved it. It's perfect for her to sit, play, and keep cool. Thanks Catherine and Danny! Too bad it isn't big enough for us to sit in!

12 month photo

Here is another photo from Holland's 12 month photo shoot with Dixie. Love it! Holland was so happy!

July 4th

We didn't do much on the 4th. We stayed in and just caught up on chores from when we were in New Braunfels. Kirk had to work so Holland and I went out to Mommer's house for supper. The neighbors popped enough fireworks for us so we watched some of them. The rain was nice to cool off the evening.



Every since I can remember around the 4th we always see tarantulas crossing the road or in the yards. On our drive back from New Braunfels we counted 8 on the road just from Henrietta to Petrolia. We stopped for me to get a picture of one of them.

New Braunfels

We took a little mini vacation down to New Braunfels on Tuesday this week. It was fun! We looked at more K9 dogs for Kirk. There was one I am really partial to. His name is PeeWee. He's so cute and looks to be a hard worker. After checking out the K9 dogs, we took Holland to Schlitterbahn. Oh my! We rented one of their cabanas so we were out of the sun and had a great breeze. We mainly stayed in the kid area for Holland, but we all had a good time. We took her floaty with the cover on it, so she stayed in the shade the majority of the time. Kirk was the only one with a very little sunburn that was gone by the next morning. After Schlitterbahn, we went back to the hotel. Showered, relaxed and then went to Carino's for supper. Thursday morning we got up and went to the San Marcos outlet mall. We shopped until we were exhausted. We plan on going back to the mall again this year. So much to look at and really good deals. Holland did great on the drive to and from New Braunfels. She learned a new word she said A LOT of the drive. "Car" She said car every time we saw a car, which driving down on I35, you see thousands of cars. :) She's such a cutie!