Boo! Grace's favorite pastime

I hope this makes you smile today!  It did for me and I really needed it.  

(Almost) Completed!

We have a vanity, a working faucet, a medicine cabinet, a mirror and a light fixture!  

What more could you want?  Well, besides a working shower, of course.  

There are a couple little details to add; I need to pick out a towel bar and other accessories, plus we need some trim along the bottom of the vanity and we need to paint the door.  But it is a usable bathroom again, and that is what matters!  

Halloween 2012

Grace was a lobster for Halloween!

She loved wearing her costume!  We tried it on in the morning to make sure it would still work for that night.  When  we took it off to go shopping, she cried, so we let her keep it on all day.  

She also enjoyed sitting in this pot for another cute picture opportunity.  

How did she fit in this pot?  

We decided to dress up too.  We have a ton of costumes from past Halloween parties during our pre baby days, so Jason was Zorro and I was a pirate.  Grace loved wearing our hats.  I forgot to take a picture of us dressed up though, sorry!  I also forgot to take a picture of our living room decked out in spider webs and fake spiders.  

Grace's best friend Avery came over along with her parents Jason and Erica.  Avery was a butterfly, one of her favorite things.  When she says butterfly, it sounds like "applewhy."  

  

Bathroom Progress

A lot has happened since I last posted about the bathroom over two weeks ago!  

We have walls, a glass block window AND a floor!  The tile guy came this weekend and put up the cement board and installed the window and the floor.  We are LOVING the glass block window.  It looks really sharp and it lets in a ton of light.  There is a sad part to this story however.  The tiles we ordered for the shower did not come in at the tile store because the tile store FORGOT TO ORDER THEM!!  It will take up to a month to get them in!  We are pretty bummed, but we asked our tile guy to at least install the floor so that we can once again have a toilet upstairs.  

This is the only thing that is staying from the old bathroom.  I'm SO excited that I don't have to walk downstairs to use the bathroom anymore!  We should have the vanity and medicine cabinets in soon.  We chose a bluish green color for the walls.  No more pink!  

Fall Leaves

Gracie loves playing in the yard!

She loves it when I throw the leaves on her head.

She loves to throw them in the air too!

Hotels with a Baby

After the Tetons, we were totally pooped and had to stop for the night.  Unfortunately, we had a hard time finding a place with vacancy that wasn't ridiculously expensive.  We finally found some places that had ambiguous names like Traveler's Cove and Wilderness Hotel - I just made those up, I don't remember the actual names.  It was a gamble for sure as to the quality of these places, but we were so tired we didn't care.  The place where we stayed was pretty unique, so I just had to share some pictures with you.  

We were so exhausted that we just collapsed on the bed, so these pictures are from the next morning.  Don't you love the wood paneling and wall paper?

It even had majestic artwork complete with log-like frame.  $100 was a bargain for this place, don't you think?

I didn't take a picture of Grace's sleeping area in this hotel, but I'll show you what we figured out by the end of our trip.  On our first night on the road, we set up Grace's pack and play at the foot of our bed, did the bedtime routine, turned off the lights and got in bed.  She then proceeded to stand up in her pack and play and scream at us for... forever.  Apparently, our baby will not sleep if she can see us.  So from then on, I made sure we always had a room with a two beds so that I could do this with the extra comforter:

It took some creativity and jury rigging, but it did the trick and everyone had peaceful nights sleep.  

Driving through The Tetons

We decided to take a different route home this summer since we've driven this distance many times and because I-80 leaves a little to be desired in terms of scenery.  Jason had never seen the Tetons, and it has been 15 years for me, so we thought it was worth a detour.  

We stopped for picture opportunities of course, and we even tried to take a couple hikes.

Well it turns out that a cranky baby tired of traveling doesn't really make for a good hiking companion, so we turned back fairly quickly.  We did find this beautiful spot to sit and eat a snack, however!  

We saw just enough to know that we would LOVE to spend some real time here someday with our little family because we know we only scratched the surface of the beauty to be enjoyed here!  Even though we didn't give the park the time it deserves, I think that a $25 admission to a park is money well spent, hopefully helping to ensure it will be here in 10 years when we are back!