Family Pictures

Last night my friend Becky took our family pictures. These were the first time we have had pictures made since Hudson was a baby and we were well over due for new ones. There was a problem with getting both boys to look at the camera and smile, but we did end up with some cute, very candid shots. These definitely show the personality of my boys - Reed is just doing what he is told only smiles when asked and Hudson is just happy to tag along. :) Life with 2 boys - never dull, but I wouldn't trade it for ANYTHING. I won't post all the pictures -there are just way too many - but these are some of my favorites...

By this point, Hudson was done. I love the next picture, but we just couldn't get that little goober to smile.

He decided he didn't want to be in the pictures anymore...

What a mess he is... :)

So Becky started to take some of me and Reed...

...and Hudson warmed up again.

I love my precious family!

A downside to country livin'...

When I got home after picking Reed up from school, the dogs were going bonkers in the yard and as I searched for the cause, I was greeted with this sight ...

Ick. It was very hard for me to get this close to take the actual pictures- I DESPISE these things. Let the snake crawling summer begin... :(

Mother's Day Weekend

Saturday morning I planned on going over to my mom's to spend the day with her for Mother's Day. I woke up feeling nauseated and not so great. I got dressed and Brian mentioned he wasn't feeling great. The boys seemed fine, so I threw some clothes on them and went to my mom's around 9:30, leaving Brian in bed. I felt pretty crummy, but decided that I could suck it up. I got a text from Brian at 11:30 saying that he threw up. Then at 12:15 Reed threw up. We got in the car and headed home.

At this point I began to think that we had food poisoning because we all ate the same thing for dinner the night before. Brian and Reed got sick first and they ate the most. I was feeling nauseated, but I only ate 1/2 of what they did and Hudson barely ate anything and he was fine.

We got home and Reed threw up again and continued to every 30 to 40 minutes for a few hours. My mom ended up bringing over gatorade and Sprite because I was really worried about Reed getting dehydrated but I couldn't drag myself to the store. She took Hudson home - all he was doing anyway was watching everybody throw up with intense interest - which was rather annoying. After Hudson left, we were able to sleep off and on the rest of the day and by Sunday morning Reed felt great and Brian and I were super weak.

So by this point in the story, I'm totally convinced that it was food poisoning - just because of how we were feeling and the timing of everything. My parents brought us lunch Sunday afternoon and dropped Hudson back off. We rested most of Sunday and went over to Mike and Susan's to celebrate her Mother's Day. We still didn't feel great, but we weren't going to give anything to anybody, so what's the harm... right?

I got a text this morning that my dad was throwing up since 4am. Susan was supposed to keep Hudson for me for a bit today and I got a text from her that she was sick. THEN, turns out Grace has thrown up twice this morning.

Well.

Evidently it wasn't food poisoning AT ALL and now we have succeded in taking down 3 members of the family before noon.

Ugh... I pray that it ends there.

His own money

Reed has been saving his money for a while now. Anything he gets for Christmas, his birthday (or whatever) goes straight into his money jar. He has quite a bit saved up, so we went to Wal-mart today to do some spending. :). After about half an hour perusing the toys and games, he ended up with the following:

A Lego set, a giant Lego tub (with an included Lego base plate that he has been 'needing') and a game for his DS. (And after all that, he still has almost $40 left!) On the way out of the store he said "It's neat to buy stuff with your own money! It makes you feel good!". I thought that was a pretty awesome statement. :)

I love this boy.

Easter Sunday

We had a wonderful Easter weekend. We hunted eggs at Gammy's on Saturday,

and I got to hold Jake - he smiles and coos at me and it is so precious!!!! And no, it does NOT make me want to have another baby- I'll gladly borrow him to get my baby fix. :)

The Easter bunny came for a visit on Sunday morning and we hunted eggs that afternoon at Mimi's (where I didn't get any pictures). Here are my sweet boys Sunday morning in their matching Easter shirts...

I knew we might forget to get a family picture, so Brian took a picture of me with the boys....

And I took one of him...

Here are a few attempts at family pictures....


I finally just said forget it. :)

Hallelujah - He is risen!!

A night out

Last night, Gammy and DadDad took Reed and I out to eat at P.F. Changs and then to Bass Hall to see Beauty and the Beast. Here we are waiting for the show to begin...

It was a great show and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I guess my preferences are changing, because I used to not be big on musicals, but I loved it. The cast was great and there was a lot of humor I wasn't expecting. Reed enjoyed it too, but I think it's a little too long for him to sit through. He was very well behaved, but started to get ansy toward the end. All in all, we had a great night!

Outside Work Day

We spent Saturday outside working in the garden and planting. I didn't get my camera out until after lunch, but this is the view from our picnic table outside the back door. It was a beautiful day and the green trees and grass were gorgeous.

Reed did a lot of driving around on the golf cart- he's actually a very good and careful driver.


The boys played around the trenches Brian dug with the tractor...


Hudson measured the spacing of the plants for us. :)


The boys sat at the table and played - they were pooped after a morning of the mostly unhelpful, but very cute activities listed above.


