Visiting folks

A few pictures from our trip to SE TX in early January.

Hannah with Rhonda


Hannah and Kennedy


Me, Hannah, Rhonda, Nicky, and Aunt Matalee


While there we visited my childhood friend, Lisa, and met one of her daughters, Abby. Hannah is not mad about being there, she's mad because we made her stop playing to take a picture!


Hannah and I went to visit Clint and Nicole and to meet Khale and Emily. Hannah was mildly interested in the babies, but very interested in all the baby toys.


Amy and Eric came over as well so of course we needed a group picture. This time Eric was sad to stop playing.


Pete and I went to eat with Stacia and John, and Taryn and a friend of hers. Stacia, Taryn and I took an obscene number of pictures of ourselves. A few of them we even liked!






Drinking our margarita flavored tequila. If you run out of margarita mix you can apparently just reverse the amounts, according to John!




On the way home we stopped at our park again. Hannah tried out the big girl swings.


And the merry-go-round with Nah-ma.


And a really tall slide.


She did not get on the see-saw like last time.

You may have noticed the beads that Hannah is wearing in a lot of the pictures since Christmas. They are kukui nuts from Hawaii. Mom gave them to her for Christmas and Hannah would happily wear them 24 hours a day if she could. Occasionally it seems that she's being nice as she takes them off and offers them to you, but she's a tease. If you reach for them she snatches them back, puts them on, and laughs and laughs.

Words, words, and more words

Hannah is becoming quite a conversationalist. I can no longer count how many words she says, but some of the newer ones are sky, tree, shoe, sock, spaghetti-o (uh-oh pa-get-te-ooooo), agua (for water), Mattie, and bless you. She's putting more and more words together and is very good at telling the dogs no (Pablo, no! Mattie, no! Guster, no!) She is not very good at explaining herself when she's upset and prefers to throw herself over backward while screaming.

Dad and I took Hannah to the park at Southpark Meadows today (sorry, no pics this time) and she was hilarious. She's really improved at climbing, but she's a shorty. She probably could climb the ladders if she were just an inch or so taller. The steps are all a little too big for her. But the slides are very manageable. And she loves to slide (wheeeeeeee!)

This evening right before bed time Hannah heard her Papi outside thru the open window. He was speaking to our neighbor and the were using Spanish. She became very excited and ran to the door yelling. Once we got outside and she saw who was there she calmed down a lot and had no interest in them. I'm pretty sure she thought her Abuela Keta was here. She knows Papi speaks Spanish to Abuela but hasn't quite figured out that he can speak it to other people too. Still, it was pretty cool to see that she is aware of the two different languages. We've noticed that her baby talk is different when she is "talking" in Spanish than English, which is also very cool. I'm not counting on her being fluent in two languages since she hears English so, so much more, but I hope we at least provide her with enough of a familiarity that she can pick it up easily later on if she chooses.

A new camera!

Mom and I went to Salado today with Grandpa and came home to find that Pete and Hannah had bought my Christmas present while we were gone. I insisted they give it to me right away, it's a dSLR, a Canon Rebel XT! We went to Southpark Meadows to buy a card for it and then to the playground area to watch the light show. I didn't see much of the show because I was having too much fun with my camera!








Hannah is signing for more tater tots.

More bath fun!

Busy day

Hannah and I met some friends today at Southpark Meadows. As usual Hannah loved the slide. This time she got to slide with her friend George.


Hannah, Campbell, and George played the drums.

The slides are the very most fun.

Do you know that this is a "tee taw"? Hannah loves to tee taw, especially with her friend Campbell.

Green girl













I absolutely did not expect her to make it up, but I promise these pictures are taken back to back with no one going to help her at all!

Later in the afternoon Hannah, Pete and I went to meet Mom and go to North Pole Village. NPV is a community event that is done near Mom's house. There is a "village" in the community center. You can go to the "petting barn" (puppies from the animal shelter), the "bakery" (decorate cookies), "school house" (make a tree ornament), "library" (get a book to keep), "post office" (write and mail a letter to Santa), "toy shop" (choose a stuffed animal to keep), and several more places including pictures with Santa.

We skipped Santa pictures since facial hair is really scary. We took Hannah to the end of the line, pointed out Santa and asked if she wanted to go see Santa. She shook her head and emphatically said "NO!"

Decorating cookies

Choosing a book with Grandma

Finding the perfect stuffed dog (with a belly button)

After that the camera batteries died, but se had a lot more fun!

Ga-pa and Nah-ma

Mom had a vacation day that had to be used so she had a rare Monday off today. She and Dad came to see Hannah, and maybe me too.

After lunch at Jason's Deli Hannah and Dad entertained Mom and me with their carefully choreographed dance routine.

Green baby!

Ahoy Mates!

Hannah was moving really fast, but I finally caught her playing the drums.

Ready?

That was fun!

Let's go again!

San Marcos Park

It was a beautiful day and Pete and I decided to take Hannah to the San Marcos park for a picnic.





Hannah did lots of exploring.


And tried to get into the river.


Next we found a slide on the playground.


But it was way too big so we found a better one.


There was a big hole at the bottom, but that was ok.


Hannah and I climbed up high.


And then Hannah just climbed,


and climbed,


and sat a minute,


and climbed some more.


She made some cute faces too.




Here Hannah is practicing her Uncle Brian face. Tongue must be out in order to concentrate fully.


We left the steps for the swings. Hannah pitched a nice little fit over leaving the steps, but we had been there for nearly 30 minutes. She didn't like the swings nearly as much.