We had a fun and exhausting day yesterday! More details to come, including an awesome video of Lucas driving a race car. Until then, have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow. May you have some yummy food and a great nap!

A Day at the Beach

First of all, I would like to wish Ben and myself a happy anniversary. Seven years. SEVEN. That means we're growing up. Another sign of growing up is that I turn 31 tomorrow. Yikes.

Today we drove from the farm to Clearwater Beach. Lucas had tons of fun playing on the beach - he was much more of a fan this year than last year!
We decided to walk to the pier and Lucas started running and ran the whole way. We couldn't keep up with him, but luckily didn't lose him. Once we paid our $1.50 to get onto the pier, Lucas decided it was boring and wanted to go back to the beach.
After playing at the playground, running some more, and a long conversation with an old man, we headed to lunch at Frenchy's South Beach Cafe, which replaced my family's old fave, Julies. Ben and I both had Grouper sandwiches and they were yummy. We voted our day our best anniversary yet.
Lucas was exhausted and took a spill onto the floor from his stool before we left the restaurant. Now he has a big bump on his head... and another bump on the other side where he ran into a gas pump the other night.
Lucas managed a one hour nap as we drove to Orlando, which was nice.
He had a hard time going to sleep tonight, but I think that he's finally out... now that it's 10:00. We really needed him to get good sleep tonight, but it didn't quite happen.

Tomorrow is Disney World. My parents are flying in tonight and meeting us at our hotel. It should be fun.
Here are some pics from the trip so far...

Trip Update

Good Morning! We left for our trip yesterday morning at 9:15. I was instructed to take a baby aspirin and stop every two hours to walk around as to avoid blood clots. We HAD to stop every two hours to visit the potty, so that worked out well. Lucas was a true champ and managed to not have one fit the whole day. After a few hours, though, he did say he wanted to go home, "Let's go home. I don't want to go to Disney World anymore." Poor baby.

He did manage a little fun after dinner at the Chick-fil-A play area, so that was good. Ben was full of energy as soon as night fell so we kept driving while Lucas watched movies.

We pulled into Mobile, AL at around 11:00, argued over which hotel to stay in, and were tucked in bed by 11:45. It's almost 8:30 now and Lucas is still asleep. Poor kid has got to be exhausted.

Lucas has come down with a croopy cough/sore throat, and now Ben and I are getting it, too. We'll try to drink lots of noni and kick it in time for Mickey Mouse :).

As for the weather, it's rainy. We drove through TONS yesterday and hit a few horrible traffic jams due to road work. Thanks, Louisiana!

Lucas just woke up and says to tell everyone hello. We're gonna go get our free "hot breakfast" and then hit the road. We'll pull into the farm some time tonight...

What Happens When...

...Lucas finds the camera.

Thank goodness for big towels!

Or when you try to look through your PB&J.

More Adventures...

We've had a few adventures the past couple of weeks, so I'll get you caught up.
First off, Lucas generally doesn't take naps in his bed anymore. I can only get him to nap if he falls asleep in the car. Then I just park the car in the garage with the windows rolled down and the door open to the house, and I try to nap on the Love Sac until he wakes up. Sometimes we can bring him in and he'll fall asleep again on the Love Sac. He's very cute...

On another note, we're planning on losing the binkies after Christmas. He only uses them when he's sleeping, but he loves them and it breaks my heart a little to take them away. Let me know if you have any advice... poor little boy.

Last weekend we went to the San Antonio Temple. We got a couple cute shots of Lucas there. He mostly was excited to find nuts on the ground and have me step on them with the heel of my shoe. He also liked playing in the fountain.

This past Saturday we had wonderful weather so we decided to take a trip to Mt. Bonnel - the highest point in Austin - at a towering 785 feet. Basically you "hike" up lots of stairs to get to the top, where you enjoy a beautiful view. We had a little picnic and then walked around. It really was pretty and Lucas loved looking down onto the lake and watching the boats go by, wishing he could go for a ride. On the other hand, Ben and I looked down at the multi-million dollar houses and wished we could have one of those.

