Olympic and Summer Fun!

Ok so we might be a tad bit obsessed with the Olympics!! We just love them! We all were so excited for them to begin and so far it has not disappointed. On Friday night for the Opening Ceremony, we invited a couple families over to eat and watch it together. It was great and the kids were excited each time one of the countries they had colored a flag of came on the screen. We have been learning about a lot different countries and we love it!

We made our own medals to wear, thanks to our creative friend Mitzi.....

And we had to have "Olympic Torch" cupcakes for the ceremony!

Here is an updated photo of the kids for their wonderful Grandparents

There have been a few times that we have stepped away from the Olympics and played.... yesterday we went with our friends the Waters to the zoo....I know CRAZY to go to the zoo in the middle of the summer in Texas....but we went early and we survived....and we managed to even have FUN!

Here are all the kids, minus cute little Emma

They were excited because they got ONE ride on the carousel.

Gotta Play on those drums at the African Safari!

           We had a nice day and we are enjoying the summer, even though it's super hot!

Rainy Days!

This past week and a half it has rained a ton! We are so grateful for the rain, but it sure has kept us inside a lot. We have had my sister Natalie staying with us for a few days and then we went over to her house and hung out with her there a few days while my parents were on a little trip. Natalie got to enjoy our dress-up parties, movies, games, and endless hugs from Channing who adores her. By the end Channing was even calling her "mama" because Natalie would pay more attention to her. We are so glad that Natalie could come and hang out with us for a little while. (I can't believe I didn't get a picture of her with the kids, but I guess she lives close...we will have to do it again!) I only hope it doesn't rain for the next week and a half straight!

Yes this is my son wearing a super woman costume....as you can see we need some "boy" dress-up attire. I justify it and say he at least chose something that resembled a male action figure! He loves whatever his sister loves!

The Butterfly Museum

This past week I went with my sister Natalie and my friend Mitzi and her son Marshall to the Butterfly museum. Ella loves butterflies and always tells me which kind she sees, so I wanted to check it out.

 Ella's dream was to have a butterfly land on her finger, we tried for a little while and then I told her we had five more minutes before we needed to leave, so that she could try one more time. I really felt bad because I thought there was a next to none chance that it would actually land on her finger....well....

 

 

Here she is with a butterfly on her finger and I think I have never seen her happier. She was so excited.

As you can see in this picture she used a little coercion from the butterfly who was on the ground to get it on her finger, but it crawled up and stayed there long enough for a picture then flew away. It was great and she talked about it the rest of the day!

Channing was ready to eat lunch ;)

I love Marshalls face in this...haha! There were butterflies flying everywhere which was neat but there were way too many disgusting insects to look at inside! We finished it off with a nice little picnic. It was a fun little outing.

Kids Bowl Free

This summer Ella and Cavin were able to participate in bible school. There is a Methodist church in our area that offered bible school to children for free for 5 days from 9-12 and they loved every minute of it. It was a good experience for them to learn with other kids about the bible and they had fun making crafts and playing. One of the perks was that they got a coupon to bowl for free through September. So....on Tuesday we checked it out. They had a fun time and Tyler and Tyson came along!

Ella used the ramp and also bowled on her own...she couldn't decide what she liked more. She only worried about one thing....can you guess.....winning!

Hoping for a strike.... although she did get a spare!

Cavin loves numbers as you know, so you can imagine how excited he got looking at the scoreboard after each time and seeing that his score would get higher and higher :)

Here is Cavin and his buddy Tyler

Channing is now our little walking buddy, so she was having a hard time staying still. She does however love to sit in big kid chairs!

Here are the kids, Cavin, Ella, Tyson, and Tyler....not pictured were the two cute girls, Channing and Emma. We sure enjoy their company!

Blueberry Picking

 This year some friends of ours were going blueberry picking so we decided to join along. We all like blueberries and in our family you can never have enough. There is a place called Moorheads  Farm about 40 minutes away so we waited til evening when it "cooled" down (if there is such a thing in Houston) and enjoyed picking away!

Ragnar is going to town picking here in the back of this picture. He was on a mission to find some!

Ella was so worried about making sure she had the most!  She was working hard to make sure she would ...she is our competitive child!

Cavin is obsessed with numbers so he pretty much counted every single blueberry that landed in this bucket. I think we hear numbers more than words come out of his mouth!

Here are a couple of my friends who we joined...Brittany and Emily

This was mostly a mixture of Channings two faces. She would smile so big because she would be eating all the blueberries from the bucket.....or.........

She would give you a grumpy face because she was eating them all and I would tell her she had enough. Oh we love this little girl! We picked about 7 and 1/2 pounds in about an hour, so we had plenty to take home!

Home Sweet Home

Well here it is....our new home! We love it. It had only been lived in less than a year after it was built so it is in great shape and still has the new home smell. Unfortunately the lawn needs a little tlc! We are still working on decorations and yard work and such, but I wanted to give you an idea of where we now live! Enjoy!

    I love the Texas star on the door!

Our backyard is a good size, but the grass will need some help. There is also a little porch that I didn't get in the picture!

When you walk in this is what you see. There is a large utility room to the left and also a half bathroom.

    On the right of the door is a space we are using as an office

    Here is the kitchen

   This is the family room. I love all the cut outs and arches up the stairs.

 

On the bottom floor is also the master bedroom

   And master bathroom (I love having a huge separate closet :)

    When you walk upstairs, here is the view looking down from the banister!

    Right at the top of the stairs is the gameroom......here is one half....

 and here is the other                                                  

          The kids bathroom

Here is Ella's bedroom, she loves having a queen size bed!

  Here is a glimpse at Channings room

And here is Cavins room! (And since he is the only boy, he says his imaginary friend "Pants" sleeps in the other bed :)

Out with the Old, in with the New!!

On June 14, 2012 we officially became home owners again! We were so excited to have been able to finally find a home that we love and were so excited to move into. It has felt like an extremely long process to find a new home. We have been looking for the better part of 4 years. We knew that Heavenly Father was aware of our family and we felt several "tender mercies" throughout the process of finally finding our home. In the end, we got all the things we wanted. We found a bigger home, in a subdivision we really wanted to stay in, in a ward we really wanted to remain, with a gameroom, and backyard, and 4 bedrooms, and all the essential things. We are feeling extremely blessed and very grateful for the house search chapter in our life to be over. Ragnar wanted to document our house moving process so I will post a few pictures of trying to pack our townhome up to move. We literally only moved about a street away, it was like 30 seconds in the car!

We began putting the boxes we had packed into Channings room.

Then eventually they moved to the garage and then the truck!

This was the last night in our home.....packing up all the frames. It was a wonderful townhome for us and we have great memories of it. We just simply outgrew it and wanted to feel settled in something of our own.

Here is Ragnar and I about an hour after we signed the papers and this became our home. Our realtor was kind enough to take this picture. She was amazing and the process went incredibly smooth which we felt was a testament that this was truly the home we had been waiting for! We love it! I will update you with pictures soon!