Another fun weekend

We had another good weekend. Saturday morning we got up and went to the Avery Ranch Garage Sale. I can't figure out why I don't go to garage sales more often? It's really fun. You can get some great deals!! And you can get some silly stuff for the kids for like a dollar! Who can beat that? My mom and Jerry came and Erica even snuck away from her garage sale and we all loaded up in the 'burb and cruised around Avery ranch looking for treasures! We wound up pretty much filling up the back of my suburban and I even had to make a trip back to pick up an exercise bike I got for Stu! It was awesome. I want to do it every Saturday!!

Logan bought this bike/skateboard ramp for $4 and the helmet for $1. Not bad, huh? Yeah, I know it's something else for him to break a bone on, but boys will be boys, right? (BTW, he just set the bike up there to pose for a picture. Cute, huh?)

On Sunday, we celebrated Erica's b-day by going to lunch and then coming back to her house for cake. I made her a chocolate cake and it was good (if I do say so, myself). It was a new recipe from my Kraft Foods magazines I get every few months. It turns out like a cake you'd get at a restaurant, but it's super easy! Here's a link to the Best-Ever Chocolate Fudge Layer Cake. http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/recipes/recipedetail.htm?recipe_id=91361 Here's a picture of it and some flower's I got Erica.

My mom may not like how she looks in this, but I thought it was too cute to see Ellie and Grace squeezing her like this! They love their Nonny! (That's what they call her).I just had to show this last picture. I walked out into the living room the other night to find Logan and Ellie cuddled up on the couch like this. Isn't it sweet? It's nice to see these loving moments between them, which unfortunately are too few and far between. That's what makes all the time and toil of having kids worth it, right? Now if I could only have a little more of this and less of them screaming and trying to kill each other!!

Oh yeah, I had to add one more picture. It's prince(ss) Carter. He wore around Grace's tiara the other day and he was so cute. This is the best picture I could get of him with it on. I'm not sure if Ray would like this posted or not, but I don't think he reads my blog, so who cares. It's cute!

Hope you all had a good weekend!! Bye!!

My sweet kids

This weekend was fun. We had a visit from Stu's dad on Saturday. The kids love to see their Grandpa and it's not just because he usually brings them gifts! This time it was overdue Easter baskets. We visited and went to lunch and had a great time.

We were also planning a visit to Erica's house for Dinner and so we decided to bake a cake to take along. The kids love to help me cook and this time they broke out their aprons to do it up right! We made a pineapple Angel food lush cake and it was really good. I wish I'd taken a picture of it. Aren't they cute?

We visited, ate, played and had lots of fun. Logan was such a sweet big cousin to Carter, who seems to idolize him a little bit. He played with him a lot and kept him pretty happy. His Aunt Erica even paid him for his babysitting services.

As usual, the girls played together and had a wonderful time. I'm so glad they're growing up close like Erica and I did. They always say things like, "I love Grace. She's my best friend." It's really sweet. Of course there are also times that they can be kind of cruel to each other, which is normal, but sad all the same. Just like grown up girls, they seem to have mood swings. This weekend went really nicely though.

Logan got sick again this weekend. We haven't had the best luck in the health department this school year. He was home from school Monday and Tuesday. Today he and Ellievwent back to school and I just felt a sense of calm and relief. I'm not ready for Summer when they'll both be home all the time. I need to figure out how to spend our time better, more productively. Maybe I need to sit down and schedule out some activities for the week so we're not just aimlessly wandering through our day. Anyway, I'm not ready. I still have some things on my list of stuff I wanted to accomplish with my kid-free time. Today, I decided I needed a break from projects so instead I've been doing a ton of laundry and watching Oprah (do I know how to take it easy or what?). I also decided to dedicate part of my "free time" today to blogging which I haven't done much lately. So there you have it. This is what I've been doing with my life for the past few days. Ahh, I feel better. Now I just need to work on fixing up my blog a little more. Patience, grasshopper, patience. (yeah, I know- I'm a dork!)

Templates driving me crazy!!!

If any of you have looked at my blog in the last few days, you may have noticed that my template has changed a lot! I'm in the process of re-doing my blog. Since I lost a lot of my page elements I haven't bothered to replace them until I'm sure I really like my template. So It's a work in progress. Bear with me. I still will try to post some stuff as much as possible.

