Easter Weekend

We really don't have any traditions for Easter which makes it kind of nice.  This Easter, my parents were able to come to Beaumont for the weekend.  It was a treat for all of us!  When my parents are in town, the kids get to do a lot of things we don't usually do with them and Dave and I get some time off  :0).  

This year, I decided to make the Easter Cookie Story with the kids.  It was getting late (past their bed time) and I was so tempted to say "forget it, we'll do it next year", but I couldn't.  Natalia and Carson kept asking me if it was time to make the cookies, so we made them and I'm glad we did.

 

The Easter Bunny brought the kids rain  boots, some Easter eggs with money (BIG hit!) and, as always, a Chocolate Bunny (which is a MUST at our household!) 

  

And you are NOT going to believe this, but I have no pictures of the family on Easter Day!  Now, what happened?????  I have no idea why I didn't take a picture of at least the three of them with their Easter clothes on.  I don't know!  Well...the boys wore jeans because Carson decided that he doesn't like to wear khaki pants and NO button up shirts for him.  Oh and no pastel polo's either!  I mean, is he old enough to decide what he is going to wear?  I don't think so, but to tell you the truth...that's one battle I DO NOT want to fight.  Dave tells me I fight way too many battles so I'm trying to back off a little and that is one I really don't care enough about to fight.  Natalia, on the other hand, was wearing a beautiful and I mean BEAUTIFUL dress Grannie made for her.  The only picture I have is this one :0(

I mean, how pitiful is that?  This photo was taken at Lowe's.  Look at my poor Dad, he was so tired!  My parents had taken the kids to the bookstore after lunch while Dave and I stayed home cleaning the carport.  Right before dinner, I met them at Lowe's to buy some items for the guest house we are building on the back of our house.  ~Thanks Mom and Dad for helping us with the kids!  

Hope you had a marvelous Easter!

Week Recap - Can You Say Crazy?!

I still haven't finished blogging about our Spring Break fun, but just wanted to let you know what we've been up to this week.

Wow, what a busy week.  Ready for some rest!!!!

*Last Saturday, we attended the Annual Easter Party at Mr. & Mrs. Ivey's house.  As always, we had a great time.

 

Natalia and her best friend Hannah

   

The kids went fishing and we also went on a little canoe ride.

*Sunday morning, my friend Brittney picked me up at 6:00 a.m. to go and buy junk at Round Top!  Oh, I love doing sort of thing.  Dave, on the other hand, stays home hoping and praying that I don't go too crazy and buy too much junk.  

Here is Brittney and the truck full with all our junk!

   

Meanwhile, Dave and the kids were planting an herb garden!  

  

*Oh yea, and this is a picture of Dave and my new old outdoor furniture I got at Round Top.  You have to have vision to see what this furniture will look like one day!  :-)  ~Dave just can't wait to see!!!

*Lately, Natalia has been waking up with the desire to serve her Daddy.  ~More power to you girl!  It is the sweetest thing.  She is so proud of all her hard work.  And Daddy, well, he is eating it up!

  

*Carson had a little presentation at school this past week.  He is so shy that he just stood there looking cute.  ~I sure hope he grows out of this :-(

  

*Oh, what a busy day I had on Thursday.  Carson's Easter party was at 11:00, then Luke's was at 12:15 and Natalia's at 1:30.  They had a blast though!

  

Natalia and some of her friends from school.

  

*Dave went to Houston on Thursday night for a tennis tournament, so we decided to have fun. We rented a movie and built a fort.  What????  I can't believe I did this.  If you know me, you know that I'm all for schedules and I definitely won't make a mess I later have to clean up.  But, I did on Thursday night.  The kids couldn't believe it and we had so much fun.  

  

*Today, we ended our week by making breakfast together.  Natalia cooked the eggs, Carson was in charge of the bacon and Luke took care of the biscuits.  We spent our afternoon at the park and ate dinner at Chick-Fil-A.

Hope y'all have a great weekend and Happy Easter!

Rain, Rain Go Away - Spring Break Part 2

Our stay in San Antonio durning Spring Break was planned out - so I thought, until it started raining on and off for a couple of days.  But, no worries, we stayed busy during those rainy days too.  First of all, per Carson's request, I mean supplication, we enjoyed bagels for breakfast one morning!  We also went shopping, got haircuts, watched more TV than usual and enjoyed an afternoon at the Children's Museum.

