Fall Festival

We bumped into our neighbors a couple weeks ago, and they happened to mention in passing, "Y'all should come to our church's Fall Festival the Wednesday before Halloween." Since our church doesn't have anything like this, we thought the suggestion actually sounded really fun.

I failed to tell my neighbor that we'd be coming, but I figured we'd just see them at the festival. HA! We totally underestimated how massive this festival was and the hundreds of people that would be there. Luckily, we found them and had an opportunity to chat for a minute.

The free festival was at The Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, and had a ton of bounce houses and slides, two really tall rock climbing walls, face painting, Guitar Hero contests, and different carnival-style games. They had music jamming the whole time, and we all 3 had a blast.
Now to my sentimental note: I am still utterly amazed at how much joy I get from watching my child experience new things. I loved seeing her go from very hesitant during her first bounce house experience to gaining confidence to run all over it, all the while a beaming smile radiated from her precious face because she was learning something new and was proud of herself. There was nothing at the festival that would have entertained Jarret and I alone. We would have been totally bored without Julia there. But even though we experienced nothing for ourselves, the joy of her experiencing it made for such a wonderful and fun night. I can't help but think: if my human heart can experience this much love and joy for my child, how much greater must God's love and joy be over me. That the Creator of the entire universe would even know my name and the number of hairs on my head is astonishing, but that He deeply loves me and smiles down on me? That absolutely blows me away.

On to the photos! Julia wore a ladybug costume, which originally belonged to her cousin Kendall. She was not interested in wearing the hoodie part, so we opted for the hair bow instead. At least she's finally allowing me to put a bow in her hair. There was a good 9 months or so that she would rip 'em right out.

Getting warmed up to the bounce house idea. We'll start by sitting on the side.


Next, we put her in but she just held on to the bumpers right by our side. I love this picture because of her smile and how happy she was. Our child does not pose or smile for the camera, so anytime we get one of her looking at me with a smile like this, I get so excited!


I think this first video is funny because she's basically like "What the heck is going on here? Okay, so these kids are bouncing me all over the place. I won't freak out, but I'm not moving one inch from this spot."

After our 2nd trip to the bounce house and several minutes on it, she had become very brave and fallen in love with it. Every time we'd take her off, she'd say "Bow, bow" (bounce, bounce). This video also shows her two styles of dancing - the arm groove and the hip shaker. On a daily basis she goes up to our radio at home, does the arm groove while saying "das", which is her request for me to turn the music on so she can dance.

Austin Trip

Also a while ago...

At the end of September, we took a family trip down to Austin which is one of my favorite cities. We stayed with Chris, who is a good friend of Jarret's back from their college days. Since Chris got married right before Julia was born, we'd never had the privilege of meeting Chris' wife Laurie and her two sons. We stayed at their house and had a wonderful visit... despite the horrors of the 3-hour drive down in which Julia didn't nap and then the following 2 days in which she napped a total of just over an hour. Chris and Laurie are such generous and thoughtful hosts, and Laurie was super patient, sweet, and snuggly with Julia.

They just recently bought a boat, which meant we got to enjoy a lake trip without having to haul our own boat! Better still, what lake in Texas is prettier than Lake Austin? Even better STILL, the boat they bought was the same make and model of Alan's boat (Jarret's best man from the wedding), which is the boat we met on and got engaged on!

Julia's only naps seemed to happen in 30 minute chunks on the boat. Laurie and daddy both were eating it up though (Chris is the one driving):






Laurie's son Court (13) was tearing it up on the wakeboard considering he'd only really been doing it about a month:


I simply can't imagine this lifestyle. Wow:


I've climbed the 100+ steps up to the scenic overlook on Mount Bonnell several times before, but this was my first to be in the river directly beneath the overlook. It was fun to look up and see all the people at the top of the hill taking in the beautiful scenery:


And of course, some family shots. We were riding near the 360 bridge, which is what you see in the background:

Visit to Graham

This trip actually took place back in mid-September, but I'm just now getting caught up on life enough to begin blogging about the past several weeks. Julia and I went to visit "Aunt" Katie, Grace and Lily for a quick overnight trip during the middle of the week just for some girly fun (we had fun seeing you too Lee!!). I had missed Lily's birthday back in August, plus this was the first time I got to see their new house. So it all made for a perfect excuse to visit...not that we really need an excuse, of course.

Lily and Julia are just two months apart and love playing together, and Grace adores acting as a big sister to both of them. They had fun reading, being couch potatoes the 1 time we let them watch TV, chasing around the two kittens (Julia adores pets since she has none of her own), and going down the awesome indoor slide (Julia went down the slide literally dozens of times).

Julia doing her crazy headstands and playing peek-a-boo, and finally letting us capture a few of her sweet smiles on camera.

Jarret and I find it amusing that the "hiding" part of Julia's peek-a-boo can last for so, so long:

Grace is full of love, joy, and lots of energy too! She'll be 4 in November. I distinctly remember meeting her in the hospital right after she was born, and that does not seem 4 years ago!


And although these have nothing to do with our trip to Graham, I thought they were worth showing off because they were cute of Katie's family.

Arboretum and Pumpkins

I promise another hugely long blog post is coming to catch up from the past several weeks, but this post is all about our wonderful morning at the Arboretum. I love the Arboretum, but rarely go because of the distance and the crowds. Andrea blessed Karla and me tremendously by allowing us to go as her guests using her Family Pass. It was a beautifully sunny morning (finally!) and perfect cool weather, and it was even better that it cost us nothing! The 5 kiddos had such fun exploring and running around. Thank you Andrea so much!


Left to right: Noah & Haley (Karla's kiddos), Julia, Paige & Jacob (Andrea's kiddos):

And my personal favorite of the day (thank you Karla for getting her to smile!):