Thanksgiving Week, Part 1: San Diego!

Somehow today is November 30th.  I'm not quite sure how that happened.  It seems like we were just celebrating Harper's birthday and now we're passed Thanksgiving and getting ready for Christmas!  So here's the first post from Thanksgiving week before I get too far behind...

Our week started off with a trip to San Diego.  We drove to Longview the Friday before Thanksgiving, left Harper there with Jason's parents, drove to DFW on Saturday morning and then flew to San Diego.  Jason and I both needed a break.  Jason from work and me from my mom duties.  Don't get me wrong, I love Harper more than anything in the world, but feeding and cleaning up after that child plus the cooking, cleaning, laundry... I'm sure most of you reading this can understand.

I have to say, as nice as it was to getaway and have a break, I did miss Harper a lot {thank goodness for facetime!}.  I'm not sure that Harper missed us as much.  She had a really great time with her Nani and Pa, and I can't thank them enough for watching her :)

So San Diego.

On Sunday we met up with our friend Kellie in Coronado and had a wonderful day.  We ate lunch at Il Fornaio with views of the water and downtown San Diego, rode bikes all over Coronado, watched the sunset at the beach, drank too much wine and ate delicious California burritos for dinner.  It was a perfect day!  Thanks so much for being our tour guide Kellie!

On Monday we rented a car and drove up to La Jolla.  It was beautiful!  We hiked at Torrey Pines, checked out the golf course, took pictures of the seals, did a little shopping, and had a wonderful dinner at George's at the Cove overlooking the ocean.

We also went to Old Town {where we had really, really, really good margaritas and lunch at Casa Guadalajara}, Balboa Park, Seaport Village, Gaslamp District... but I don't have good pictures of those places.  

So that was most of our trip.  Now I'm going to try to rest some before Harper wakes up.  I took her to the zoo this morning, and I'm planning to take her to open gym at Gymboree when she wakes up from her nap.  Can you tell I'm bored with our park after going everyday this week???

really quick

I have a lot to do during Harper's nap today so I'm keeping this pretty short.  I just wanted to share some pictures that I took yesterday.  That's all anyone wants to see anyway, right?

I was vacuuming so Harper needed to, too!

Little girl loves her books!

Never too young for the Toys R Us ad :)

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Yes, another photo book: Harper's Second Six Months

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

so many new things

I've really been slacking lately in regards to documenting all of the new things Harper has been doing.  It's so hard to keep up--I swear there is something new everyday!  So here are just some of the things she's been doing lately...

First of all, we are amazed at how much she understands.  We will be playing in the living room in the evening and say "Harper, do you want to go take a bath?" and she gets up and walks straight to the tub in her bathroom.

{I thought it was cute how she lined up all of the cups on the bathtub}

And after she poops {which she still does shortly after almost every meal} we say "Harper, let's go change your diaper" and she heads straight for her room.  

And if I ask her, "do you want to call Daddy?" she heads straight for the phone.  And she knows to say "bye" right before you hang up.

She pretends to wash her hands with the antibacterial hand gel that hangs on her diaper bag.

{feeding some milk to Tiger}

She knows the milk is in the fridge and will go to it when she needs more.

She knows the names of all of her toys {puzzle, books, Tiger, ball, phone, puppy, etc.} and she will bring you the one you tell her to.  She can put all the puzzle pieces in the right spot on her peg puzzle, too.

She can show you where her belly button, nose and ears are if you ask.

{giving Tiger a hug}

She loves her books.  She will crawl into my lap with a book and have me read it to her, but she also enjoys flipping through the books by herself.  And before her nap and going to bed at night we read to her in the glider in the study.  She has to sit to the right of you and will hold one book while you read the other and then switch.

She also LOVES going outside.  She tries to open the front and back doors to go out.   She knows that she has to put shoes on first and will sit down and wait for me to put them on her.  She is not a happy girl when she doesn't get to go outside.  

Our former neighbors gave us these toys that they wanted to get rid of and Harper enjoys pushing them down the sidewalk.  She could stay outside forever.  I sure wish it would cool off and stay cool pretty soon!!

We walked down the street to get the mail a couple days ago and Harper stopped at a house that usually has a dog in the backyard.  She waved and made her barking sound, and the dog wasn't even out that day!

After a few very frustrating days of trying to figure out what it was that Harper was begging for in the pantry, I got it.  Toast.  She ate two entire slices!  And I've also discovered that Harper prefers it if all of her food is not cut up into small pieces.  Why didn't she just say so?

{Notice the tear in her eye.  She was frustrated, too.}

We didn't do anything for Halloween.  Harper was really sick last week.  Unlike with her previous two colds, this time she had a wet cough, fever, poor appetite and slept A LOT {17 hours last Monday!}.  She was so miserable.  I took her to the doctor and found out that she had her first ear infection.  {I need to vent just a bit now.  I had taken Harper to the doctor to get her second flu shot a few days before she got sick with the cold, and in my gut I know that she got the cold germs from the waiting room.  WHY ON EARTH DO PEDIATRICIANS PUT TOYS IN THE WAITING ROOM!?!?  GROSS!!!!!!  I brought a couple of Harper's toys with us but of course she has to play with the "new" ones.  I guess next time they'll just have to listen to Harper scream because she will NOT be playing with those nasty things again!}

She was feeling a little better on Wednesday and had some fun dressing up in her owl costume.  It was pretty big so maybe she can be an owl again next year :)

Harper seemed to be feeling a lot better by Friday so we got out and went to the zoo.  This was the first time I took her to the petting zoo at the zoo.  She really enjoyed it!

I think that is enough about Harper for today :)