Books, Books and More Books

Wow, it has been so long since I've blogged! What's up with that?  But I'm back and I'm committed to keeping a "journal" of our everyday life.  It helps keep my family in Guatemala and San Antonio up to date with our milestones, etc. So bear with me...

We've read so many books lately. Here are just a few...

I think this might be Carson's favorite so far. He enjoyed the book so much that he MADE me go and buy his friend Ella (from school) a copy.

(Like father, like son...that's the way Dave started to trick me!

~Of course, we were MUCH older! Ella has said she wants to get married, but Carson is non-committal at this point.)

Another great book we enjoyed was "Where The Red Fern Grows."  Since reading this book, Carson has been letting us know that he's saving his money to buy two hound dogs. It's a very, very sad book. I had gone to the grocery store the night they finished reading it. While shopping I received a phone call from my children crying hysterically. At first, I didn't know what was going on! Finally, I realized that they had finished the book and they were devastated that both dogs had died. The funny part is that they didn't even cry when they watched the movie. That just goes to show you that the movie is never as good as the book.

We also read..

(This book inspired Natalia to be Dorothy for Halloween this year. The plan was for all three kids to choose a character from the Wizard of Oz, but the boys wouldn't go for that nonsense :0(

(Are they old enough to make those decisions anyway?)

and...

As a matter of fact, these last two books Natalia finished reading on her own. According to her, I wasn't going fast enough.

It's just so fun being able to sit as a family and read. ~So, why not grab a book and start reading...you'll be hooked!

In addition to our family reading time, Natalia loves to read on her own too. Here are a few from her collection...

The American Girl books - The Kit series plus these two mysteries:

She also enjoys The Magic School Bus books!

About Time

What a beautiful day!  The weather was perfect and the attitude was too!  Natalia finally decided to learn how to ride her bicycle without training wheels.  I thought this day would never come...

But watch out!  She is still learning to turn and stop, so you better get out of her way if you see her coming...

And if there is anything in front of her, she is in big trouble because she still doesn't know how to stop...

So very proud of our big girl!

Yay!!! I Now Have Internet!

Yes, you read that right. I have Internet!!!!!

Now, if I could only find time to blog :-(

Carpe Diem

Today was full of surprises!  

We woke up all excited because we were so looking forward to going to Katy to celebrate Sarah's 3rd birthday party.  All of a sudden I received a call from Hetal to let me know that the Pinkalicious party was cancelled!  ~What?!  Well, little Sarah had fever and she had been throwing up.  Poor girl, hope she gets better soon!

So...what to do, what to do???

Right after lunch, we headed to the San Jacinto Monument.  Yay, I've always wanted to go there - we see it every time we drive to and from San Antonio.  So you can't even imagine how excited I was.  Once there, we read a sign that said the parking for the Monument was full.  There was traffic everywhere - it took 20 minutes to go about 2 miles.  What?!  We didn't understand why there were so many cars.  Seriously?  Everyone had the same idea as we did????  We kept driving and finally understood what was going on when we saw this sign:

How is the one day we randomly decided to visit the monument the anniversary of the battle fought there (April 21)?  Oh no!  I was so bummed.  I didn't even try to convince Dave to park the car and enjoy the festival because I know how he feels about crowds.  All of a sudden he said, "why don't I drop you and the kids off here and I'll go and find a parking space."  I couldn't believe it!  Everything was working out great, right up to the point when I asked about the battle reenactment.  They informed me that it had been cancelled because of the rain.  ~I just couldn't believe it!!!!!  A few minutes later, Dave called me and said, "hey, why don't y'all hurry and we can go on the ship before it starts raining and it gets even more crowded."  It made total sense to me, so the kids and I started heading towards the ship.  All of a sudden, we see Dave walking back towards us.  It had just started raining, and was getting ready to storm.  We just decided to leave all the fun for some other time.

I'm truly surprised how well we all took the change of plans. We just seized the day!

An hour and a half later, we ended up at Houston Williams Water Wall.  Once again, I can't believe Dave agreed!  When I asked him if we could go to see that big Water Wall, he looked at me and said, "do you really want to see that wall?  Is just a tall wall."  I am so glad we went.  Call me wired, but I LOVED it!  I'm really glad I saw it.  I mean, I would not plan a special trip to Houston just to see this, but if you are in the neighborhood, hey why not?