Pretty, right? Check out the shadows of the birds on Lucas in the shot on the bottom left. Pretty freaky looking...

And that's about it. Now we're preparing for our trip to Florida this weekend. We'll be driving - two days in the car - a toddler, a pregnant lady, and Ben. It's sure to be an adventure. We plan to spend a day at Clearwater Beach, Disney World w/ my mom and dad, and the rest of the time we'll be at my Grandma's farm outside of Gainesville. I haven't been in 10 years, so I'm really excited to go see where I spent the majority of my childhood vacations!

As far as a baby update.... I 'm 30 weeks now - 10 more and we'll have 2 kids! I feel fat, but I know it's gonna get so much worse. I passed my glucose test with flying colors, had my shot for being RH negative, and enjoy feeling this kid break dance inside of me. Lucas likes to talk to him through my belly button, "the baby's inside that hole" he says.
In other news, we were looking on Family Search the other night for cool family names. Instead, we discovered that genealogy work has been done for one of the lines in Ben's family all the way back to the year 6 AD. Insane, right? He's also related to Charlemagne, King Henry I, and royalty from practically every other European country. Pretty cool. We didn't find a baby name, though.

laser eyes make you dance better

The other day Ben found out he was a finalist to win Lasic surgery by The Mann Eye Institute. He submitted a video a couple weeks ago and now he just needs your votes.
Go here to find his video and vote. His video is titled, "Who doesn't want Laser Eyes, right?"
We are supposed to vote until the 25th. Thanks for your help!

Week in Review

I started to write this post on Monday to tell you all about our Halloween weekend. But then Ben emailed me about health insurance and our saga began. It was open enrollment at his work this week and they changed insurance companies, so I had some research to do. I decided to switch over since I'm about to have the baby... Anyhow, to make a painfully long story short, the Harmans are officially paying more for health insurance than their mortgage.

Then Monday night everyone got sick and within days so did all our friends who were at our house Sunday night. This week has been a real winner!

BUT, last week/weekend really was fun, so let's talk about that.

Last Thursday Lucas and I drove to meet Ben in San Antonio where he was doing a photo shoot. We got to stay in his cute boutique hotel by the Riverwalk, eat at some restaurant where Bobby Flay had a Throwdown, and feed a bagel to some ducks. We had a good time being together.

We asked Lucas where he wanted his bed to be and he chose the closet, which was good due to all the street noise downtown. It took him a while to finally settle down and go to sleep, but once he did he slept until 8:00. Here he is in his little bed.
Friday morning we ate breakfast at the hotel and Lucas impressed the guests with his vast knowledge of all things alphabet and fruit related, then we checked out and headed to the Riverwalk in search of ducks. We had a lovely walk - much nicer than the night before when the sidewalk was full of people and I was afraid Lucas would be knocked into the nasty water. We found some ducks, pigeons, and fish in need of a bagel. Although, Lucas was not a fan of the pigeons. He thought they were going to eat him, too. Then we headed back to Austin, dropped Ben off downtown, and Lucas and I went home. Lucas immediately started whining about going back to San Antonio.
Friday night was our church Trunk or Treat party. I took Lucas and Ben stayed at work. Lucas had a good time getting candy from everyone. He was tuckered out and fell asleep on the way home with his balloon sword in hand.
Saturday we had a really nice day because it was the first Saturday in weeks that we didn't have anything going on, like work, or freelance. We made waffles and had a great time together, including a nap. That night Lucas got all dressed up in his firefighter gear again and we hit the neighborhood with our friends, then attended Sandra's most fantastic Halloween bash. Lucas had so much fun this year. Trick or Treating was much easier now that he could keep up with the other kids and he understood the concept. It was a good time. Here's the evidence: