Dog Days of Summer

If you live in Texas, you know it's hot in the summer. But it's been really hot lately. Kayleigh LOVES to be outside, so it has been awful for her to have to be cooped up, but it's just too hot. We are supposed to lay off the chlorinated water because her skin was starting to get sensitive to it, so the pool is out for now. Here are some of the ways we've been staying cool and getting energy out inside.

Grandma and Grandpa did get her a little pool that we can use since there's no chlorine in it.

Oh, does the sand not go in the pool?

Playdough!

Green!

Practicing letters

Making shapes

'Swimming" in  Mommy's big tub.

Splash

"Cool Water"

Stinker

We brought the slide portion of the pool inside.

"Seehorsey go salad" (read- Seahorse goes down the slide)

Peek a boo!

The incredible hulk baby

Spinning round and round to get dizzy

Dancing a jig

Crawling and pretending to be a lion

Having daddy spin me

Running really fast!

Sitting on my penguin?

Playing with my tunnel

Sweet girl

The tunnel would work much better over here, mom.

And Coloring:

We don't have enough colors, mom.

Working on sight words...kidding :)

Is it October yet? 

My New Best Friend

Meet 'Nose'.

Yes, that's a Jack-In-The-Box snowman antenna ball. Kayleigh found this in a box of stuff when I was unpacking. She climbed over me and a pile of her real toys to retrieve it. She immediately named it 'Nose' and their friendship blossomed from there. When it was time for her nap the first day they met, I took away Nose. Mean mommy, but that thing is over 10 years old and I'm sure it was made in China. After I put her down for nap I stuck Nose back in the box and stuffed the box back in the closet thinking she would just lose interest. When she woke up from nap the first words I heard out of her mouth were "Mommy, where go Nose?" I pretended like I didn't understand. Then she spent the next 20 minutes running around the house yelling "Nose, where are you????" Again, I figured she'd lose interest eventually. Wrong. I finally caved and retrieved stupid Nose from the box. She was elated. Nose has been a regular at playtime since then. She pushes him in her stroller, she shares her food with him, and she just generally enjoys his company. She was very excited to see a whole aisle of 'Noses' (snowmen) at Hobby Lobby in the Christmas section.

My Buddy and me!

Life in Little Elm

Okay, so now we’re here and settled and we love it. Frisco is such a neat area. The whole city is extremely family oriented. It’s amazing and I can’t even really explain it but it’s sooo different than San Antonio. I was really excited to be SO close to shopping. Since we’ve moved to New Braunfels in 2008, we were kind of far from any real shopping (besides Target, Kohl’s, or JCP). The closest mall was Rolling Oaks (barf) and even that was 20 miles away. Now we have shopping a few miles away, everything from Ikea, the mall, Sam Moon, you name it! I’m loving it! Here are a few things we have explored since we’ve been here.

First of all, our neighborhood has several parks, walking trails, lakes, and 4 pools. One pool has a spray park too.

K swinging at our park in the neighborhood

K riding the 'Tooey' at the pool



My little water baby

  

 



Here’s K feeding some ducks in our neighborhood ponds/walking trails. This is the same place that we released the HUGE turtle that we found on our porch. Random. So now when we drive by this pond K has to remind us of the “Tooey in the water”.





The City of Frisco also has a few spray parks nearby that we’ve checked out. K is such a water baby. Almost every day she asks to see the ‘cool water’. Which could mean either the spray park, pool, or lake. On this visit, K was obsessed with picking the flowers from a clover patch in this field and putting them in the water. This started a trend with a few other toddlers at the park (which was hilarious because K was totally oblivious to the other kids, whose parents were calling them to come back).

Picking flowers in the field

We also are extremely close to Lake Lewisville. In Little Elm they have a sandy beach set up by the lake. K loved playing in the sand. We didn’t swim though because she didn’t have any floaties. We did get to model our bikini though. We have since purchased some sand toys from the dollar store that we haven’t had a chance to try out yet.  

Our closest mall, Stonebriar, has a carousel in it and K asks to “Ride the SHEEES” (horsies) every time we go.

We got to visit two 4^th of July festivals. The first of which was called Allen USA in the city of Allen. They had the lead singer from the band Foreigner to serenade the crowd.  They had a million things to do and it was completely free. K got  to meet the Chick Fil A cow and got a Balloon bear (if you know Kayleigh, you know she LOVES balloons and animals). The lawn in the park was pristine, nice soft golf-course style grass. We didn’t really know what to expect but it was awesome. The cool thing, which would’ve made us mad a few years ago, was the festival was completely alcohol free (i.e. family friendly, no drunk a-holes). K stayed up the latest she’s ever stayed up (10:00) to see her very first firework show! She loved it, she must have gotten that from her daddy. She kept calling them “Fire-trucks”.

snack time

So, so, so excited to see the cow from Chick-Fil-A

First time watching fireworks!

The following weekend we went to Frisco Freedom Festival, in the town square. This festival wasn’t as big as Allen USA but it was also family friendly. We were smart this time and brought the iPad for K to watch some cartoons while we waited for fireworks (yes, it’s cheating. I know).

We also checked out a Wildlife Ranch called Sharkarosa- as seen on Dirty Jobs! K’s favorite part of the day was the ride on the Choo-choo and the Joeys. The Joeys were the most boring animal there, they just hung around and slept in the artificial pouches but K loved them. They take you out on a ride through their pastures and attach feed buckets to the side of the ‘train’ so the animals come up REAL close and personal. We saw a Zonkey (Zebra and Donkey mix)! K made friends with a camel.

Checking out the Joeys

A few weeks ago we went to the Fort Worth Zoo, which everyone says is WAY better than the Dallas Zoo we visited back in December. My Aunt Rita met us there and K had a blast. She loves animals so much and she loved hanging out with “Walla” which is what she’s named Rita. 

This past weekend my parents visited us for the first time since we've moved. We took K to the Children's Aquarium in Dallas. K LOVED seeing the turtles and petting the sting rays.

I'm gonna touch a sting ray!

Hi, sea turtle!

Huge fresh water turtle.

I can touch these, right?

We’ll share more as we visit more places. Kayleigh definitely gives it 2 thumbs up. She has had SUCH a blast.