Then, it was dinner time!  Time for some Greek food at...

Now what???  Hey, why not a baseball game?  Sounded like a good idea!  So we called the ticket office and set off for Minute Maid Park to watch the Astros versus the Brewers.  Total costs - $17 (the kids got in for a $1 a piece)!  The kids had a blast.  Carson was the veteran of the group, having gone with Daddy last year, and he let everyone know about the huge playground at the park.  Needless to say, they were all concerned about when we would go and play on the huge jungle gym.  Also, all Carson wanted was for someone to hit a baseball out to right field (which was where we were sitting).  And Lia was more concerned about the PINK cotton candy than anything else.  Luke just kept playing with the bleachers going up and down.

Ah, it was so nice to finally have something go as planned.  We decided we would stay and watch the game until the 7th inning.   Then we would sing, Take me out to the Ball Game during the 7th inning stretch and head to the playground.  Why we thought anything would work out as planned, who knows? As we walked up to the playground, the kids excitement began to build!!!!  Yay!!!!!  

Yes, you sure read that right, "closed at end of the 7th."  Needless to say, we didn't get a chance to play :0( ~What a disappointment!  But we still chose to seize the day! 

As appeasement for missing the playground, Dave saw someone eating a funnel cake and decided to get everyone a snack.  Funnel cakes are his weakness, P90X or not.  As we watched the cake being cooked, Dave's mouth started to salivate.  Then as the cake was getting close to being done, the employee designated to remove the cake from the oven realized it was too hot to remove with his bare hands...so he did what anyone else would do.  He grabbed the towel he had been cleaning out the grease vat with and lifted the cake out with ease.   Literally - Dave has towels he's used for staining wood that looked cleaner.  Needless to say, Dave didn't eat funnel cake, but the kids did get popcorn.

 Here they are waiting for Daddy to get back from getting the car for us.  Still having a great time even though things today didn't go as planned.

Do You Like Happy Endings?

Well, this book sure is full of happy endings! And we had a happy ending too as we met to discuss our 3rd book, Savannah Breeze by Mary Kay Andrews with good food!

We had our 3rd book club meeting last night.  We all met at Kristi's house (thanks Kristi!).  We had a delicious homemade meal.  

The menu:

For appetizers we had crab-cakes made by yours truly.  At the end of the book there was a recipe for Crab-cakes, which by the way, is excellent.  They are very easy to make too so that is a plus.  I also made a Lemon Remoulade sauce to go along with the crab-cakes and the shrimp.

They were better than what they look like on this picture, 

but you get the idea.

Brittney was in charge of the shrimp.  She did an excellent job marinating and grilling the shrimp.  She is such a champ with the grill even though the starter was broken.  I wanted to capture the explosion as the grill started but this is as close as I got.  :0)

Kristi baked the potatoes.  They were so yummy!

Elizabeth was in charged of all the stuff for the baked potatoes.  Did you know you can add red bell pepper, grape tomatoes and Italian dressing to your baked potato in addition to the other stuff like butter, sour cream and cheese?  I've never had it so loaded like that before, but I'm glad I tried it.  It was really good.  Definitely not P90X approved!

Lucy cooked the best broccoli ever, which complimented the meal very nicely.  She also brought Limeade.

And to end the meal, we had Key Lime Pie!  Thanks Heather, it was heavenly!

Okay, so with all that being said, we are ready to embark on our new adventure as we read our 4th book selected by Heather....

Drum roll please...

Stay tuned, who knows....we might end up in New York to discuss this book next month!

  

Mommy and CARSON........and Luke

Carson's pre-school had their annual Art Show this evening, therefore, Carson had no school today.  I thought about keeping Luke at home too, but then I decided to have a special day with Carson only.  Carson doesn't get too many of these days so I jumped at the opportunity.

Immediately after dropping Luke off at school, Carson and I headed to the bowling alley.  Oh boy, do I stink at bowling.  Good thing we had bumpers on each side.  Carson had a blast!  

