13.5 months old!!

Who knew a water hose could provide so much fun??  We let her have control of it and she loved soaking herself!!   My favorite is the video :)

Well, so summer is almost over for me.  I have two weeks left and I'm going to enjoy every minute with Daniel and Briley.  I have had the BEST summer!!  I am really sad to be leaving my precious little girl but I know she will be in good hands with her wonderful sitter Kristen (who has 2 girls that Briley absolutely adores) and her Daddy on the days he is home from the fire station.  I wanted to update family and friends on some of the fun/new things Briley is doing at 13.5 months old and some of the memories we have made over the summer...

1.  Briley is now drinking all whole milk!!  We still are having a hard time getting rid of our bottle, but we are working on it :)
2. She absolutely LOVES Blues Clues on Nick Jr.  Unfortunately Blue isn't as popular as other cartoon shows so I had to order a Blue off of Ebay and she carries him around and says, "boo".
3. She loves ALL baby dolls.  Her favorite is one that I bought for $3 at walmart and she carries it everywhere.  Baby usually goes on car trips with us and sometimes ends up next to us in the high chair!!
4. Briley has a BIG appetite...she is no longer on baby food except for a few fruits that I can't get her to eat as solids.  Her favorite foods right now are: toast w/butter, strawberries, yogurt melts, ANY Italian food (ravioli, lasagna, and baked ziti are her favorites), grilled cheese, chicken nuggets, Mexican rice, and carrots.   
5. She loves to imitate us...Daniel will say "ahhhh" after he has a drink and she copies him.  I will clap my hands and she does it.  Today I was snapping and she was moving her little fingers so hard to try and do it!!  So cute!!
6. She loves to give hugs.  She lays her head down on your shoulder and that is her hug :)
7. Her favorite books right now are, Hug, where a little monkey goes around looking for a hug and finally his Mommy finds him, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  She could have me read these books over and over again and she never gets tired of them.  One of my favorite things to do is pick out books at night before we go to bed.
8. She still has her "swing" time with Daddy every night and she shrieks when he opens the door because she loves going outside with him!! I also sing "Jesus Loves Briley" to her every night and she lays her sweet little head on my shoulder for the whole song every time!!  Melts my heart!!  I also say to her every night "Sweet dreams, God bless you, I love you, sleep tight".  That is what my Mom said to me when I was little (still does sometimes) and I want to do the same for Briley Ann.
9. Briley loves to play outside with Goose and Gracie...she will find their dog toys and throw it at them!!  She loves when they chase after toys and they are so good with her!!  She also loves to slide down her plastic slide and play with her water/sand table.  She loves looking for rocks and throwing them in the water...she is a girly girl but does not mind getting dirty at all!!
10. She will dance on command now.  If we say "dance Briley" her little body starts a movin"!!  I hope she keeps it up :)
11. She loves when I sing her songs...her favorites are "The Wheels on the Bus", "Patty-cake", "If you're happy and you know it", and "Jesus loves Briley".  If we are having a meltdown in the car and I start singing it works every time!!
12. She is saying a few words pretty consistently- "baaa" for baby, "boo" for Blue, "ok", and "see".  She also says "momma" and "dadada" when we ask her to now :)
13. She is already VERY independent and will get very frustrated if she can't do something herself...my Mom said I was exactly like this at her age!!  Imagine that!!
14. She loves being chased around the house by her Daddy and Papa...it can become a very long game!!  Papa and Daddy get pretty tired!!
15. She loves family hugs!!  If I give Daniel a hug she will run over to us as if she is saying "Hey what about me??" and we will squeeze her for a family hug and she laughs and giggles!!  

Well, that is just a little bit of what our 13.5 month old is doing right now.  Can't wait to see what she does next!!! 

Austin or Bust!!

My best friend, Jamie has not lived by me for the past 3 years (her husband is in the military) and finally they are close to home and will be living in Austin for the next two years while John David is getting his masters at UT.  I was thrilled to find out they would be living so close and so with the arrival of her 2nd little boy Eli on the 14th of this month, we decided this would be a perfect time to get away and see some great friends!!  This was Briley's 1st long car ride but I had packed enough distractions and food for an army so we were good to go :)

We made it all the way to Round Rock without having to stop (with a little help from Blue's Clues) and Daniel and I were both craving what we can ALWAYS agree on when we go out to eat...

