Wonderful Wedding Weekend!!!

This past weekend my last roommate married! We had so much fun with wedding plans, and wish we were in Fiji with she and her husband!!! Thursday night we played games in our hotel room and tried to call the other two roommates who couldn't make it. One friend has been working for a year on a trivia game with questions from our single lives. Friday we went for a Girls' lunch at the Chocolate Angel which was so fun and quaint! Several friends have gone there for lunch, but it's definitely not a child-friendly place! More like a ladies' tea room...
Friday night was the rehearsal dinner and it was so fun! We all learned the Hungarian wedding dance (The groom is from Hungary.) and laughed all night long! Saturday morning Becky, Katie and I drove downtown to see the The Sixth Floor Museum all about where JFK was killed. This picture includes both the Dallas skyline and the Grassy Knoll.
Becky brought her sweet little Aspen who my children all adored. When Emily finally had a turn to hold the baby, she was NOT going to let go!

This was their first dance (can't remember the name!!!).
Okay - Hollie and Jozsef have a wedding blog that talks about each member of the wedding party. One guy (Gaither) is a cowboy and loves to rope horses, etc. I was so excited to meet him and sent an email to Hollie asking if there was time could he show Ben a few tips. At the rehearsal dinner I see this guy below:
He looks incredibly familiar! I asked Hollie who is was and found out his name was Gaither. "The cowboy?" "Yes." So I said, "Hollie, he served a mission here." So, we went over to talk to him and relayed my email, etc. and confirmed that yes, he had served in the Texas ______ Mission. He said, "I remember your mom and your sister. Your mom served a mission to France." I remembered he and Elder Hardy had come over for dinner a couple of times when they were APs. SMALL WORLD!!! Now, we want him to meet a friend of Andy's that is living in the same town...

These are the beautiful wedding pictures!!!

Congratulations to the two of you! Many thanks to my sweet Andy and my incredible mom and sister for letting me play all weekend when I know you all had a thousand other important things to be doing! And I have to admit I think I laughed more in the last 4 days than I have laughed in the last four years!!!

To make the weekend even sweeter (as if that could happen!!!) we topped last night off with several hands of Nertz and a rousing game of Cities and Knights!!! What a fabulous weekend!! THANK YOU to all who were involved!!

Happy Birthday Ben!

Well, five years ago (in and hour and 26 minutes!) I became a mom! It has been a MUCH harder five years than I expected, but I love and treasure my little boy!

Ben is born!!!
Ben turns 1!!!

Ben's second birthday!!!

Ben's 3rd birthday!

Ben turns 4!!!

Happy 5th Ben! We had cereal with frosting (frosted mini-wheats) and then went to Ikea with a friend.

VERY naughty girl

So - I have been enjoying the Twilight series along with most people in the US right now. However, there 4th book came out last weekend, and I haven't even had a chance to buy it yet. Knowing that i have a very busy next few weeks and honestly don't have time to neglect my life for 750 pages of reading, I did the unthinkable! I googled the book and read the entry of Breaking Dawn on wikipedia. To me the ultimate book-reading sin is to read the last page(s) of a book! Sorry to all those I have criticized. I'm so sad to know that my life is too busy right now to read, but once I get into a book I have no other option than to keep reading. Call me a softy and get on with it. At least now I know what happens!!!

Just Keep Swimming...

One of my favorite parts of Finding Nemo is Dory on the Main Menu page, "just keep swimming, just keep swimming, etc." That's what is has been like for the last two weeks and will continue to be through the end of August!

First, yesterday I took Annie for her speech testing at the school district office and she qualified for the speech preschool! Yay because hopefully it will help (if her progress is anything like Ben's was she will soar!) and sad because that means she really is missing that many sounds. Both speech pathologists were amazed at how easy it is to understand her despite missing MOST beginning sounds. When she can't make a particular sound she says her favorite 'd' sound. I think its because we have done so much with Ben, so she tries really hard to enunciate each sound that she does know! Hopefully Emily has had enough proper examples that she won't have the speech issues also...

Second, Ben cut his hair this morning! Scissors have all been put up very high because for some reason he wanted to know if his scissors could cut the leather on our recliner (they can) and through our bedspread that my aunt made me (they can), so it was time to put them away. This morning he was making a puppet out of a brown paper sack with pipe cleaners, wooden sticks, colors, and glue stick. i gave him all the stuff to do it with! He came to show me his self-portrait puppet. It was very cute - until he pointed out the hair! Apparently the puppet needed hair, so he cut some of his to glue on!

Looking back, i think i made a little bit of a mistake by fixing the problem instead of him just living with it and looking silly. Maybe if peers ask enough questions on why his hair looks funny he wouldn't do it again! But, I had already started cutting it - with a 1!!! That's how short he made it! He is quite excited because for over a year, he has been asking me to make him bald like Uncle Ned! I told him if he ever cut it again I would not fix it and he would have to walk around looking silly.

