Bubbles

We tried making a new bubble recipe the other day. This one had Karo syrup in it, and it was great. A lot of messy fun - definitely an outdoor activity!


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Pumpkins

This should have been with Halloween, but I forgot about it. This year we just drew on these mini-pumpkins instead of carving anything. I let the kids just do them however they wanted, and this is what we ended up with:

Lily's Pumpkin



Amelia's Pumpkin



CT's Pumpkin



I think the little faces Lily and CT drew are so adorable. But not as adorable as these faces:

Halloween

These were taken at our ward Trunk-R-Treat. CT is a dragon and the girls are cute little witches.

At The Fair

We went to the Texas State Fair last week. We picked the perfect day. A little bit cool and breezy, but no rain. The day before had been in the nineties with humidity you could practically see. We got into the fair for free because it was "Free Admission with a Cinemark movie ticket stub" day. Tyler went to the theater near our house the night before and found the extra ticket stub we needed lying in the parking lot. A little soggy, but still in tact.

They had a cute petting zoo area with a lot of baby animals, including a huge pig and her litter of 7 piglets which was the kids favorite. Amelia was very enthusiastic about feeding and petting any animal she could get her hands on, and even got CT to start petting animals, which is very unlike him. Here they are with some little greedy goats.



They had this giant cut-out of "Big Tex" that made for a good fair picture.


My mom was visiting us so she got to spend a day at the fair with us. It was great to have an extra set of hands there...actually the big kids didn't want anything to do with their parents pretty much and grandma did all the work.


They had a "panning for gold" exhibit we tried out.


I think they called this the "texas sized sand box" or something. It was a hug pile of sand with buckets and shovels for the kids to use. They had a good time there.


All in all, it was a good day. We managed to leave having seen a bunch of free shows and not riding a single ride. We even kept the fair food consumption down to corndogs and one funnel cake. Much better than last year, when Tyler wanted to try nearly every fried food novelty they were offering. I think that indulgence has cured him of fried food curiosity for a very long time.

If any one wants to come out and join us at the fair next year plan to be here during the first two weeks of October!

Hurray for Primary

I'd like to say a "thank you" to the Church's primary program. CT has been in Primary for almost 10 months now, and I continue to be surprised that he is actually learning things there. I have to admit that taking advantage of daily opportunities to discuss gospel principles is not really my strongest attribute. We say family prayer, read the scriptures every night before the kids go to bed, and have Family Home Evening, but other than that I don't think a lot about making sure I'm teaching my children major points of doctrine every day. I'm thankful that primary is filling in some of my gaps.

Last night for FHE we sang the song "The First Article of Faith" a couple of times. Then we discussed the fact that we believe in Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost. We were talking a little bit about each of these separately. When we got to the Holy Ghost CT said "You can't see the Holy Ghost, but you can hear him." Thank you, Sharing Time! Thank you, Sunbeam teachers! And then, in true CT style, he said something that cracked us up. He said "Now if everyone around here would stop being so noisy so I could hear the Holy Ghost!"

Puppy Dog Tales

C.T. was saying the blessing on the food at dinner last night. He is a very thankful child who always includes a long and varied list of things he's grateful for in every prayer. Last night he added a new one. He said "And thank you for my puppy". After the "amens" Tyler said "Did you say 'thank you for my puppy?' Because you don't have a puppy." C.T. replied "I know Dad. I was saying thank you for the puppy I'm going to get some day".

Visitors or Exhibits?

Today the kids were playing one of their many imaginary scenario games. They were off to an outing. I heard CT say to Lily, "We're going to the museum. Lily, are you going to be ancient? Because you have to be ancient to go to the museum."

Cute Faces

Just some little faces...some of these are fuzzy, but the personality they showed was worth a little fuzz I thought...

Desert Camping

While we were in California we went camping out in the desert at Tyler's old boss's property. Tyler's dad, three of his brothers, and his sister Rachel went with us. The highlight for the kids was definitely four wheeling and Rachel was such a good aunt to spend hours -literally- driving the kids around the pond. Notice how scenic our campground was. And the large amount of sand. And the evidence of that sand on all the hands in the tent picture. I just literally had to put all thoughts of how dirty we all were completely aside and just let it be...

Ballerina

I started teaching a little girls ballet class three weeks ago. These are some pictures of Lily ready for her first day. And of course Amelia wants to do everything Lily does.

March and April In Review

Get ready for a lot of pictures! I have catching up to do.

First, some pictures of our visit to the Fort Worth Zoo when my parents were here with us:






Next, Lily's Birthday. Here is Lily's birthday cake:


I feel that we must have more pictures of her birthday somewhere, but I can't find them. She had a good day - we just spent the day as a family and as a grand finale the whole fmaily went to Disney On Ice in Fort Worth that night. It was a lot of fun and the kids all really enjoyed it.


That same weekend Grandpa Larry came for a quick visit and the kids had fun being silly with him.





Then came Easter.We had a good Easter. It started on Friday when we colored eggs:




On Sunday morning the kids did an egg hunt and also got their Easter baskets. Church later that afternoon was not fun - the kids were not on their best behavior. Tyler blames it on too much sugar.







There you go! That didn't take so long after all. Our rush of birthdays and holidays is over for the year, so we can breathe easy until September, when Tyler's birthday stats us off all over again!

Dress-Up

The other day Tyler cleaned out Lily's closet and came across a bag that had two little outfits in it that he bought for the girls on his last trip to India. They have never had them on before because, really, can you think of an occasion where these would be appropriate? Other than Halloween? Well, we couldn't either. So, Tyler decided to put them on the girls that night after baths and at least take pictures, even if they never wear them out of the house. I think they look pretty adorable. Amelia wasn't as into the photo shoot as Lily, but she was fascinated by all of the sequins on the top. Not to be outdone, C.T. insisted on dressing up in his Peter Pan outfit and being photographed also.