Enjoying yummy bagels

Shopped until they dropped (which didn't take long)!

Ah, amazing what a haircut can do.

They loved "grocery shopping at HEB!"

     

They enjoyed making humongous bubbles too!

    

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast Off! - Spring Break Part 1

We started our Spring Break on Saturday, March 21st by going through Galveston to see the damage from Ike.  Even after all these months, we were able to see debris everywhere!  It is crazy and sad to see the damage.

Galveston 6 months after Ike

The ferry is always fun!

For lunch, we went to eat at an excellent Mexican restaurant called, Lupe Tortilla.  I highly recommend it.  Their beef fajitas and their tortillas are out of this world.

Finally, we made it to our destination, the Space Center.  It was super crowded, but fun.  We were able to see a live feed of one of the astronaut in a space walk working on the space station.  We saw moon rocks, played with some displays and saw the craziest people ever dive.  

Moon rocks!

By the time we left the Space Center it was dinner time, so we went to eat at Niko Niko's.  Yummy Greek food. And then, we went to the Apple Store to buy another Mac for the practice. 

We ended our day with some Starbucks.  Always a good way to end the day!

The next day, we tried the Astronauts' ice cream we bought at the Space Center!  Yea, Dave and I thought it was disgusting but the kids liked it. 

Week Recap - Oh Boy!!!

Last weekend was a pretty rainy weekend, and due to the construction going on at our house, the backyard is a mess.  In order to run plumbing and electrical to our carport, currently being converted to a mother-in-law apartment, a trench 2-3 ft deep had to be dug between our house and the new project.  Needless to say, that left a lot of loose dirt in the backyard, and combined with a couple of days of rain,  there was mud, mud everywhere and not a drop to drink.  So, after church, Dave headed outside to do some work in the back, and naturally, the kids wanted to follow Daddy outside.  I don't know why, but I never imagined they were going to play in the mud.  I mean, they are always digging and playing in the dirt, but why did I think they were just going to walk around and look?????  It was water and dirt together, for goodness sake, the perfect combination for some fun.  The only problem?  They were wearing their Sunday-go-to-meeting-clothes!  They know we don't play when we have our nice clothes on, right?  WRONG! They were covered in mud when all was said and done.

In the meantime, Luke was being a big helper.  We have lots of pieces of wood lying around in need of 50 nails embedded in them.  I honestly believe there are thousands of angels all around our children all the time.

While working in the back, Dave smoked a pork butt for dinner.  Every time we talk about smoking something, Carson asks, "Daddy you smoke?  That's not good for you, you are going to DIE!"  

I don't know about that, but the pulled pork sandwiches were great!

You gotta do what you gotta do!  But, why were people staring at us while we were shopping at Sam's?  (This was the kids' idea and we did not argue!)

Luke is 100% potty trained (no more accidents), so we celebrated by going to Toys R Us!  This is what we have walking around the house now...

 

Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Finally Putting My Birthday Gift To Use!

Remember my birthday gift last year in July?  Yes, my tennis racket!  Well, I've used it a couple of times since then, but nothing serious at all.  Anyway, today four of us had our first official Tennis lesson with the sweetest lady ever.  We love her, she is wonderful!  So who knows how far this "playing tennis" business will go, but for now, I'm enjoying it.  Dave and I might start fighting about whose turn is it to stay home with the kids and who is going out to the tennis courts.  ~Great!  Why don't we add another thing to argue about, right?  

My Little Bookworm!

Natalia loves to read and normally she can read the Junie B. Jones books in a day.  She has read several of these already, so one day, I decided to buy her her first American Girl book.  I just thought it would be a little more challenging.  

I went with Meet Kristen.  She loved it.  I started by reading it to her.  One day she got so tired of hearing me say to her "wait Natalia, I'll read it to you in just a second", that she just grabbed the book and read it until she finished it.  

She loved it!  So, I went ahead and bought her another American Girl book, but this time I got her Meet Felicity and, yea, I don't think she liked it as much.  I had to finished reading it to her.  The last two pages, she made me laugh.  She kept jumping up and down saying "please stop reading, oh I just don't want to know what's going to happened, please stop!"  

Anyway, needless to say, I guess we are buying another Kristen book.