First Soccer Game

The wind-up.


The follow-through.


And she's even having fun!

College Station Cousins

The kids and I spent the first two days of Spring Break in College Station with my sister Emily. We had such a great time! Addie and Jack loved playing with their cousins and I thoroughly enjoyed letting Emily cook yummy food for me and be completely in charge of entertainment! The bulk of the entertainment: a tent in the backyard. Oh the joys!


The girls took baby dolls and princess clothes outside the whole time. They were in heaven aside from the annoying two year old boy with his golf club/weapon.


These two girls really play well together. One afternoon while the little boys napped, Emily and I actually napped on the couches while the girls quietly colored. They just discussed what color the princesses should be and complimented each other on their fine work.


We went to Brenham to tour the Blue Bell ice cream factory. Little did we know that this idea was VERY popular. We got there at 11 and had to get tickets for a 12:30 tour time. So we found a great park in town to picnic and let the kids run around.


This park was really fun. If we'd known it was there we would have planned more time for playing. The factory tour was also really cool. I would do it again. I've always had a thing for watching food on conveyor belts I guess, and the free ice cream in their new ice cream parlor was a nice touch too!



Emily has a talent for catching Jack's many faces.






We will be crashing College Station again asap!

Gardening

One of the most exciting parts of finally being settled now is that we can plant a GARDEN! Yay! For the past three summers we have moved mid-summer so the fruits of laboring in a garden were not worth the trouble. Not so this year and Anthony has been hard at work. I have been hard at work with my opinions...I really love the idea of gardening, just not the ensuing allergies I get from getting down and dirty with Mother Nature. Here they are planting some petunias.


The beginnings of Anthony's garden. Pictures and details of the finished product will follow!


The first rose bloom of the season.


Spring brings out some of the best things about our house. I absolutely love our yard, and we've had little to do with it really. The former owners really worked at the yard so we just get to enjoy the mature landscape they worked on for 16 years.

First Soccer Practice

I am kicking myself today that I didn't have the organization yesterday to document Addie's first day of soccer practice with a photograph. She walked out the door with her pink cleats, pink chin guards, and a first aid kit in case she got "scrapes and bruises" while she was playing. It was all I could do to get her to leave the first aid kit in the car. We have Daddy to thank for giving the kit to her and explaining the dangers of soccer!

She had a good time, despite being the youngest on the team. I think at least 7 of the 9 girls there played last year, too. So she's a little behind but it made me glad we went ahead and put her in this year. She ran behind the pack, dribbled all of her drills the slowest, and frequently stopped to give me hugs and kisses (I was assisting the coach.) Despite all of this, when Anthony asked her how soccer went she indicated that she had done really well and she was pretty sure she had won. Ahhh, the confidence of a 4 year old!! I wish I could put it in a bottle and save some for later.

Phone Dump 2011

Between Christmas and our anniversary, we've had a lot happening. I just haven't formally documented it here on the blog. My sister does an occasional phone blog entry that I think is in order here because a lot has been happening worth noting.

Like these fantastic foamy Valentine pencils. Really, you say? We are exciting around here...this was actually some desperate entertainment during a snow day. I think these beauties actually had a well thought out purpose when I bought the kit at Michael's, but alas they were made gleefully on a snow day and discarded after Valentines day.


Moving on...Jack got a haircut and was pretty stinking cute in the process. Love this boy a little more every day.


Addie's ballet class tried on their recital costumes. Oh, the sweet excitement! Little pink ballerinas were flying all over the room.


We went to Will Dickinson's birthday party at Bouncin' Around. Talk about a kid's DREAM birthday party and an awesome business idea. It was just a huge room in a warehouse with maybe 6 bounce structures and some picnic tables in the middle for the parents. This was the best picture I could get of Addie finally being brave and going up to the top of the biggest bouncy house slide.


Addie painting her toenails on the driveway.


Warm weather and popsicle kids.


Mr. Jack is not a champ when he wakes up sometimes. Well, most times. We work on it pretty much all the time - the concept of getting up happy. He's not really getting it. Why should he really? Mom just snuggles his cute self if he's frowny so why bother being happy on his own?


I liked these so much that I took a picture and sent it to my sister. It is gluten free and super good. Worth documenting.


Jack got some new shades. "Lightning McQueen Ka-chow" shades. He frowns pretty bad when the sun is in his eyes, then he goes and gets his shades and all is well.


I found a bench I liked for my entry way. I sent this picture to my husband. He said, "let's just get past the kitchen..." So happy to be past the kitchen!

We went to the aquarium at Fair Park in Dallas. It was good for kids and much better priced than the Dallas World Aquarium. I think I drop $32 just to take my kids to that one which seems insane for looking at fish. This one was $14. Much better. And, the kids get to touch crawly things in one tank and stingrays in another. Pretty cool.


That's all I've got. My phone is clean now! Ahhhhhh. These were in no true order. So many pictures to upload and Blogger always scrambles them. :)

We go to Emily's house next week. I will take pictures. Or maybe she will. I will post them. Or maybe she will and I'll put up a link to her blog. We'll see!

Niner

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
~Albert Camus

Nine years ago today our little family began in Houston, Texas. What a great day and what a wonderful nine years! I'm so happy to have Anthony by my side in this life. This has been a great year full of opportunities for growth and I'm so grateful for every bit of it. Now I can start planning the 10 year getaway...

Kitchen

We've been busy! It's been fun, but stressful, to do some changes in our kitchen. I'm so glad we did it, but equally happy that there is nothing else in the house I want to do any major work in!

It could have been a lot more demo and a lot more rebuild. We felt like our cabinets were classic enough to go with what we wanted, so we replaced countertops, backsplash, appliances, sink, faucet, and some hardware.

The "before" picture:


Our kitchen now:

A couple of my favorite things in this next picture: the pot filler and the new stove. The pot filler is mostly neat looking, but it's handy.

There's a story with the stove though. I was really disappointed that gas was going to be such an ordeal. We'd pretty much have to re-do the gas for the entire house if we were going to get gas into this one little corner so we decided that the additional cost and the idea of tainting so many other areas were just not worth it. We got a Bosch induction stove, thanks to Anthony's brilliant research. It is pretty cool. It heats up insanely fast, the temperature is very precise and easy to control, and if you boil anything over you just lift up the pot and wipe it away. No scrubbing.

We traded out our porcelain double bowl top mount sink for a large single bowl undermount out of Silgranit, a granite composite that is really easy to care for. I love it! We also switched out our crazy faucet that would turn on and off when it felt like it (spraying you all over in the process) for this one with a pull down nozzle. It makes cleaning out the sink really easy. Just in case this one decides to turn on and off when it wants to, at least it is pointing down. The deep sink is awesome. I can hide a lot of dirty dishes in it and you can't even tell! ;)

Just another view of the kitchen from our eating area. We bought some saddle stools for the peninsula, which the kids love. I love the inexpensive addition of 4 extra seats when we have people over.

Materials used: soapstone countertops, white subway tile, and platinum grout.

Ready for vacation now...