To Evette

It is Sunday, I left home at 6 pm for a church meeting. I won't see you again until Thursday night or Friday morning because I'll be working in Seattle this week. There is no method through which I can convey to you how much I'll miss holding you, tickling you, and kissing you over these few days, at least none that I'm aware of. Yet, even though you're only 14 months old, you knew what my departure tonight meant. You were heartbroken when you saw me heading for the door and you let me know. I backed away from the door and scooped you up; you gave me a tight hug with your short precious arms and held me for a while. I pulled away and you gave me one of your wonderful, perfect kisses.

You melt my heart in a million ways, and every day brings a new one. We spent a lot of time together today, my favorite being the time we spent chasing each other during the third hour at church. The fiery excitement I see in your eyes sends my heart aflutter. Your trusting embrace brings me to my knees. I love you sweet child, with feelings I never knew could be experienced by man. Thank you for being my daughter. Thank you for being my friend.

Gratefully yours,

Dad

{One Cute Day}

Today was an especially adorable day for Miss Evette. 

She had many pictures taken as I tried to bottle up the sunshine that was radiating from her whole self all day today.

{Our life in pictures}

Sorry I'm to lazy to actually blog so I'll just mainly put up pictures instead - that's all that really matters anyways.

Christmas is up

Evette has learned how to color!

Rocking the skinny jeans with momma

Went to a Mavs game - "go my favorite sports team!"

Hanging out at the park

Went to one of our SS boy's gymnastics meets. He's so great!

Brenden and Natalie stayed with us for the weekend while they were visiting UNT

Evette is a star at playing the tuba.

We had our first snow!

Beautiful baby :)

{Cozumel}

Our last cruise stop was on Cozumel.

We rented a little boat and crew for 3 hours and went out snorkeling. Awesome.

They had these little "houses" to help the fishes/reef build back up after a big old hurricane a couple years ago. Coolness.

We did 2 snorkeling stops - Grandma stayed behind on the first one to watch this little booger and I stayed behind on the second.

After the snorkeling we had a delicious lunch and then headed over to go parasailing. Evette was pretty worn out after the long day and long week of cruising so Evette and I cut out early to go shower and take a nap on the boat.

How cute are these guys?

I told the husband I wanted a new mexican house dress and since I had to cut out early with the Babes that put the husband in charge of it. He did a fabulous job! I couldn't have picked out a better one! Way to go, husband!

Amazing cruise.

{Roatan}

Our next stop was Roatan, Honduras. We decided to head to Gumbalimba Park. Our first adventure was to go on the zipline. Since the cute little Evette was too cute and too little to do the zipline she joined Megan and I in the park while the rest of the family went down the zipline. This was a big zipline with lots of stops- took like 30-40 minutes to go down it. After the family was done then Maggie and I handed off the Babbs and went for our turn on the zipline.

We were so lucky because we were with a small group - just us and one other couple so we got lots of attention. We also got to do tricks like the superman:

and we also got to ride upside-down for a little bit like this guy:

It was awesome!!!!!

After ziplining we went snorkeling. I'm not going to lie - this was pretty scary for me. We swam out to the reefs instead of taking a boat and it freaked me out to be that far away from the beach with nothing but a tiny little life jacket. We did have a guide with a lifesaver but it was still pretty crazy.

Grandma Kristen volunteered for Evette duty. They played in the sand and in the water. Evette found a dinglehopper in the ocean - what a little mermaid. We saved it as a memento. 

Once we got in from snorkeling we took Evette out in the water for a swim. She absolutely loved it!

We grabbed some lunch.....

and then went to go look at the wildlife! Evette, Megan, and I saw all of this while the rest of the family was on the zipline but we were more than happy to go back and do it again. Evette wasn't too thrilled when we went to go see the monkeys, especially since one of them pulled her hair, but after time she got more used to them.

She mostly like playing with rocks.

That day was pretty draining. Evette slept the majority of the way back to the cruise ship.

Roatan was, in my humble opinion, the most beautiful stop we made!