Emily has developed an attachment - yes, another one! She now loves the washcloth that we wipe her mouth off with after eating. Yesterday morning she took it to a friend's who was watching her for Annie's appointment. She carried it around with her while there. This morning she had a huge fit because I wouldn't let her keep it after washing her mouth with it!

I'm sure there is a lot more going on, but the show the kids earned is over and we are back to work to make our house spotless for company this weekend! I love weddings!!!

The Heat is On!

And not just here in Texas! We have been super busy lately, but we've also started a friendly little competition with some friends (per a fabulous suggestion from another group that is already involved). Here are the details:

Weekly weigh-ins
Master scale and record keeping chart
couples work together
final data entry on November 4th
most weight percent lost = 2 over-nights child-free

Andy and I are competing against another couple, and we've been getting up and taking the kids on walks/runs before the heat of the day does us in! We're 6 days in and have gone 4 of those days. Why is this going to work? Because we are a competitive couple - and I continue to remind Andy that he is GOING TO work hard on this because I have supported him on several things that I didn't necessarily want to work hard on. Love you honey!!!

As for us, this weekend we had a 2-day garage sale with my mom to clean out accumulated junk and make space for more stuff! We learned to can peaches!!! I made more peach jam. I froze several bags of peaches (still in the process). (((Peaches were $0.39 at a new store here, so we bought 4 boxes - yes, that is like 240 peaches!!!))) We had an incredible produce shop. And - we exercised. :) Hope your weekend fared as well! I'm exhausted to start my Monday, but tomorrow night is book club here, so I've got to get busy getting the house ready. Because this is the ONE night all month I asked Andy to be home early for, so of course he will be out of town on business. :) AND - I need to make some yummy cakes for refreshments...can you guess which book we are reading???

Staying Busy!

A friend passed on this adorable little ballet outfit to Annie, which is worn at least twice a day. She LOVES it! She continues to ask to take a ballet class. I explained that we just don't have the money for that right now (while paying $4 for gas!!!), but maybe she could ask for that for her birthday. She was THRILLED when Grandma said yes to that gift suggestion... Emily loves talking on the phone. I've started calling my nieces in Utah (who have unlimited long distance). They will call back and just talk to her while she carries the phone around the house. If they sing then she will join in, but she is just happy to be "BIG!"
We dog sat for a friend last night - Reese. The kids all love him. Ben pretends Reese is a pet horse. It's quite comical! Emily likes to lay on her tummy and be nose-to-nose with him. I wish I could have captured with the camera all that I was seeing with my eyes!
This is ONE plant that is thriving in our sad and dead garden. I thought it was a squash or zucchini plant, but then I saw the following...

Now I think - watermelon or cantaloupe??? I can't remember what I planted there (I was so sure I wouldn't forget!) but I assume watermelons look the same while small and large? If so, we are going to have a TON of watermelon - assuming that these hundreds of flowers get pollinated. We are having some issues with lack of bees around here. I've been self-pollinating the tomatoes and have finally had some success. This afternoon I took to this plant with a Q-tip, so hopefully something will happen soon!!!
Tell me if this isn't the most handsome boy you have seen in a LONG time!
This is the other new-found love that has been taking up so much of my time - cooked JAM!!! I love it! I found some strawberries on sale at Kroger for $1.25 a pound, so I bought 8, made freezer jam and froze a few. Then a friend bought a ton of peaches and taught me how to make cooked jam (((far superior in my opinion - of course, I don't really like eating regular peaches anyway...))) So, I have 8 jars of that (well - minus the two I shared with my mom and sister) in the pantry. I decided I needed more strawberries, so I went Monday and got 8 more to freeze. However, by Tuesday morning we had already eaten two full containers! I needed more and it was the last day of the sale! So I went back Tuesday afternoon to only find the organic strawberries - on sale for $1.25! Yippee!!! This time I bought 16 containers and happened to see blackberries 4 for $5 (same price!!!). Had I remembered how much I LOVE blackberries, I would have bought more than four.

Anyway, I canned this jam yesterday (strawberry and strawberry/blackberry) and made ten Ziploc bags of frozen berries to eat through the fall and winter for smoothies (I did this last year with strawberries and peaches - YUMMY!). Now I just need to find a place in my pantry for these jars.

And for the jars I intend to do next week. Sprouts has just opened down the street from my mom and one of the opening sales is peaches and nectarines for 39 CENTS a pound. You can bet I am going to buy as many of those as I possibly can!!! And them I am going to learn to can peaches... YUMMY!

