China

My parents recently went to China for a dental trip.

Here they are in Shanghai.

My dad was a huge deal there and he was doing presentations and big dinners with the mayor and everything!  This is the clinic they worked at while they were there.

They brought home some darling things for the kids.  You saw Bear's halloween costume already that they brought home.  The little girls got these cute nightgowns.

The boys got a tie.

And the girls got silk scarves.

Shelley made some awesome cookies that night that we had fun decorating.  I thought this picture was really funny because my face is funny but also because Bear and I are in basically the same pose!

Children's Museum of Houston

Our last full day in Houston we woke up and went to breakfast at Le Peep.  We had that restaurant right by our house in Dallas and were excited to see it in Houston too!

Then we went to the Children's Museum.  It was a really fun museum, Bear wanted to stay forever! 

They had the whole place decorated for Halloween and kids were even in costume doing trick or treating that night.  We didn't have Bear's costume of course so he didn't do that part.

That night we got some yummy Mexican food at Berry Hill.  Seriously the best chimichanga I've ever had!  Good way to end the trip!

The next day, Bear and I flew home and he did really well!  I think he's just used to flying now.  It was our last free flight with him since he'll be 2 this month!

I think he was really happy to get home and back to our normal routine and his own bed.

He was especially excited to see all his cousins again!

After a week and a half of restaurant food and no working out, I was THRILLED to get back to home cooked meals and my second home, the gym!!

Discovery Green

I went to check on Bear one day when he was supposed to be napping and he was just standing in his crib with his blanket on his head!  It totally cracked me up!

Neil made himself a sandwich and I couldn't figure out what was in it because it looked so weird.  He made a peanut butter, jelly, and m&m sandwich.  It was pretty good actually!

We went to a park area called Discovery Green.  It was about 85 that day and I loved being out in the sun!  They had this fun fountain area and Barrett was loving it!

There was a little playground for him to play on too.

We had a little picnic there.

Bear's other favorite thing there was throwing rocks in the pond.  We tried throwing cheerios in at the fish and ducks but they didn't eat them.  One fish actually ate it and spit it out!

Then we went home and Bear and I cuddled while he watched some Baby Einstein.

Halloween

Taking a small break from the Houston posts to post about our fun Halloween!

This picture shows Barrett last year and this year in his (so far) traditional Gymboree skeleton jammies.  He's also on the same blanket (which he now sleeps with) AND both pictures were taken in Texas (that's just a coincidence).  In the picture on the left, we were living in Grapevine (the Dallas area) and in the right, we were vacationing/visiting Daddy in Houston.  

It's so fun to see how big he's gotten!

Our Halloween was very busy and kind of crazy since Bear didn't take a nap!
We started out in his giraffe costume and went to gymnastics.

He's in gymnastics with my cousin's daughter Soleil- she's the one who was born just 1 day before Bear.

LaLa came to watch and play today too.

It was Bear's and Soleil's turn to jump together and Bear wanted to stay by my mom and Soleil wanted to come jump by me!  She was darling!

They got suckers at the end of class and didn't care too much about getting their picture taken.

In the afternoon, Bear had a costume change into his skeleton jammies and he helped clean out the pumpkins for carving.

 He really hated the guts at first,

but it didn't take long before he was having fun with it.

Next he changed into his Chinese dragon warrior costume.  My parents just got back from China and they brought him this cute little outfit.  The hat his hilarious and has a long black braid attached to it (you can kind of see it hanging over his left shoulder).

We all went over to visit Grandma GiGi, who recently fell but is looking so much better! That's Max in the scary mask if you were wondering.

Next we went to Grandma CC's.  We feel really lucky to live so close to so much of our family! Bear loves seeing his grandmas!

Next we headed to Grandma and Papa Johnson's.
Papa was given a silk Chinese outfit when he was little too!

Grandma and Bear.

Lola and Leah were over as well.  Lola was a dinosaur.

Leah was a clown and I was an Indian.

The final costume of the day was his pirate pajamas.  My mom was Harry Potter (she's not wearing her HP glasses in this pic though).

Here's the HP glasses.

We put Bear to bed and carved pumpkins.

We normally do pumpkins earlier than Halloween night, but since we were out of town and my parents were out of town too, we just never got around to it!