More Ainsley Lovin'

Don't be fooled, the actual reason I came to Texas was for Ainsley's birth, Hayden just demands a little more attention these days! Here are some pics of sweet Ainsley Kate from this past weekend!

Look at those teeny little legs!!

Sweet angelic little face

Ainsley and her LaLa

Just Keep Swimming

Finding Nemo is one of my favorite movies ever, I just love Dori!! But now my favorite little fish is Haydenbear! This girl loves to swim!! She also happens to love Nemo and we got to watch it together early Saturday morning while the rest of the house was still sleeping! This weekend my parents stayed at a brand new hotel they just opened in Town and Country Village in Houston so we took Hayden swimming. I forget the name of the hotel, so I am not a very good reference for them, but it was really cool!! I don't think their clientele is geared towards kids at the pool, as you can probably tell by the swanky cabanas in the pics below, but Hayden had a fabulous time!

Is there anything more precious than this girls smiles and laughter!?!

Hayden is so fearless, she LOVES jumping into the pool...although she is not so much a fan of her face going under water!

Testing out my new camera's underwater abilities for the first time!! Pretty cool!

Again, is there anything sweeter!?!

Hayden's fishy face

Little Miss Sassy

This is the hotel pool...not so much kid oriented, but pretty nice!

L.O.V.E.D. this mirror in the hotel

AND this chandelier is fabulous!!

Roadtrip a la Tejas!

Sunday I had to leave Houston to drive back to Dallas to work during the week. I made some pretty lofty plans for my little road trip. Sunday I was in Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas...all in one day!! I woke up Sunday morning after spending the night with Cargill and Ruffino and drove up to the hospital to see Lindsay and Ainsely one more time then got on the road about 10:30. I drove to San Antonio to visit Christina and meet baby Davis!! I am so happy that I got to see Tina and meet Davis while he is still a precious newborn!! He is only 3 weeks old and his mama looks great! It was so nice to catch up for a bit, although I was sad it had to be so short, but I had a lot of driving left to do!

Me, Davis and Tina!

I stopped off in Austin on the way to visit my aunt and uncle and was surprised by getting to see my two cousins as well! My Aunt KK had shoulder surgery last week so I wanted to stop by and see how she was doing and get a chance to catch up with every one while I was in the states! After I left Austin I was in a mad dash to make it to Dallas for the Blue October concert at the House of Blues! I made it with about 10 minutes to spare, safe and sound and no speeding tickets! It was a long day, but I was so glad to see my family and friends and I had plenty of time to enjoy a Butterfinger Blizzard and a Coke Slurpee along the way!!

****I just posted a ton of blog entries so scroll down to see what I have been up to since I got back to Texas last week!

Swim Diapers Do NOT Work Outside the Pool!

Everyone was spending all of their time up at the hospital over the weekend with Lindsay and Ainsley and hospitals are not all that entertaining for 2 year olds, especially two year olds who are not all that interested in their new baby sister! (Hayden was very cute with Miss Ainsley, but she just couldn't hold her attention very long!) So on Saturday I took Hayden to go swim at the Houstonian. They have a fantastic pool that is great for kids, we spent several hours swimming and eating out by the pool. It was such a fun day and I absolutely LOVED getting to spend some time with just me and Hayden! I think she liked it too :)

Me and Hayden all dressed and ready to go down to the pool...this is after about 15 minutes of chasing her naked booty around the hotel room trying to put her swim diaper on...she thought it was hilarious to run away from me...truth be told it was pretty funny!

The awesome pool at the Houstonian, this pic doesnt do it justice, they have two kiddy pools, a waterslide, a waterfall, a hot tub...they have it all!

Hayden loved playing in the water fountains!

Hayden and LaLa in the big pool!

This girl is truely hysterical! This is how she "swam" in the kiddie pool, she crab walked around the pool like this the entire time, it was so funny!

Hayden by the waterfall, she was scared to death of this thing at first. It was really loud and was coming down really fast, but she warmed up to it after a little bit, she really loved when I took her behind it!

Eating lunch by the pool...this is when I found out that swim diapers only work when IN the pool...she peed all over the Houstonians nice lounge chairs...oops!

Her kids meal came with a free ice cream...she picked out the biggest popsicle of course. The girl ate the entire thing and loved every second of it!!

Layin' Over in Chi-town

Thursday was a LONG day of traveling for me. I was awake for practically 26 hours, yikes! It all started off very frantic as I had overslept Thursday morning and woke up to the cab driver calling saying he was outside my flat at 5:30 am. I still needed to shower, so I asked him to wait 15 minutes and I am astonished to say that I actually showered, dried my hair and flat ironed it in 20 minutes! I had to lay over in Chicago since I was flying directly to Houston so I decided to make the most of it and opted for the 9 hour layover rather than the 2 hour so I could hang out with my friend Emily who lives in Chicago. I love the story of how Emily and I met. Two years ago I had to go to Chicago for three weeks for work and I didn't know anyone there so it was going to be a long three weeks. My friend Cole said he had met a co-workers sister who lived in Chicago and I should call her...at the time I wasn't as shameless as I am now and I was not up for calling a stranger but low and behold, about 5 minutes later my phone rang and it was Emily! We hung out the whole time I was in Chicago and I have since made several trips to hang out with her and Big Gay Buck (her chocolate lab)! It is so funny because she and I have never lived in the same city and have really only hung out a handful of times, but she is a great friend of mine now, thanks Cole!
So back to this trip.... I landed in Chicago about 10:30 am and Emily came to pick me up then we headed into the city for some day drinking, luckily there was traffic so we didn't sit down for our first beer until just after noon so we didn't have to feel too bad about it! She put me on the El back to the airport around 5pm only for my flight to be delayed about an hour. I was supposed to get into Houston at 10 pm that night, but didnt land until after 11 and they took forEVER to get the luggage out so I didn't get to the hotel with my parents until 1 am...that is 7 am London time...a full 26 hours with only a couple of short naps on my flights. Oh and I left all of my liquid makeup at security at the Chicago airport, UGH!!!

