The Vineyard Family

Shay passed my information along to her sweet friend Jenna, and I had the privilege of doing her Off the Vine Designs blog and this past weekend I did her personal blog! I LOOOOOOOVE how it turned out and was super excited that I could add her (again!) to my happy clients list! Thanks, Jenna!!!

Harvest Party 2010

Every year The Cox's host our Sunday School's Harvest Party and every year it gets bigger, younger and way more fun... well, fun in a different way. Not fun in a sitting around the fire eating s'mores and talking with friends until late kind of way, but fun in a chasing your kids around making sure that they don't fall in the fire pit kind of way :) I can't get over how many kids (and cute costumes!) there were - hard to wrangle them all for a picture, though :)

Luke didn't want to wear his costume, but once we got there he completely forgot that he was dressed up as a monkey :)

Me and my little monkey enjoying a s'more (actually, Luke enjoyed the smore components seperately - he wanted nothing to do with them all mushed together)

The best group picture I managed to get:

Mason Update

Finding out I was pregnant during my first week back at school was so much fun - but since the first few weeks are always sooooooooo crazy it was hard to find the time to post all of the details. Now, I find myself here nine weeks later realizing that the only time I've even mentioned the pregnancy on my blog was here... in a super short announcement post :)

Now that it's the second quarter of school, I'm settled back into my routine and I have a little bit more time on my hands here are all the details:

I'm due on April 24, 2011. Sounds really far away, right?!?! April 24th happens to be my dad's birthday (my mom's is on April 25th) and it also happens to be Easter this year.

We're completely settled on a name either way... Mason Joy if it's a girl and Mason West if it's a boy. Right now my next ultrasound is scheduled for November 15th and hopefully Mason will be cooperative then and let us know whether we should start buying pink or blue.

I'm about 12 and a half weeks along right now. We had an appointment earlier this week where we got to hear the heartbeat for the first time and it was a steady 171 beats per minute. I have absolutely NO CLUE what Luke's were - so I now have nothing to compare this little Peanut's heartbeat to. Oh well - as long as it's healthy and strong!

I've been exhausted for the last 8 weeks, but other than that have been feeling great. Occasionally I would have to eat a saltine or two before getting out of bed, but it wasn't anything that stopped me from consuming cereal and two pieces of toast before I headed out the door :) I've also been STARVING 100% of the time - meats, salty foods, pasta and pizza. hahaha!

I had my first ultrasound about a month ago and here's our first shot of Mason: This time around is soooooooooo much different than it was with Luke. With Luke I felt I was consumed with "baby thoughts"... "what are we going to do with the nursery", "what kind of stroller are we going to buy", etc., etc,. etc. and now there's just not a whole lot of time to sit around and think about all of those things :) We're definitely less nervous and more excited this time around, not only can we not wait to meet Mason but we can't wait for Luke to meet him/her either!

I promise I'll be better about posting updates as things progress!

Arboretum - Part I

I have WAY too many pictures from our trip to the Arboretum on Saturday morning, so I decided to split it into two HUGE posts :)

The look in the picture below is pretty typical of what we got all day. hahaha Everytime we'd pull out the camera he'd stick his tongue into his lower lip and make this strange face...

Checking out all the cool pumpkins:

Looking at the fish...

"I following the path, Mommy!" He loved the arboretum simply because of all the pathways and freedom to run! He got a huge kick out of running along the mulchy paths...

There was also a lot of pointing going on...

Posing by the BIG "punkins"

Peek-A-Boo!

"Luke loves pun-kins"

RUNNING! I know that the picture is blurry, but it kind of sums up most of what he did the entire morning :)

We came across this big bowl of little white pumpkins...

... and my little engineer would have spend all morning "linin' them up" if we had let him :)

After lining up and then putting away all of the little white pumpkins, we headed over the the pumpkin village:

Not a great picture, but a great example of his "cheese" face that we saw a lot of!

"Blue Steel"

Just in case you didn't see enough pictures of Luke with pumpkins, be sure to check back for The Arboretum Part II :)

Arboretum - Part II

Here's the second (and final!) installment of Arboretum pictures. I know I took too many, but I couldn't help myself!
After a quick shirt change it was time for some climbing!

And some cheesin' for the camera :)

Luke and Daddy looking at the map trying to locate a bathroom for mommy (who currently has to go to the bathroom approximately every 35 minutes) hahaha

It was getting a little warm outside, but we did a quick walk through the Texas town... ... and while there we found a little bench perfect for some posing :)

I'm not sure whether or not this boy has a future as a model. ha!

After the Texas town it was time for a Sun Chips break:

Daddy was tickling Luke-Man and it was all fun and games...

... until Mr. Moody had had enough...

But he and Daddy kissed and made up :)

At this point he was "done", but I really wanted a few more pictures (because I didn't have enough already!) and so I made him sit on this cute little pumpkin. He kept complaining about and saying "not want to sit here!" , but I insisted and when he got up I knew why.... his entire hiney was SOAKED! The pumpkin was concave and had been filled with water. OOOPS!

Taking one last opportunity to stop and smell the flowers before we headed out:

When we got to the car we stripped off his soaking wet jeans and removed his muddy tennis shoes and ended up with what is probably my favorite picture from the day (isn't that always the way it works?!?!)

It was sooooo much fun and we can't wait to head back to The Arboretum again soon!