I love the giant tree in the back that the picnic table sits under...


A few weeks ago, Brian had some potatoes that he asked me to cut up. So I cut them into pieces with a couple of eyes on each piece and we literally threw them into a trench he dug with the tractor. Here they are now...


Here are the blackberry plants we planted yesterday...


Then Brian wanted to get some of the wild thorny blackberry plants that are growing all over the quarry. He and Susan went over and dug some up.








Here is our row of blueberry plants...



I'll be excited when all of these plants start to produce- it makes for a lot of work, but it's also very satisfying.

Boys night

While I was at bunco last night, I received a few texts from Brian. The first said 'Hudson is stuck' with this picture attached...

It was followed by 'Can they get in the mud?'...



...and 'how about swimming?'



I got a good laugh out of it. I'm so glad that we have not only the space for the boys to do things like play in the tank, but also that they have such a fun daddy. (I also love that he cleans them up afterwards too.).

Reed's 7th Birthday Party

It's 3 weeks before the actual date, but we celebrated Reed's birthday today at the bowling alley. Good old Granbury Lanes... brought back memories. :)

Grace and Hudson would roll the balls so slowly that they took about 30 seconds to get to the pins. At one point Grace's stopped about 5 feet short of the pins... too funny.
Reed did pretty good and he had a lot of fun (until one of his friends accidentally smashed his finger between two bowling balls. He was trying to put on a brave face, but his finger was already swollen and turning purple. The poor kid sat in my lap and cried for a few minutes while we put some ice on it. This picture is pre-finger smashing.)
Then it was time for cake! I lucked out and instead of making some fancy cake, Reed asked for coconut cake, so I whipped a few up yesterday and it was enjoyed by all.
On to presents... He made out like a bandit. :) I was really happy about the gifts. Nothing overdone and there were only about 8 of them. He got a light that looked like a Lego block and it lit up when you push the button in the middle... that button needed to be pushed by every kid there. :)

Gammy got Hudson a gift too...

A barrel of monkeys! It kept him occupied while Bubba (as Hudson calls him) opened the rest of his gifts.

And during the whole party - bowling balls slamming against the floor, kids yelling, etc., here was sweet baby Jake...

Dontcha just want to squeeze him??

Thankful Thursday

This week I am thankful for:

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Girls Birthday Weekend

Last weekend we celebrated my mom's birthday. She took us girls (Me, my sis-in-law Cara and our friend Becky) to San Antonio. We surprised her by stopping mid-way for a pedicure that we evidently all needed. :) Cara and I had a hard time picking out colors... (I have no idea why this is underlined... can't seem to make it go away).

Our freshly painted tootsies...

We continued to head south and decided to stop in Gruene and eat at the Gristmill.

It was delicious and had awesome ambiance. I plan on making Brian take me back there someday soon. :) We headed on to San Antonio, found our hotel, checked in and decided to have dessert... and some appetizers at the Hard Rock Cafe on the river walk. This was not shaping up to be a healthy weekend.

On Saturday we got up and ate a late breakfast at the Madrid Room in the hotel. Then we headed out for a little shopping and some more eating. We got a ton of baked goods from a bakery we found (can't remember the name) and ate a gordita like thing from a booth in the middle of the marketplace. It was fried and wonderful. Then I ate a churro. Goodness. We headed to our Cirque show, Dralion. It was great as they always are! That night we made reservations at a nice restaurant named Ostra on the river walk. The food was yummy, but the service was terrible.
After some more late shopping, it was off to bed. We ate breakfast the next morning, you guessed it, on the river walk. By this point my stomach was rolling, so I had fruit and toast. The best part about breakfast? A bird pooped on my arm. I had to keep my gag reflex in check - it was so nasty. A little more shopping and we started to head back home. We had a great weekend with lots of laughs and great conversation. Happy Birthday to my mom... How old is she you ask? I'll never tell... :)

Spring Break Part II

I think instead of going into what my boys did for the second half of spring break, just click here. My mom took them camping and they had a GREAT time (and she has the pictures on her blog to prove it.) :)

While the kids were at their house, I was running errands and cleaning our house and Brian called to see if I wanted to look at some cars. My Expedition was 5 years old when we got it and only had about 60,000 miles on it. Now it was creeping up on 100,000 miles and was beginning to show some signs of wear. We had replaced the starter twice in the three years I had had it and it was turning out to not be so reliable (I got stranded in the pick-up line at Reed's school a couple of weeks ago - thank goodness Brian was only 5 minutes away and it didn't happen somewhere else!) Anyway, we ended up spending a huge chunk of the day at the dealership and came home with this...

I could not be more excited! Brian and I took advantage of babysitters and went out to dinner Thursday night. More errands and cleaning on Friday and then Brian and I had went out to a movie (two dates in two days... never thought that would happen, but it was awesome!!). I picked up the boys on Saturday and we had a friends' fun birthday party to cap off Spring Break.

They had such a great week and I'm so thankful for sweet grandparents that love them so much. :)