My new parking lot...I wish!

Me and Emily at Beer Bistro

Ainsley Kate Wagner

She's here!! Sorry for the delay in post, things have been absolutely crazy busy since I have got back to Texas on Thursday, but more about all that later! She was delivered Friday morning at 9:31 am. She was only 6 lbs compared to Hayden's 9 lbs. so she is so teeny!! Lindsay's c-section went much better this time around and she is healing much faster than she did with Hayden which I am sure she is very glad about. They all went home from the hospital yesterday and I am so excited to get back to Houston this weekend to spend some more time with them both! I don't have many great pics of her yet, I'll have to steal my dad and sisters pics later, but here are a couple from the day she was born! Here is the precious girl!

Yeah I Like Texas, Man There Ain't No Doubt

As you all know I like to steal lines from songs for my blog titles! I have been preparing myself for my trip home by listening to lots of Pat Green, the man loves to sing about Texas! I can't wait, I leave tomorrow morning! I have a layover in Chi-town to hang out with Wiggles and then I am Houston bound to meet my new neice Ainsley Kate when she forever graces us with her presence on Friday morning! I'll be in Dallas on the weekdays and Houston on the weekends for the next two weeks so everyone get ready for some Texas fun!

P.S. Here is my 2 cents on the National Healthcare System which I got to test out yesterday...gross, inefficient and unhelpful!

W.A.W.

In this world of text messages and twitter that we live in, people seem to have an affinity for abbreviations so I decided to make up my own. WAW...What A Weekend! I have developed a format to my weekends lately that I am thoroughly enjoying. The formats goes as such:

• Friday - come home from work, put on pj's, eat dinner in front of TV, read book, go to bed
  
• Saturday - sleep in, stay in pj's all day, read book, do some cleaning, lounge around, meet friends for dinner/drinks at a fun new place, go to bed abnormally late
  
• Sunday - go to brunch, do something fun around London with friends, come home make lunches for the week, read book, iChat, go to bed
  

I had another great weekend, true to format, this past week! Friday night, please refer to the format above as I did not deviate and it is quite boring! Same for Saturday afternoon. Saturday night I met up with Annie, Colby, Stefan, Ollie, Corrina and Annie's friends visiting from the States, Jack and Ashley. We had dinner at Floridita. It is a fantastic Cuban restaurant in Soho, they have great food and even better atmosphere. The dining room in downstairs and they have a live Cuban band and a huge dance floor. People are dancing all around your tables as you dine, it is fun fun fun! After dinner we all went to a house party in Covent Garden. They have a fabulous flat with a rooftop patio you can see all of London from! The night ended around 4 am with Shwarma and a slumber party at Annies!

Floridita

Colby, Annie, Me

Stefan, Corrina, Colby, Me, Ashley, Annie, Jack, Ollie

The next morning some of us headed to brunch at S&M...(Sausage and Mash get it!!) for a traditional English breakfast. After that we headed out to Greenwich, I was really excited about this because I haven't been to Greenwich yet and we had a beautify day to do it! We took the train out to Greenwich and hiked up the hill to the Royal Observatory, which has the best view of London. We also straddled the Prime Meridian, pretty cool. After that we took the boat back to London down the Thames. This was also my first time to do the boat ride on the Thames, what a day of firsts! I love living in a city where every day presents new opportunities!

Me & Annie straddling the Prime Meridian

Jack, Ashley, Me & Annie in Greenwich

Laurenproof

I have been on the hunt for a new digital camera, just a small point and shoot to replace my old one, since the screen randomly decided to give up on me and start over exposing everything making it impossible to take pictures! Let me just start this off by saying that this is my 5th digital camera in 5 years. One lost a mean battle with my keys in my purse, the screen on the back came out the clear loser. One lost a short battle with a glass of beer in Cabo a couple of years ago...it sunk right to the bottom. And the latest one, well I can only assume that it suffered one to many encounters with the pavement.

So in my research I came across the Olympus Mju 8000 Tough. It is waterproof, shockproof and freezeproof...basically it is Laurenproof!! I have already lost 3 cameras to 2 of the 3 "proofs" it deters (I have yet to leave my camera in the freezer, but I wouldn't put it past me!). I also thought it would be an excellent camera for my upcoming trip back to Africa to climb Kili...I'll get to test all three of them at once! I received my camera in the mail today and I am excited to put it through its paces in this little thing we call life...my life that is!

Meet my new, durable friend!