Andy and I talked this afternoon about Christmas gifts (we like to do food for his co-workers and people in his calling with him - Rudy's BBQ sauce, homemade salsa, Popcorn Papa, etc). I thought we could give people a jar of peach and strawberry jam and then a loaf of homemade bread. HOWEVER - I really don't think I can part with this jam. I would have to dedicate a whole day to making them more jam because I need enough to last through next summer so I don't have to buy that kind in the store with high fructose corn syrup! :)

We Are All Enlisted 'til the Conflict is Over!!!

My children have learned a new vocabulary word - diarrhea. Although Annie calls it gas-a-rhea. I hate potty-talk. I despise the "f" word. In our house, we "pass gas." Although I am pretty much tired of anyone passing anything.

Andy woke up in the middle of the night joining our household of sick. Looks like another few days of quarantine for us. Although I don't quite understand how when he is home sick from work he gets to sleep in a quiet cool bedroom (although he does have to move from room to room to find that) with drinks brought to him, yet when I am sick I still get to take care of 3 kids, keep up with laundry, make meals, and exist on even less sleep than normal...someone care to explain that one to me? Although I did get to run and get my hair cut and buy toilet paper since we were down to our last roll - all by myself!!!

Dressed Like a Princess

It took a lot of work to get Annie to put on clothes Sunday morning. Ben loves getting ready because on Sunday mornings he 'shaves' just like Dad and then dresses in a suit just like Dad. He loves Sundays!!! Annie just doesn't like to get dressed at all in this current almost 3 year-old stage. I finally told her she would look like a princess. Apparently she also felt that way and needed her broken crown on. Ben asked if she wanted to dance. I put on some music and they danced the morning away - until the little McDonalds crown fell off her head one too many times!
What sweethearts! They are such fabulous friends when they are both happy!!!

Mr. Independence!

Ben and I decided a few weeks ago it was time for the training wheels to go. They kept turning on our walks when he'd go fast and just seemed like a pain. We've been working on it in 10-15 minutes increments. A friend suggested starting them going down a slight hill to get some momentum. We started with that, but he did much better riding in the dirt in our front yard (because we killed all of our grass...on purpose). Once I figured out that he needed one pedal always on top, I taught him how to turn his tire to accomplish that. Now he is even more sturdy that he was with the training wheels! Dad got to see him for the first time Sunday night - being a a daredevil on the church ramp behind our house! Way to go Ben!!! He likes to go off the edge instead of straight down the ramp like he used to.

I figure if I can teach him to ride without the training wheels and jump off the diving board in a week - reading is going to be a breeze...right... I'll just go back to eating my warm chocolate chip cookie with Blue Bell vanilla ice cream and dream about the future!

Hip Hip Horray for BEN!!!

He did it! No more man-eating vacuum in this pool! It was a process and we all worked together. Thanks Aunt Jamie for working with Em and Annie while we played with Ben!

1. First, Andy took him into the deep end to blow rings (he puts on a scuba mask and blows rings from the bottom that get bigger as they rise; it's really cool!).
2. Then I stood about 5 feet away and told him to swim to me. Okay!
3. Then I went halfway from one side of the deep end to the other.
4. Then he and Andy swam across the deep end.
5. Then they started seeing how deep they could go and if Ben could touch the bottom. So they did that for a little bit.
6. The convincing moment was a stoke of brilliance (mine, of course!)!!! I asked Annie to go jump off the board and had Ben watch underwater to see how far down she goes after jumping off the board (it's seriously less than a foot!).
7. As soon as he watched her, he was off and running out of the water and jumped right off came up and swam to the steps!!! It was incredible!!! They were performing for the camera!
We started a new game last week (are you ever too old for games while jumping off the board?) where the person in the water would "set" the volleyball and we would hit it. Everyone was busy with other things, so I did the self toss, approach, and hit. Andy had the camera on infinity so there is a 5 picture series of this moment - but I'll just post the crowning moment! I must admit that my steps are still there - they just have an extra 50 pounds since high school...!
After a long day in the pool, we love to have dinner with Grandpa grilling. The kids have their make-shift table to eat. Then we all shower, put on jammies and drive home to bed! It's the perfect summer Saturday!!!

Wait Too Long

I left Emily eating today and went to help Ben and Annie with something else. I got a little bit sidetracked. About 5 minutes later I wondered why Emily hadn't called me. I went back in the kitchen to find out I had waited too long. She still took a 3 hour nap after I moved her to her bed though!

The Man-eating Vacuum

It seems like MONTHS that we have been trying to get Ben to go off the diving board, but he gets this deer-in-the-headlights look. Annie now goes off and can do so without her life jacket. Ben will walk to the diving board and then run back to shallow safety.

