It All Started with a Little Skittle...

Anyone who knows Gabby knows she is a crazy cat baby and that is no exaggeration.  She believes she can speak cat, chooses clothing with cats on them, calls her cat, Lila, her sister, wants to be a cat babysitter when she grows up, and literally has at least 100 toys that are cats.  This girl is obsessed and has been since she was two.  Any time we ask her what she wants as a gift her answer is always a cat. Well her dream came true one day recently.  I kept dropping not so subtle hints that cats were only $5 at the SPCA.  One day Michael said lets go look at kittens. I literally thought he was just thinking Gabby would be in kitty heaven and we were going to look, but when we arrived Michael kept saying things as though we had decided to get a kitten. So after a very long wait we went and looked at hundreds of cats and kittens, but little JJ Watt stole her heart the moment she saw him and that was it we had found our newest family member. ...

 Father's Day was a relaxing day.  Michael has been working extremely hard building things at the escape room.  We decided to spend the day with his best friend.  It was a fun and relaxing day enjoying the kids and cooking burgers.  I think these pictures depict our day: I think Gabby knows that she is so blessed to have such a loving, caring, involved fun Daddy.  I know that I am lucky to have such an amazing partner sharing this crazy life of parenting and making memories.  We love you Michael and we both feel so blessed for the ways you choose to so your love.  You make our lives amazing.  Love you.

One evening while eating dinner at Texas Roadhouse (our usual on Friday nights so we can see Daddy for an hour while he’s working) Gabby saw Olympic swimmers on the television and said I want to do that.  Michael and I have been wanting Gabby to become less fearful of the water and a stronger swimmer so we immediately agreed that becoming a swimmer was a great idea.  Two weeks later I had all of the information needed and we were signed up for the neighborhood swim team.  Little did I know how intense summer swim team would be! To be allowed on the team you must be capable of swimming across the entire 25 meter pool, there is no time limit and you are allowed to hold on to the rope as much as you need.  Gabby made it across the pool in about 2 minutes, 20 seconds with a lot of encouragement from the coaches and a lot of holding onto the ropes and taking breaks.  I must add that the evaluation was in April and it was cold, but she never even mentioned the t...

Gabby's dance recital theme this year was "Texas."  Gabby's tap and jazz class chose "Deep In the Heart of Texas!"  Gabby worked extremely hard to learn her dance over the past two months and I must say she did amazing! I loved watching her put on a big smile and shake her hips in her tutu while pumping her heart in the dance.  She did very well and seemed so confident while performing on stage (although that wasn't truly the case). Yesterday at the dress rehearsal Gabby heard people laughing (because her dance is so stinking adorable) and Gabby was very upset that people were laughing at her.  I calmed her down after ensuring her everyone loved their dance and were just being interactive because they were enjoying singing along \the song and clapping when while singing.  They ran through their dance twice on stage and did amazing the second time, but I think the fact that they ran through their dance twice made Gabby feel like they we...