We attended a family wedding on the beach this past weekend. After the ceremony the girls had some playtime in the sand and water. They loved it! Emily did lose her footing while a wave was passing and got a little wet. I think it added to the play! Julia enjoyed the sand and water. Her Mother even let her put a little of it in her mouth.

The girls were just playing together on the couch having fun and watching some TV together. Emily was doing a little cooking on the side and eating pretend food from a stacking cup. Sweet times!

Our daily life changes as often as Julia does, but we enjoy it. Our morning routine when we are spending it at home is pretty relaxed and full of play, cartoons, jammies, and breakfast. Emily will ask for breakfast when she is ready and Julia wants to eat just about an hour after her morning milk.

Emily’s breakfast options are generally waffles, eggs, cereal, toast, bagels (if we have them), or oatmeal. She goes through periods of favoring each of these options. She has only recently started to eat cereal with milk. It is a trick to learn to use a spoon for cereal and milk. She hasn’t mastered it, but she enjoys the food even though it is messy and requires help sometimes. We got Chinese soup spoons to help her hold the milk and food a little bit safer for the trip from her bowl to her mouth. She likes her special spoons and likes having a little more success.

Julia’s breakfast options are yogurt, oatmeal, baby food with baby cereal, or bits of Mommy’s breakfast. Julia has started to eat a lot of finger foods, but breakfast doesn’t have much self feeding. She likes to pull chunky bites back out of her mouth to redeposit it back in. It is like she wonders what she is feeling in her mouth so she wants to touch it with her fingers. When we eat the yogurt she makes the funniest faces. I wonder if the taste of the yogurt encourages it or if she is just having fun playing. She also figured out how to sip/slurp yogurt from the spoon. It’s funny, but she hasn’t repeated it with anyone around other than Emily and I. She also snacks on Cheerios, baby food puffs, and rice cereal when I’m finishing my breakfast.

These are some of my favorite photos from Bryce National Park. So many good memories!

This is one of the moments that I wish we had been able to photograph, but life has to happen at its own pace and we were without camera at this one. Twenty-one years ago when my family took a similar trip to the one we were taking we made a stop at this crazy restaurant in Amarillo called the Big Texan. It was very memorable and entertaining. I wanted Robby to experience this phenomenon of a restaurant that I had told him stories of. No joke, if you are capable of eating 72 oz of steak in one hour you get the meal free. If you fail you have to pay for your dinner. They now even have a webcam to broadcast the people who are attempting the feat.

For our visit, we were seated up in the balcony which gave us a great view of the restaurant. There was one gentleman attempting the 72 oz challenge, but he was unsuccessful. Emily enjoyed watching a cowboy band work their way around the dinner floor entertaining everyone table by table. She informed the waiter that she wanted ‘mac-cheese’ for dinner immediately at his approach. She received a cowgirl hat with her meal which she thought was awesome! The hat was so distracting that she really didn’t eat much of her dinner. She thought she was big stuff.

Part way through our meal the cowboy band, which did have one cowgirl musician, visited our table. I sat racking my brain for a few minutes trying to think of a song for them to play for us. Then I remembered ‘Home on the Range’! I made the request and Emily’s eyes lit up. She was so pleased as they played and sang the song to her. When they were finished she thanked them for singing ‘her’ song. It was really sweet.

That evening was perfect – I got to relive a fond memory, I was entertained with a great dinner, I was able to introduce this odd restaurant to my family, and Emily had such a great time. Since we have visited The Big Texan, we officially have a cowgirl in our house.

How cool is it when your Dad climbs up a ladder and lets you look back out. This storage room was a little bigger than the other ones we were able to enter and allowed for a little exploration. While we visited at Bandelier, Emily had the freedom of hiking and riding in the backpack. She got quite a kick out of getting to go up with Robby and taking a peek back out.

You always meet interesting people when you are out hiking. We hiked up to a family of five on the trail with their two-year old son lagging behind. He didn’t seem very motivated to keep up with his family . . . but when he saw Emily hiking on the trail he found motivation to keep up with our family. I figured that his family would be grateful that he was catching up, and then when we passed them and he kept up with us talking with Emily and I. I don’t think he was going to give his own family a second consideration so we slowed down and let them catch back up with us. His mom convinced him to hang with them again. It was really cute to see how kids relate and are so comfortable with other little people like themselves.