This, that and the other.

I had a few pictures that I hadn't posted in a blog yet and so this is a smattering of things I wanted to share.

First I wanted to share with you Logan's poster that he made for his turn as "Star Student". It's funny, I remember last year Ellie and Logan happened to be "student of the week" on the same week and this year it was about a week or two apart. That's a big coincidence since they choose those things randomly. Anyway, I just wanted to give Logan his due since I did a blog about Ellie's poster already. He did all the writing and drawing on the poster himself. It has a pirate theme if you couldn't tell. All those circles are gold coins!

Then I was looking back at a few pictures and realized that I never posted any pics from the Saturday Erica and I took Grace and Ellie to Market Days in Wimberly. The first Saturday of each month in the spring and summer, Wimberly has this thing called market days. It's an outdoor event with tons of individual vendor booths. They have tons of different crafty stuff. Lisa's family has a booth there and so they go every month. She met up with us and showed us around the place. We pulled the girls around in the wagon and had a great time. It was our first Mother/Daughter girls event that we've done and it was fun. The boys stayed home and had a Father/Son weekend. Yesterday Erica brought her kids over in the afternoon to play and eat pizza from Costco (yummy). Afterwards we gave the kids a bath and for a little while (about 30 seconds!) they all sat calmly on the couch watching TV. Don't they look cute?I know that it's not a very good picture of Logan and Carter, but they were wearing matching outfits (coincidentally) and I just thought they looked so cute together! Almost like brothers.
OK, I think I'm all caught up now. Bye!

Happy Easter!!!

Hi Everyone!

I hope you all had a happy Easter! We did. We went over to Erica and Ray's house for brunch and an egg hunt and wound up staying for dinner too!! The kids sure have fun together. That's something I'm really glad about. I grew up seeing my cousins almost every month at my grandparents and I always loved getting together for our family party's. I'm so glad my kids and Erica's are close in age and proximity so they can grow up together.

On Friday Logan, Ellie and I went to Erica's and dyed eggs and played all day. We wound up with 4 dozen dyed eggs! When Ray came home he was raking leaves and the kids just had to play with them so they buried Carter in a pile! It was cute!

Saturday we went to Karate and lunch, like always and then we went to Petsmart. Logan won a 1 gallon aquarium from his math-a-thon at school and we told him we'd get a fish for it. So we went and picked out a pretty blue Betta which Logan has named Zack. The tank and everything are nice, not too big or complicated. So now that ups our pet count to 5 (if you include the sea monkeys).

That evening we went to the 5pm Easter service at our church, Gateway. It was neat. They told the story of the prodigal son in a musical format using U2 songs. I love our church! It's so cool! They're always doing stuff you wouldn't expect. And they have an awesome kids program there. Free coffee, a rock band and pastors who wear flip flops- what's not to love?

Easter Sunday we woke up to find the Easter bunny had left baskets for the kids and hidden eggs all over the living room. My kids get really excited about this every year. They really liked that the Easter bunny had wrapped their baskets in plastic, thus making them seem way more special (I guess). Then we got ready and went over to the Yakes to eat and have an egg hunt. On the menu was breakfast casserole, spiral cut ham, fresh baked bread, fresh fruit, deviled eggs, memosas, pie, cookies and candy of course. The kids had a great time and so did we.

My crazy mom decided to get some chicks and bunnies for the kids to play with. They loved it of course. The chicks she got were dyed all different colors (weird, I know). She had 4 bunnies including 2 lop eared bunnies. They have to be some of the cutest things on the planet. It seems as though my mom's going to have quite the barnyard happening in her back yard!

Friday was my Dad's 71st birthday so we decided to celebrate it on Sunday when we were all together. We took the kids on Friday to Dollar Tree so they could pick him out some presents. They love doing this. They really seem to feel a sense of pride giving gifts that they picked out themselves. I made him an apple pie with splenda since he's diabetic and it was delicious!

It was a great weekend of Family and fun! Hope yours was too!!

Spring Break - Part 2

Once we got back from Houston on Wednesday, we spent the day getting unpacked and cleaning up the house. We also took the kids to the park for a long time in the afternoon to play. They had a lot of fun since a lot of the neighborhood kids were there too.

Thursday we went to the Rodeo with Erica and her family. It was fun, but pretty cold. We saw the animals in the petting zoo and walked around a little before going to eat lunch in Elgin. The kids also did the pony ride. They loved the free ice cream and the big tractors! They had a lot of fun together.

That afternoon was a lot warmer so we decided to take the kids to the playground by our neighborhood pool to play. There are sand volleyball courts there that we like to play in. The kids decided to be buried and I made them mermaid tails. Aren't they cute?

For those of you who don't understand why I sometimes say I really don't like my dog much anymore, maybe this will help. When we got back from the playground we found this in our kitchen. We don't usually leave the dog in for reasons such as this. (of course the trash can was as full as is humanly possible) Yuck!!

Friday we went to the Austin zoo with Erica and her family and my mom and her husband Jerry. That was a lot of fun too. The Austin zoo is perfect. Not too far away, not too big. You can get up close and personal to the animals. The kids favorite part of course is feeding the animals.

Ok, now that's done! We had a fun spring break, hope you all enjoyed the pics!!

