Mini Vacation to Liberty Hill

We finally made it to Liberty Hill this past weekend. While there, the kids enjoyed plenty of playtime with Mercedes and exploration in the woods. Matt & I had a great date on Saturday night at the Iron Cactus & Alamo Drafthouse. We also had a few photo sessions of course. On the way home on Sunday, we stopped by Inks Lake. What started as just a look quickly turned into a swimming session– clothes and all. Afterwards, we tried to stop by the Mansfield Dam but found it closed to public access.

Baby V Is Finally WalkingI

As you know, Viola has been very serious about her walker toy for the past week or two. And then she finally did it! That little stinker took her first steps on her own on Friday night, while I was out with Emma. We got her to perform a little bit for us today.

Impromtu Carlsbad Getaway

On Friday of last week, Matt said, "We should do something special with the kids tomorrow...maybe a movie or something..." And somehow that turned into a quick trip to Carlsbad Caverns. It was a trip which turned out to be a bit longer than we had anticipated- we left at 10am and dragged ourselves home at 9:30pm– but was worth the time. We did the "Big Room" tour, which involved about 2 hrs of walking. But thankfully, we went down via elevator and spared ourselves the steep descent. The kids were very excited, but it did wear them out. In fact, if you look closely at the last picture, you can see that Emma is wailing as I drag her up the path. Viola was living the sweet life, riding high on Daddy's back all day.
After the Caverns, we drove to the town of Carlsbad and had some really spicy Mexican food at Lucy's.

Baby V is 15 months old

Well, she's still not walking on her own. But she has recently begun zipping around with her walker. As you will see from the video, she is plenty agile enough for walking– she's just a big faker!
She is also giving big hugs, saying a few new words ("sister","brother", "amen"), and scribbling with crayons. These pics were taken a couple weeks ago. The video is from a few days ago.