So, I was heating up leftovers for dinner tonight - of course with all the kids in the kitchen with me. :) If mom is in the kitchen, so is everyone else!

(Sidenote, Ben would rather be cooking with me than wrestling with dad!!! He is always in charge of eggs in the morning - I turn on the stove, do the salt, and separate the yolk for 'flat eggs' for he and Annie if we are having pancakes. He gets out everything, puts the butter in, cracks eggs, scrambles, flips (sometimes not so pretty), peppers, and wants to serve them on plates. He knows that with Dad he can do the whisk, but Mom takes away egg-making duties if he even looks at the whisk...okay back to the point of the story...)

So, there is no conversation and my brain is fried from 5 busy days of being mom. I say, "Tell me a story." So Ben starts on this story about a little boy who jumps off the diving board and sinks under the water and is eaten by the vacuum on the bottom of the pool. (This is while I am cutting watermelon and they are snatching pieces.)

AH-HAH! So we find out that is why he hasn't wanted to jump off the board (even though he is also scared when the vacuum is OUT of the pool, but oh well...)! So we talked seriously for a few minutes about that not being a possibility because he is much bigger than the vacuum and maybe it could get a few toes, but that is all. Then we decided he could try it with the life-jacket on. That brightened his face and we will try it!!! Hopefully tomorrow!!!

It's so funny - on another completely sidenote - his story reminded me of a mom who was trying to potty train her son. He was over four and would pee in the potty, but not poop. After taking him to many doctors and specialists, they found out he was afraid to sit because there was an elephant hiding in there and he would make noises when the toilet flushed. Once they resolved that fear, the little boy was great! Hopefully this will be the same way. Ben LOVES the water and LOVES swimming and diving for rings, and hopefully will soon (or later) LOVE the diving board as well!!!

Now I know...

...why all parents love Where the Sidewalk Ends! Ben has been loving tv this week, probably because we haven't been able to go anywhere alllllll week (more about that later)! Tonight I went to find him, hoping to now find a mess and instead found him watching tv! I told him he was going to turn into a tv set! So I had to go and find "the book" that I thought wouldn't be appreciated until my children were much older. It is hilarious! I just figured out that each poem is about some hideous behavior that children exhibit and takes it to the extreme! We've been reading it for the last 30 minutes and letting Ben and Annie take turns picking stories! I did have to majorly edit the Paul Bunyan one; I didn't remember that from my youth...

Happy Fourth!

It was a fun and busy day to celebrate our country's birthday! We started with a church picnic breakfast, and truth be told it is one of Andy's very favorite activities. You will see why shortly... We put everyone in red or blue; Ben chose his favorite cowboy outfit (a red FLANNEL shirt! with jeans, cowboy duds and trusty canteen) and used his hat to shade his face... Here he is getting on his horse. All the kids love this climbing apparatus.
Moms love that it can handle several kids at a time with room enough for all!
This is Annie and her friend Brynnley. We did a little photo shoot with the two of them because they were having so much fun playing!
Emily enjoyed swinging over and over and over again....

So, I looked over to find these two little munchkins without their shoes and climbing on the top of the tube slide. I have shoe issues (one must always wear them outside!!!) and Annie knows that, so she and B went climbing back up inside the slide. It took me a few minutes to convince them I only wanted to take a few pictures.

They are quite silly together!
Annie with B's little brother - riding away on his horse!
This is why Andy LOVES this church activity - an on-going game of Ultimate Frisbee with old out-of-shape men (the 30+ group) and the teenagers, who have the speed and the energy but lack the years of practice. They start with a little bit of football and then bring out the Frisbee. Andy would LOVE to bring out the soccer ball also, but that's not so popular down here...

Then we went to my mom's to swim and eat. This is Emily with Baby Claire - her favorite friend who she gets quite giddy about seeing! On the table you will see the most fabulous roasted corn and black bean salsa dip that my friend Farrah makes! If I was really good at technology I would give you a link to her blog for the recipe, but I'm not. Sorry. Really sorry because it is pretty much a little bit of heaven on earth!

Ben and my mom worked on painting when Ben needed a pool break. He and Andy made this last weekend, and he took it to Grandma's because she has birds living in a nest in her backyard.

Annie has learned to go off the diving board by herself - WITHOUT a life jacket! She is like a little daredevil and just jumps right off! Here is the succession of her swimming.

We sure missed the rest of our family, and the day would have been more perfect if we'd had some cousins here too! We were finally able to finish off our Independence Day with Andy's other favorite activity - fireworks! The last few years we've had to leave with Ben in hysterics because the fireworks scare him so much. Not this year! He did great!!!

Now I need to run and check on Ben and Annie. They are playing 'Mommy and Daddy' and somehow Aunt Nancy is cooking dinner, and I know how scary that can be!!! :)