 Isn't Chipotle the best??  Briley is particularly fond of the cheese quesadilla, guacamole, and rice :)  Here is she having fun with her Daddy at lunch...we were so proud of how well she did in the car!!

We made it to John David and Jamie's house and I couldn't wait to get my hands on sweet Elijah James.  He is the cutest little guy and you would never have even guessed Jamie just had a baby less than a week ago!!  

After we spent some time with the Cunningham's and had a great dinner at Red Robin...Daniel, Briley, and I decided to head downtown to wait for the bats to come out from under the famous bridge.  Sadly, the never did come out but we still had fun taking pictures and just enjoying our time together!!

We always have to find a fire station (bottom) and take a picture of it!! I'm pretty used to it by now and I actually find myself looking for a sign like this...

Pretty picture of the capitol at night!!

It was our first time to stay in a hotel with Briley and man did she have fun jumping on the bed...I think she had reached delirium at this point!!

The next morning we decided to get up and head to the capitol to take some pictures and visit the firefighter statue.  It was SOOOO hot so we didn't stay long, but we managed to get some great pictures!!

We found the firefighter statue and took some great pictures of it.  I didn't know this until we got there but Robert Wayne's (Daniel's Dad's cousin) name is on it.  He worked as a fireman and past away while he was on duty.   How amazing is it that his name is on this statue at our state capitol??  What a legacy he has left for the Bufe family...

After getting a quick bite to eat at a hamburger joint called "Mighty Fine Burgers" (very similar to Kincaid's) we headed over to the Cunningham house for one last visit before we headed home.  Briley loved being near Eli and wanted to give him kisses...it was so sweet!!  She will be a great big sister one day!!

We had such a great time visiting with the Cunningham crew and I am so grateful for Jamie's friendship...her and I were both pregnant at the same time with Caleb and Briley and there was a lot of phone calls back and forth asking many pregnancy questions!!  She is such a wonderful friend and I am so happy for her sweet family. 

We can't wait to go and see them again!!

Summer Fun!!

We have had so much fun this summer running around and being busy :)  Yes, it has made my summer FLY by but I am still so grateful for the time I have had with Daniel and Briley and I still have about 3 weeks left :)  Here is some of the fun we have been up to the past couple weeks!!

On our way to Briley's best friends 1st Birthday Party.  The theme was "Night Owl" so all the kids were asked to come dressed in their PJ's :)  So cute!!  Briley is ready to go in her PJ's and of course has a hold of her baby that she rarely lets out of her sight.  The picture below her is Elliott's present...Daniel made the crib for Elliott to put all her babies in.  This picture does not do it justice...it even has an E at the top of it!!  We filled it with some fun books, a picture frame, and a cute shirt with E's name on it.  Our best friend is very special to us so we had to make her present special too :)

Some of the fun we had at the party :)  Briley loved being outside and playing with all her friends...especially her sweet friend Tristan!! I wish I had more pictures of the decorations it was beautiful!!  They had a make your own pizza and make your own sundae bar and it was so yummy!!  Daniel and I said the next time we have our firemen friends over for dinner we are going to do a pizza bar because it was so easy and really good!!

After we got home that night, Briley was pretty wired from all the sugar so we let her work some of it off by playing outside after the sun went down.  I love these pictures :)

Hope your summer is treating you well too!!

Fun with Frames

I absolutely love the website Shabby Blogs and I found these frame "freebies" on their site the other day.  I also started uploading and posting photos on my blog from a website called Picnik.  I am most definitely hooked on both.  I have had several friends ask me how I do the collage of pictures on my posts and that is how!!  It is very user friendly and you can create some really neat things to post on your blog.  Here is some fun I had with frames from using both of those websites...I love seeing how much Briley has changed.  God is so Good!!

Alice and Wonderland at the Gaylord

My friend Tracy called me the other day to invite Briley and I to come to the Gaylord and have lunch and take pictures because they have decorated the hotel in Alice and Wonderland and it is SO NEAT!!  We also went with Tracy's sister, Trish, and her two sweet boys, Grayson and LD.  We were definitely a sight to see with 3 adults, 3 strollers, and 4 kids under 3!! 

