My new nieces

Last Thursday, the 23rd, I was blessed with two new nieces! I was on my way to a dental cleaning and my mom called and said that Becky's water broke and they were on the way to the hospital.  She was about 4 1/2 weeks early at this point and was scheduled to have them on the 10th, but when your water breaks, there's no delaying that!  So they boys and I ran back home, packed up games and stuff to do and headed to the hospital.  Here are the soon-to-be momma and daddy...

The bottom baby wasn't in a head down position, so they had to do a c-section.  In a couple of hours, we got to go back and meet them - Makenzie weighing in at 4 lbs., 6 oz. and Ryleigh at 5 lbs., 7 oz.  Makenzie was in and out of the warmer a bit because she was having trouble keeping her temp up, but neither had to spend time in the NICU which we are very thankful for!  They were so precious and tiny!  Here are my babies holding their baby cousins.

And me with my new little nieces!

Becky and Brandon asked me to take some newborn pictures for them.  I have a teensy bit of photography experience, but am by no means a professional.  I did a lot of research and reading in preparation so I could get some good shots.  I was thinking that I would be pleased if  got 2 or 3 really good ones, and I ended up being very pleased. ( Of course looking back, I see little things that I would do differently, but I still think they turned out pretty good.)  It helped that my subjects were SO sweet!

Becky brought over her doll beds from when she was little and we set up a cute little shot.

I had this bowl I bought at Canton a couple of years ago and thought it would be so cute with them in it.  Just to give you an idea, the diameter of it is 16 inches. :)

This is by far my favorite.  The lighting was really good and they look so sweet with their little floral headbands.  Swoon.

Makenzie

Ryleigh

Also a favorite - so sweet and simple.  Love mom and dad's hands in this one.

The new family of four

I'm so thankful that they are healthy and doing great.  God is good. 

Summer is here!

Well, it's been a while.  We've been quite busy and I haven't had much downtime.  The boys played soccer for a couple of months and didn't like it.  They made the commitment, so they finished, but I'm pretty sure neither will ever play soccer again.  Soccer was over in mid-May, so we had some downtime between sports and I think that helped us to finish out the last of the year.  My oldest finished up 6th grade and my youngest 1st.  They won't ever be at the same school again and that makes me sad. :(  Reed is now in the youth group at church and I think he's excited about that.  

We finished up the house and moved in over Mother's Day weekend.  The first night, all we had were beds and the TV (you know, priorities.) :)  We had pizza and watched a movie in lawn chairs.

It took a couple of days to get the couches over, so the boys ate breakfast before school in their lawn chairs.  While wearing their robes. 

Then the rain came.  We had a RIDICULOUS amount of rain in May.  I think it rained something like 27 days out of the month and it wasn't a soft rain either. We would have full on downpours!  The water never came in the house, but was a little to close for comfort.  Our tank definitely filled up.

I was glad when it finally quit and dried up because I was scheduled to have my brother & sister-in-laws baby shower here at the first of June.  The rain has really messed up the road and Brian had to get quite a few loads of dirt to fix it.  They would bring 3 or 4 loads a day and he would get home after work and get on the skid steer and work on smoothing it all out until after dark. He really busted his hiney getting stuff ready for the shower.  It was a really pretty shower... too bad I didn't take ANY pictures! :(

So we've been in a little over a month and we love it.  They boys love the stairs and Nerf gun wars are a regular occurrence... I find Nerf bullets all over the place.  The boys started SEALS practice last week.  Reed has moved up in age groups, so his practice is at 7:00 am. So we leave the house at 6:45 and I've been running while he swims.  Hudson's practice isn't until 8:45, so Brian brings him to the pool a little later.  We leave at 9:45, so that's a full 3 hours at the pool for me and Reed 4 days a week.  I can see that wearing thin by the end of the season. I can tell he is growing, because he eats a LOT and there has been a lot of this...

We finished up our church VBS last night, so we are just worn out.  I was a group leader and Reed helped out with crafts. It was a long week and we are looking forward to free days next week... with rain/thunderstorms in the forecast, SEALS may get cancelled and we may get to sleep late. :) 

We have SEALS until mid-July and then not much planned after that.  We have our road trip in August which the boys and I are really looking forward to.  We didn't go anywhere last year because of the building of the house, so we are ready for vacation. We will be hitting Hot Springs National Park and Great Smoky Mountain National Park.  Hopefully before we leave for our trip Makenzie and Ryleigh (my twin nieces) will be born.  Becky is due at the end of August, but I don't see anyway she will make it that long.  She is a tiny little woman (about as tall as Reed), and I don't see how those two babies will fit in there very much longer.  Aside from that, lots of plans for swimming, snow cones, lazy days of TV and games with some water parks and other fun things thrown in.  Yay for summer!

Soccer and Musical Instruments

We had our first soccer game today.  

They've only had two practices, so I wasn't really expecting much.

This kid is a mess.  :)

He spent a lot of his time on the outskirts and wouldn't really get in there to get the ball.  He told me he was afraid to go after the ball because he thought he would get hurt, so there was lots of spinning in circles and feigned exhaustion after small snippets of jogging.  Then at another point in the game, he ran over to me (while everyone is playing) and told me that "in case I wanted something cold, but not to drink, there was a Sno-cone stand right over there."  I guess the temptation of the sno-cone stand was too hard to resist even if a soccer game was going on.  I think he had fun and he was definitely fun to watch. :)

This one however...

