Our Little Texan

Clare has been really good about saying Thank You and says it in appropriate situations. Tonight after dinner, she asked for ice cream. Brian fixed it and put in front of her and said, "What do you say?" She responded with "Yee Haw".

Our big announcement...

A Huge Update!

Our family has been through some exciting changes in the past few months. The biggest and most amazing is our new addition. Ian Robert Piascik was born on March 6th. He is as beautiful as his big sister! He is very laid back and a very content baby.

He wrote the book on sleeping! He loves his swing during the day and is still in the pack and play in our room at night. Which leads us to the next piece of big news... We moved to Dallas on New Year's Eve. We actually live in a town called The Colony. If you are familiar with the DFW area - it borders Frisco, Little Elm and Lewisville. Frisco is 1/2 mile from our house and we are about 3 blocks from Lake Lewisville. We live on a peninsula. We are thrilled with our neighborhood - it has walking/biking trails, a community pool, a spray park, playground and, drum roll in Brian's honor, a golf course! Brian has quite a commute to the office each day, but the tradeoff is golf and the other amenities.

We love our new house. It sits on a postage stamp which is normal for the Dallas area. It takes Brian 20 minutes to cut the grass - front and back. I'm adjusting to having the kids' bedrooms upstairs and our's down - thank goodness for video monitors. The house was under construction when we found it and we moved in 2 weeks before Ian was born. I was on modified bedrest for 4 weeks which means we're still making the house a home. My parents were here for 2 weeks, Brian's sister came for a few days and then his mom came for another long weekend. So, we're getting close - I'll feel better once our walls aren't bare.

Back to the kids... Ian is already smiling and cooing at 8 weeks (smiles started a couple of weeks ago). I've yet to get it on film though. Clare is becoming a big girl. She talks non-stop and is constantly amazing us with her vocabulary - we don't know where most of her words come from. Last night, she looked in the mirror and said, "I'm so cute." Very matter of fact.

We've been doing lots of family activities and Clare has had lots of new experiences. Brian's dad was here yesterday and we went to the Fort Worth Stockyards. I told Clare we were going to see the cows and she said, "And horses?". Yes - and horses. Then she said, "Ride a pony." She had her first pony ride a few weeks ago at Nash Farm in Grapevine and remembered. We weren't sure that she would be able to ride one at the Stockyards - we lucked out. Here are pictures of both rides.

Clare also made a new friend at the Stockyards - Big Mike, a 17 year old...

LONGHORN!!! And, yes, he's real. For $3, we could take her picture on his back. She loved it!

We realized that we didn't have a picture of PaPa with Ian, so we took this one this morning before he left. Clare had woken up at 5:00 AM (her usual wake up time is 8) and this was at 7:00, so she was a little tired.

Clare also had her first really good haircut in a long time following this picture. She even used mousse! I'll try to get a picture when she wakes up from her nap.

If you know anything about Texas, you know that you can't be a Texan without taking portraits among the bluebonnets. In an effort to indoctrinate ourselves, we had pictures of Clare and Ian done last weekend. These are the ones that the photographer sent us by email. I'm still waiting on a CD with the rest of them.