Fun with Craig's list

This week has been fun! I started out just trying to continue to get organized and this weeks task was to clean out the garage. I guess I'm a bit lazy since while doing this I wanted to pretty much just wanting to give away all the stuff I didn't want rather than going to the trouble of selling it. I can't tell you how much stuff I've taken to goodwill or put out on the porch for various organizations to pick up simply because I couldn't deal with everything that went along with selling it (keeping it somewhere, organizing it to get it ready for a garage sale or something). I just wanted it gone! But, with some nudging from Erica I did decide to list a few things on Craig's list this week. Much to my surprise and delight it turned out to be not that much trouble and actually kind of fun.

I posted 3 things on Monday, the car seat, dryer and the water softener. I decided to list the water softener for free because it was given to me and I really don't know if it even works. By Tuesday when I checked my email I had about 20 emails on the water softener, about 10 on the car seat and even 1 about the dryer! I started emailing people back on Tue. On Wednesday morning I posted the play scape and the power wheels. Within about 30 minutes I had 4 people email about the play scape! Between 2:45 and 6:30 4 different people came to my house to purchase/ pick up stuff! The only thing left is the power wheels and someone emailed me today about it! It was a lot of fun and I'm so relieved to have gotten rid of all that stuff!! Yeah Craig's List!!

On a separate note, about the template I'm using- I saw Jennifer and Sammy's new templates and decided I was ready for a change. I tried to upload a new one and somehow lost a bunch of my page elements! I was very bummed as I had recently added some new stuff there. I even tried to save my old template in case of something like that. Anyway, I'm not totally thrilled with my new one, but I decided not to mess with it again until I figure out what I did wrong. Anyone thinking of doing that, beware!

The funny things they do.

Ellie was sick on Friday. Well, for a few days last week really. This is a picture of her sleeping on the couch. Even when she's sick she still looks like an angel. Too bad she can sure be a little devil. She's been giving us a rough time going to bed and waking up in the night. In fact I just had to get up and put her back in her bed right now. Also, she has wet the bed the last 3 nights in a row! She's never been much of a bed wetter. I'm hoping it had something to do with her illness which is better now and it will stop because I'm sure tired of getting up and changing sheets in the middle of the night! Not to mention washing sheets and blankets every day. We'll see how it goes.

My son loves to play with crawfish!! He's been counting down the months until spring again when they sell crawfish in a big bin in the aisle of our HEB. You get to pick them out yourself with tongs while they're all crawling around! He loves it! He plays with them right up until they go in the pot to boil. This doesn't seem to bother him much since he loves to eat them too! I feel so lucky to live in a place where we have such beautiful surroundings. We have a greenbelt behind our house with a little creek running through it. The kids love to stop and pick up rocks to throw in the water. It's lovely and I'm glad they get to experience a little bit of nature the way I did growing up. Not just a bunch of concrete and asphalt.

This is my little doll with her little doll! Too cute! Ellie picked out this outfit complete with hat and shoes to wear to the park. I told her I wanted to take her picture and this is how she posed for it completely on her own! Funny little turd!


Logan bought himself a skateboard this weekend. He used his allowance to buy it. While I feel like I can guide him on what he can and cannot buy, I don't feel like I can completely put things off limits (unless they're totally inappropriate). Which means now I get to sit around and wait for him to defy death and broken bones while he learns how to ride it! Ahh, the joys of parenthood!

It's party time!

Saturday was a big day for us. We had 2 parties scheduled pretty much back to back. First was Grace's 4th Birthday, then a family barbecue at my brother's house. We woke up and got ready to go to Grace's for her Princess party. All the little girls dressed as princesses. It was really cute. Ellie let me curl her hair and fix it really nicely. I love it when she let's me do stuff to her hair (which doesn't always happen).


We got to Erica's and played, had pizza and cake, then did the pinata outside. Erica bought a giant pizza (28 in, I think) from Rome's pizza. It was huge!!! This is a picture of it next to a regular large pizza.
Look at how beautiful Grace is in her princess Giselle (Enchanted) dress!
Austin sat with my Dad and Carter and had a great time reading a book. Aren't they cute? Austin was also pretty serious about not leaving any candy on the ground after the pinata. Such a good helper! (ha,ha) Carter liked the pinata too!

Grace also got a bike for her birthday. Here she is on her maiden voyage. She's a natural. She did great!!

That afternoon we went to my brother's house for a barbecue. His house backs up to a big greenbelt. We went out and explored. We even saw a pretty big grass snake!! Ellie loved picking flowers with her Aunt Susan. Logan followed his 13 year old cousin, Collin around the whole time. It was cute! We had a great time with our family the entire day.

I guess we overdid it a little because that night Ellie wouldn't go to sleep for a while. Later we found her asleep on the floor. That hasn't happened in years! (Hey Lisa, maybe it's going around?)