Spring Break (part 1)

I'm going to have to do this in stages since I have so much to catch everyone up on. I'm going to start with our visit with Stu's family in Houston. Well, let me backtrack a little.
On Thursday night before spring break I was watching TV and I noticed I had quite a sore throat and headache. I also felt a little feverish, so I got up to take my temp and some advil. I had like 100 or something and didn't think too much of it. That night I woke up around 4 am feeling awful. I had a 102 fever. I got up and took some more medicine and then lay there awake and miserable for about an hour until I could go back to sleep. Stu had to take Logan to school, but then I had to get up and get Ellie ready for school so Stu could take her too. Then I literally spent the rest of the day in bed. I was miserable. It was awful. I laid there either sleeping or feeling so bad I couldn't move not even wanting to watch TV. The whole time I was worrying about the rest of the day. I was still supposed to watch kids after school. There was just no way. My fever never went below 101 all day, no matter what medicine I took. Stu had to come home early and pick up Ellie and then pick up the kids after school and take care of them for me. I was very grateful to have him be able to fill in for me like that. It was the first time that I've needed a "sub " and hopefully the last. At least for a while. The good news was that by Saturday morning the fever, which had gone up to 104 overnight was gone. I felt sooo much better. We were supposed to leave for Houston Saturday afternoon, but decided to wait until Sunday morning to leave instead.

So Sunday morning we left. We had fun in Houston. We went for a walk Sunday afternoon on a trail behind Stu's mom's house. While we were walking the kids picked flowers and we even found a turtle. It was so cute. The kids named him Timothy. We carried him back down to the water and let him go.

We also went to the playground by Grandma's house. The weather was great and the kids had a great time playing.

We also got to play Stu's brother's Wii. It was really fun and of course Logan wants one for his birthday. We'll be accepting donations to raise the money for it. Ha ha. Just kidding... maybe. We all played the bowling game one night. It was great and Logan beat me, Stu and Grandma. When we get one (notice I say when and not if) we'll have to have girls night here and play. It's a blast!

We also got to visit Stu's grandparents. Yes, he still has all of his grandparents. Lucky, I know. We visited Grandma Cindy's parents MeMaw and Paw Paw. They're great people and love the kids a bunch (0f course). We went to a restaurant in Tomball called Mel's. They have great food (burgers and home style food). The kids both had chicken and dumplings, yummy! Too bad I didn't take my camera.

Logan, Stu and Stu's dad went to a Rockets game too. They had a great time.

Our trip to Houston turned out very well. We love visiting all the family there. The kids really look forward to going to Grandma's house. Can't wait until our next trip!!

I'm still alive!!

I am planning on posting again (hopefully tonight)! I just took last week off- completely! I didn't get on the computer at all, not even to check email. I don't know why. I guess at first it was because I was sick Friday and Saturday. Then Sunday through Wednesday we were in Houston, so there's no blogging to be done there. Then I just didn't feel like it. So now I feel like it's been forever and I have tons of pictures and stories to share. I just wanted to post something really quick so you'd all know I was not out of the blogging business for good!!

Babies, babies everywhere!!

As most of you know we have had a big crop of new babies in our small group of friends very recently. Last night I got to see some of them for the first time. It was nice to see all these new faces that had just been big bellies up till now.

I got to see Jacob and his lovely mommy Sammy. And Madelynn and her lovely mommy Jennifer. I was too late to see Adam since his mommy Samantha had to go home early to take care of his big sister Madison who was sick. (I hope to see him soon) The lovely Lily was there too, although she was asleep the whole time that I was there.

It was nice to get together and talk and laugh about all the things that go along with having newborns. It was a trip down memory lane for me as it's been 3 1/2 years since I've had one and 6 1/2 since I had my first. It does have a tendency to make you start to think if you want to have another one. We'll have to see about that. I've already decided that if I do, I want to wait until Ellie's in Kindergarten and definitely not have another summer baby. Lisa's trying to convince me to have another one when she does (pretty soon). That's not going to happen, but I'm not completely ruling out the idea of a 3rd. Maybe it's because I'm the 3rd child and the thought of not having a 3rd means I woudn't be here. I don't know. It depends which day you ask me as to what my answer would be. Like I said, we'll see.

Have no fear, Barack's still here!!

That's right. For all the big headlines that Hillary's making about "winning" 3 out of 4 primaries, the truth is that's nothing has really changed. Here's a quote from an email I received from the Obama campaign.
Our projections show the most likely outcome of yesterday's elections will be that Hillary Clinton gained 187 delegates, and we gained 183.
That's a net gain of 4 delegates out of more than 370 delegates available from all the states that voted.
The task for the Clinton campaign yesterday was clear. In order to have a plausible path to the nomination, they needed to score huge delegate victories and cut into our lead.
They failed.
I think that pretty much sums it up! Obama's still our man. Have faith everyone!!! Stay strong and true to the path that we are treading. It's a long road, but together we can do it!!

I'll admit, yesterday morning I was a little disheartened by all the press saying, "Hillary did it, she won Texas and Ohio, she's still in it!" The truth is (as I stated above) that it's much more complicated than that. I'm just upset that the Democrats are going to be warring with each other for a lot longer. I'm tired of that and I think it weakens the Democratic nominee whoever it turns out to be.
The last few weeks have been tiring. It's hard to watch all this unfold when you start to really care about one of the candidates. I can only try and imagine what the candidates themselves and their families must be going through. And the thought of this going on for 8 more months is awful. That's why I was really hoping Tuesday would end it for Hillary and we could move on to a real debate with McCain.
Ok, that's enough about Obama for a while. I just felt like I needed to sum up my feelings and the truth about what happened in Tuesday's primaries. I promise my next few blogs will be about my family and not politics!!