Caroline Pulled Herself Up

Caroline pulled herself up to a standing position for the first time! Amy and I believe she could have done so weeks ago and that she just needed the proper motivation. Well, she was properly motivated today.

I was sitting on the couch with Caden in my lap and Caroline sitting next to me. Caroline reached up towards Caden's mouth wanting to take his pacifier. (Sadly, doing so is one of her favorite pass times.) However, she was unable to reach it. The next thing I know, she put her hand on my leg, which was below her shoulder level, and quickly pulled herself up to a standing position!

From a standing position, Caroline was easily able to steal Caden's pacifier. I wasn't sure if I should praise her for standing up or tell her "no" for stealing her little brother's pacifier.

Caden Has Another Tooth!

This is Caden's third tooth to appear and the matching tooth on the other side is about to poke through as well. Thankfully, Mommy found this one. She had been feeling left out of the tooth finding experience.

Caden's new tooth is on top. It is the first top tooth for either of our kids. His previous two teeth were his bottom/middle teeth. Caroline has those two teeth as well. Oddly, Caden's new tooth is not one of the two top/middle teeth. We think it is the one next to that tooth but it might even be the one next to that. Either that, or Caden is going to have the worlds largest gap between his middle two teeth! :)

With Caden's only top two teeth coming in so far apart, I think it is safe to call them fangs! :) I like calling him my little vampire. Mommy does not enjoy Daddy calling Caden that. Maybe I'll start to call him Spike. That also fits since Caden's hair is starting to become a little spiky.

BBQ in Lockhart

I love going to random BBQ joints. I'm probably a little bit of a BBQ snob (and definitely a BBQ sauce snob). Before the twins came, every time Amy and I went to Dallas, I would pick a random BBQ place to stop at. We tried a lot of good places. But since the twins arrived, we haven't done something like that.

That changed Saturday.

I've heard a lot about how good the BBQ is in Lockhart and I've wanted to go for years. I've even seen multiple Food Network and Travel Channel TV shows on places in Lockhart. I convinced Amy that we should make a short road trip to try it out. On Saturday, the four of us and our friends, the Markums, drove down to Lockhart for some good Texas BBQ.

Our main destination was Smitty's Market but we also stopped by Kreuz Market to try out a few things there. Smitty's is a little more "hole in the wall" but it is still a good size place. Kreuz is very large and more commercial feeling. We all ate a ton of BBQ and everything at both places was awesome. If I had to pick which place was the best, I think I'd have to say Smitty's. I loved their sausage and brisket.

Here we are posing in front of Smitty's.

And here we are with the meat. I promise we brought Caden inside. He just was on Amy's other side.
Our friend's, Matt and Alica.
After finishing off everything you saw above, we decided to try Kreuz. You can see that the place is much larger.
I hope going to some good BBQ places becomes more of a regular event. I'm thinking the next trip will be to Cooper's BBQ in Llano.

First Time Swimming

Ever since the twins were born, Amy has been looking forward to taking them swimming. When I got home from work on Friday, we decided to finally do so. The four of us put on bathing suits and two of us put on swimming diapers. We covered ourselves with sunscreen, grabbed a whole bunch of towels and headed to the community pool. We were very excited!

When we got to the pool and started to get in the water, our first thought was "this water is a lot cooler than I thought it would be." We decided to play in the pool anyway. It wasn't that cold and we figured the kids would get used to it. I took Caden and Amy took Caroline.

After getting in the water, I immediately blew in Caden's face to make him hold his breath and I dunked him under water. Amy thought I dunked him way to deep but the pool was only four feet deep and I thought he should touch the bottom. Ok, not really. I probably put his head six (maybe twelve) inches below the surface. He didn't mind being dunked at all. I tried it a few more times and he even enjoyed it as long as I made him fly out of the water.

I then traded Caden for Caroline. Amy couldn't build up the nerve to put her face under water but I obviously had no problem. Caroline dealt with going under water just like Caden.

Here are a few of the pictures from our swimming adventure. It was very hard to take good pictures while trying keep the kids head above water, keep the camera dry, and avoid the older kids that kept jumping into the pool (who I think were trying to splash us).
We were probably in the water for ten minutes before the kids started shivering and we decided it was time to leave. I think the kids favorite part of the experience was being pushed around the pool as quickly as we could do so. But honestly, I'm not sure when we'll do it again. It was like 45 minutes of prep time for 10 minutes of play and I think the twins would have had more fun in the bath tub. :)

Baby Dedications

We've been really busy lately and our blog has been neglected. I'm going to try to get back on track. A lot has happened since our last post including our twins were dedicated at our church on Mother's Day.

At Grace, babies are brought on stage and introduced to the congregation. Then, the senior pastor prays for them individually while baby pictures are displayed on the large monitors for all to admire.

Amy's parents and her brothers family all made it for the occasion. My family could not make it. It was the weekend before my sister's wedding and they were busy trying to prepare for that. I'll attempt to write a blog post on her wedding later but spoiler alert, everything went well and my little sister got married.

This is a picture of us onstage for the dedication.
These are the three pics that were shown on the screen during Caroline's dedication.
Here are the pics that were shown for Caden.
I missed most of the prayer when I was up on stage. It sure went by fast and I was just trying to keep Caroline from cracking up. (She really wanted the mic and/or the pastor's note card.) But thankfully, Amy's brother recorded it for us so I got to hear the prayers.



After the dedication was over, we all headed back to our house to celebrate Mother's Day and the dedication with some Rudy's BBQ. It's not your traditional Mother's Day lunch but it sure was delicious.