 

We took a picture in front of the famous tea party scene where you can actually go and have a tea party and take pictures with the characters!!  A little too old for our kiddos but I can't wait to do things like that with Briley when she gets older.  We decided to have lunch at their bar and grill restaurant and when I went up to the counter and told the hostess it would be 3 adults, 3 highchairs, and a booster-seat, she looked at me like I was nuts.  It ended up that we were pretty nuts because they couldn't even fit us at a table with that many highchairs!!  I decided to take a risk and see how Briley Ann would do in a booster-seat and lucky for me she did AWESOME.  I was very proud of my little girl...though I kept my arm around her most of the time just to make sure.  After lunch, we decided to walk around and take some pictures with the kiddos and all of the beautiful decorations.  Let me just say two words....YEA RIGHT!!  The kiddos had other plans, which included my daughter getting up the moment my darn slow camera would take the picture!!  However, I was still able to get some shots worth showing...

 

Such a fun day with great friends!!  I love the Gaylord and I can't wait to take Briley to ICE during Christmas Break!!

Wordless Wednesday

Date 2 of 12- The Dallas Aquarium

For our June date this month I had planned for us to tour Cowboys Stadium, but since Daniel picked the same date and it came first I had to think of another date.  I have been wanting to go to the Dallas Aquarium for awhile now so I thought that might be a fun date and we never really get to go into Dallas anymore.  I was a little worried that we would be sad we didn't bring Briley with us but once we got there I realized that next summer she will enjoy it a lot more being a year older...so it will definitely be on our plans to take her next year!!  One thing I realized a couple days before is that it is VERY expensive to get in.  If you have kiddos that are still 2 and under than make sure you go before they turn 3 and it costs $12.95 to get them in!!  However, even with the expensive price tag it was still worth it!!

Everything was SO pretty and very well taken care of.  It was so neat to have birds flying around you as you walked through, I really felt like I was in the jungle!!  The aquarium is 3 levels and you start at the very top and work your way down...this waterfall is the 1st thing you see when you walk in!!

The top picture is a sloth that just hangs in a tree that you can walk right up to and the bottom picture is me feeding some kind of toucan...very cool!!

It is very hard to see in these pictures...and this is when our camera died and we had to take pictures with our phone :( but this momma monkey is carrying her tiny sweet little baby on her back.  It was the cutest thing ever and I made Daniel stand there for about 10 min just so we could watch the Mommy and her baby!!

 All of the exhibits were so neat!!

The underwater tank was amazing!!  We sat in there for awhile and just watched sharks, sting rays, and all kinds of fish just swim right by our heads!!

 

We ended the date looking at the amazing manatees and cute little penguins!!  I loved this date and I had so much fun spending time with Daniel.  Who knew dating your husband again could be so much fun ;)  

Love,

Melissa

Zoo Fun!!

We have made two trips to the Zoo this summer so far and I just realized I haven't blogged about any of them!!  My good friend Tracy is a Zoo member and both times I was able to get in under her guest pass...you gotta love a free trip to the Zoo!!  Thank you Tracy!!  Here is a snapshot of the fun we had on our Zoo trips!!  Have I mentioned how much I love summer??

Hopefully we will have the chance to go a couple more times this summer!!

Love,

Melissa

Wordless Wednesday

July 4th Weekend

We had such a great 4th of July weekend!!  We spent Saturday night with family and friends grilling burgers and watching the fireworks our subdivision put on.  Here is a look into the fun we had!!

I love to look back and see how much Briley has changed...I can't even begin to think about how much bigger she will be for July 4th 2011!!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY AMERICA!!!!  

How lucky we are to live in such a wonderful country...a special thank you to all of the soldiers and their families.  God Bless our Troops!!

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend as well!!

Love,

Melissa

Father's Day 2010

So I'm a little behind on my blogging but I wanted to make sure and get Father's Day pictures up :)  Briley and I started the day by getting all of Daniel's presents ready for him when he came home from the fire station and had a little surprise of donuts for breakfast as well!!  We know how to take care of Daddy!!

 

Kisses for Daddy!!

He loved all of his gifts :)

The shadowbox I made for Daniel that has pictures from Opening Day with the 3 of us.  We hope to go to opening day every year together as a family :)

We went to a great church service, had lunch with Daniel's family, and then came home and just enjoyed a relaxing Sunday playing outside.

 Briley is so lucky to have such a wonderful Daddy that loves her more than anything and would do absolutely anything for her.  God truly blessed Briley and I with Daniel.  We love you!!!

Love,

Melissa