Was a beast!  He was all over the field giving it everything he had.  One of the coaches was on him quite a bit, but I think it was because he sees potential in him.  Reed isn't good with criticism (constructive or not), so he was beat down.  It really warmed up today and by the end of the game, all of the kids were exhausted - they run back and forth the entire hour!  He was so hot and tired, but he never complained.  I was so proud of him!

We went to lunch and then over to the middle school.  Kids going into middle school have to choose from 3 electives - art, choir or band.  He chose band, so we had to go to the "instrument fitting".  He picked the top three instruments that he was interested in playing and then they worked with him on the mouthpieces to see how they did.  

                                               

She was very impressed with how he did with the bassoon, but he also tried the trumpet and tuba (Brian played trombone in high school for a few years, so I think Reed wanted to try out something in the brass section also).  The tuba also seemed to be a good fit, but in the end he decided to go with the bassoon.  There aren't many that will play that, so he'll have better instruction because he'll be in a lot smaller class.  I think he's really looking forward to it.  :)

The last couple of weeks...

It was my turn to have Reed for kid/parent date night, so I took him to Simply Fondue in Fort Worth. We had the BEST time. 

Right when I said I want to take a picture and he threw up the hashtag.  I'm guessing it's for 

#momisthebestdateever

Or so I choose to believe.  :)

We started off with cheese fondue.  They brought out bread cubes and veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots) and even some baby pickles. Yum!  Then we ordered our meal.  They had a list of meats to choose from and we chose 3 each.  With those, they brought some ravioli, some different veggies and ac couple of other things to try.  She gave us instructions on how long to cook each meat, so I used the timer on my phone just to make sure everything was cooked correctly.

After the main course, we were excited for dessert.  We chose what kind of chocolate we wanted and they brought us marshmallows, fruit, cheesecake balls, cookie dough balls... it was all very good.  The whole meal took a couple of hours and I really enjoyed having that time with my oldest.  He's a really fun kid.

I needed gas on the way home and my date pumped it for me. :)

We've had some sleet/snow/icy weather over the last couple of weeks and the boys have gotten 4 days off from school.  They've loved it and it's been fun to see the snow, but we're all kind of over it at this point. We wouldn't last a week up north.  :)

Anyway, the cold weather always brings out the wildlife.  We had a lot of birds eating the fallen birdseed, even a few Cardinals. 

One morning a little buck went walking across the back yard.  Sorry- bad picture.

After the heavier snowfall, I got a few pretty pictures...

Should be ready to move into soon.
Anyday now.

From the upstairs balcony...

And yes, the boys have ziploc bags over their gloves and duct taped to their jacket sleeves.  We didn't have any snow gloves, so we tried this to keep them from getting wet.  Didn't everybody do that?  :)

One more piece of news, Brandon and Becky are expecting!!!  Take a peek at their sonogram...

 Do you see that? Baby A AND Baby B???? They are having twins!!!! We could not be more excited for them and I can't wait to meet these two precious little babies and be an aunt again!!! 

What we've been up to...

We've never participated in the science fair before, but this year Reed was required to do a project.  We started out with a cheese molding project and then Brian and I left on our trip to Costa Rica.  The boys stayed with Gammy and DadDad and during the trip it was obvious that the cheese thing was not going to work.  So (very thankfully) they came up with a couple of back up plans.  After all was said and done, we went with the gravity project - dropping a few different items at the same time and seeing which will hit the ground first.  Reed and I spend a few hours with my cricut and a glue stick and finished up his project board.

He was very pleased with his grade. :)

Reed and I went to his first middle school meeting at the end of January.  I can't believe this kid is 2/3 of the way through 5th grade. UGH.  Man, how it flies.

We also finally started our parent/kid date night in January.  We've been talking about it for a while, so I was glad to finally put it into practice.  To start out, I put "Mom" and "Dad" on two pieces of paper and let Hudson draw.  He got me, so Reed went with Brian (next month we'll switch kids and so on).  We each decided to go to a movie and then to eat.  Brian and Reed saw Project Almanac and ate at Pastafina.  Hudson and I went to see Paddington and I told him we could eat wherever he wanted to... and he chose Dairy Queen.  We had a lot of fun and I think it's something that we will all look forward to each month.

There was the most beautiful sunset the other evening.  I took about 30 pictures and they just don't do it justice.  It was gorgeous!

On February 5th, Hudson turned 7.  We got some donuts for breakfast and I put a candle in one to sing him Happy Birthday... he was still a little bit asleep and the light was a little too bright. :)

I went up to the school later that afternoon with cupcakes for his class.  This kid was loving' his birthday. 

And in his backpack, I found a note from his first secret admirer.  No idea who it is from, but it was super cute! :)

On the 7th, we had Hudson's birthday party at the bowling alley.  Our bowling alley here was old,  run down and smelled terribly of smoke.  When the owners retired at the end of the summer, someone else bought it, gutted it and completely remodeled it.  We had the best time.  The cousins playing air hockey while waiting for bowling to start.

We bowled for an hour...

After bowling, we went to the party room and had pizza and cake.

Hudson wanted a Pokemon named Mega Charzard on his cake.  The cake actually ended up looking pretty close to the thing, so score.

Then we opened presents...

Lots has been happening with the house also, so hopefully we're only looking at a few more weeks until we get to move.  I'll be VERY ready for things to settle down again. :)