Little rascals

I'm playing catch-up with the blog....I've been trying to finish a Shutterfly photobook (which had to be done by yesterday) and I attempted to figure out the process of protesting our property taxes. I spent all this time and learned so much about it, all to end up deciding to call a tax firm to do it for us! They'll keep half of whatever they get back for us, but I realized that they probably have a better chance than I do of successfully lowering our appraised value this year. It was crazy....the value of our house went up by over 12% from last year! Unfortunately, our zip code was raised across the board by that amount....it was one of the highest zip codes in Houston, in terms of increase in property value appraisals. Wonderful!

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the week before last (the week of Grant's 18-month birthday). Backyard picture on the swing:
He loves to pick the red/yellow lantana. It's really sweet of him, but I don't want all the flowers to go away! Thankfully I can usually divert him and ask him to pick one of the white weeds that grow in our yard!

We had spaghetti one night.....Grant likes spaghetti! Of course he gets really messy, but I wouldn't expect anything else. And if there's something aside from cheese and chocolate that he wants to eat, I'm willing to clean up the mess!


On Sunday the 18th, we went to our neighborhood pool for the first time. We went in late afternoon and I didn't wear my swimsuit. Neither did Dean, but we should have! Grant played for a few minutes in the baby pool, but he mostly wanted to run around and watch the big kids swimming in the big pool. I think he'd really like to swim around it with us. We haven't had a chance to go back yet....maybe next weekend.

Grant likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches now! And he doesn't even need them cut up anymore....he looks like such a big boy when he eats them! But I've created a bad habit of sometimes giving him one when he's not in his highchair, and he always takes off running with it....usually straight into the dining room. For some reason he seems to enjoy eating behind the dining room table! I have to really keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't get jelly everywhere!
Here he is after he's finished, hiding in one of the corners of the table. This is his only hiding place....he thinks he's so sneaky when he runs back there and crouches down like this!