Right after that, we took care of his second request....Tennis.  We played tennis for a while.  ~He was just eating all this individual attention up!

I'm sure you've seen this shirt several times already.  He LOVES this shirt.  

He tries to only wear it when he knows he will be playing tennis.

Later, after bringing lunch to Natalia and Natalia's teacher, we met Daddy at work so we could go grab a bite to eat at Olive Garden, per Carson's request of course!

I gave Dave the keys so he could be the designated driver.  Well, we got in the car and the car would start up but then, immediately, it would stall.  He tried this several times.  Every time he tried, the car would roll back a little.  Eventually, he figured out we weren't going anywhere so he pushed the car back into the parking space.  All this time, I kept praying!  I kept thinking, this is NOT what we need right now.  Well, once we were back in the parking space, right after he finished pushing the car, Dave realized that he had been using the copy of the key which will unlock the car, but will not allow you to drive the car with it.  ~Oh boy!!!!

We finally made it to Olive Garden and had a fun lunch together before we picked Luke up from school.

And that was the end of Carson's Special Day!  

This evening, after eating dinner at Grannie's house, we all headed to the Annual Art Show.  

Luke's Art 

Luke showing off his picture.

Carson's Art

Cousins - they love each other!!!!!

Fly Fly Butterfly

Today, we went to Orange Texas to Shangri La Botanical Gardens & Nature Center for the Annual Butterfly Release.  I even pulled Natalia out of school early :0).

Carson and his friends from pre-school.

Luke and his little friend from church and BSF.

Shangri La also offered a Caterpillar Crawl.  Employees helped the kids look for caterpillars...

I think Luke's favorite part was watering the plants!

Here is a picture of all three together.  Couldn't leave the place without a group picture!

And then it was time to go to Awana's after we drove through McDonad's to get dinner...

To be honest with you, I think THAT was their very favorite part of the trip.  The poor kids couldn't believe it when I pulled into McDonald's.  They all told me "thank you" several times.  Then I heard them discussing how I NEVER take them to McDonald's!

Now...You Wouldn't Expect Anything Else, Would You?

Well, believe it or not, my Prince Charming has done it again!  Last week he asked me to move my car so that he could go to work and yes...he hit it!  I no longer have a license plate in the front of my car.  Good thing it's not required in the state of Texas (so I think.)  He can no longer close his trunk.  He tried tying it down, but that's not working.  So now, he just drives around town with an open trunk.  He's also missing the hubcap on his left front tire.  Is anyone in the market for a Honda Civic?  I'll even throw in a dog for free!  He hunts and you can scratch squirrel off your grocery list!

Hey, who cares about the cars when you can have good coffee whenever you feel like?  Look at what got me!!!  Oh my, this little appliance is awesome. We were at Matt & Elizabeth's the other day and Matt introduced us to this gold mine.  I'm telling you, it's like having Starbucks right at your house.  I hope I slow down once the excitement wears off, but I've used this little guy every day. 

Oh wait a second though...that's not all he has been up to lately.  He also installed the wooden floor in our future little office!  Yes, he is such a handy man.... Thanks Dave for all your hard work!

Meanwhile, while Dave was at home working hard on that wood floor, I decided to also be useful and help out so I took the kids to the Stark Museum of Art in Orange Texas.  I know... that's just the kind of wife and mom I am.  Always helping out!  I was smart though and I dragged my dear friend Elizabeth out there :0).  She is always so willing and very helpful!

It was family day and they had a special feature: Bluebonnets and Beyond by Julian Onderdonk.  Natalia and Carson were very interested in the paintings and Luke, well he was just there.  The lady that walked around with us was excellent.  She really got the kids talking about the paintings.

After enjoying some excellent art work, we walked across the street to make some art.  As always, this experience was very enjoyable.  Nothing like some "hands on" opportunity.

The kids had a blast.  To end the day on a good note, Elizabeth and I decided to drive by a little snow cone stand, but they were closed!!!!  You just don't understand.  We've tried to buy a snow cone from this place several times and every time we go...it's closed!  How is that possible. Apparently, according to Hetal, these are the best snow cones ever.  I don't think we'll ever know :0( .