"A Night with Frog and Toad"

This year the kindergarten students go to full day school. For the musical department, that means that the kindergartners got to participate in their first play this year. They performed the musical "A Night with Frog and Toad". Channing was super excited. For about a month before the play she would sing the songs around the house after school each day! On the night of the play, she was at the dinner table and proclaimed " Tonight is my performance on the big stage, I'm going to be a star." Yes Channing, you are. Not quite broadway, but close enough for her! haha

Here we are waiting to go in! After several plays at the school Ella made sure we we early enough to be in a good spot in the line!

She was right in the front row and she did a great job! Their classes song was "Down the Hill"

At the end she took pictures with some of her friends. Here she is with Gabrielle

She and Mallory are good buds as well. 

Then of course Avery. She literally talks about Avery ALL DAY! She thinks she's the best!

They sure are cute kids, and they did way better than I was expecting a kindergarten play to go! They listened fairly well and all followed instructions pretty awesome! Proud of these kindergartners!

A weekend in Louisiana!

What can I say, we sure love Daphne. She is a great sister, friend, and an even better Aunt. We were excited when we were able to get a weekend together to come visit her in Baton Rouge. She comes so often to Texas, that it was about time to return the favor again.

On the way there we made good time, until right before we were about 15 miles away, and then it took us an hour to go 15 miles.  We were in good company parked on the freeway next to our German friend. :) When we got there Friday night, we ate dinner, and then took a quick, chilly dip in the pool. It was fun to be there. That evening we watched SING and then we all had a nice rest. 

Saturday morning we exercised, and went to start the morning off with delicious famous Louisianian Beignets!! They were from a place called the Coffee Cafe and they were great!

It was this carb girls dream to eat them, and the kids loved that they made them in finger shape as they were easier to eat! 

Food selfie to document our first real Beignets!

After we ate breakfast we bought a kite and headed to the Louisiana kite festival. It was a perfectly beautiful day! The wind was blowing great and it was sunny and so pretty!!

Ella got the hang of kite flying pretty fast and really liked it. Channing occasionally would come and help out.

Ella could have flown the kite for hours. The boys tried the minion kite for a bit, but mostly kicked the soccer ball or threw the football outside.

Channing enjoyed lounging on the blanket and Deacon mostly had Daphne kick the ball with her. With the music in the background, she got him to dance with her a little bit. 

It really was a perfect morning and so nice to be outside and just enjoy and relax. After the festival we listened to conference. When the sessions were over we headed over to a BBQ at the pool!

The kids love Daphne's apartment complex and talk about it all the time. Cavin loves the volleyball pit and the girls love to play in the sand.

The kids even made sand angels in the sand ;)

Ragnar and Daphne took turns grilling and we had a delicious, big, juicy burger by the pool!

The pool was a little warmer today, but still fairly cold. The others embraced it better than me! I was freezing and so would stick toward the shallow side. 

Ragnar went to priesthood session and we finished playing in the pool. When he got back we watched the movie "Hidden Figures" which I thought was a good movie.

Sunday morning we watched the first session with Daphne at her house. She was great and played games with the kids before it started. They love playing with her.

After the session we headed home as there was a tornado warning coming in and it was supposed to be heavy storms. We definitely hit the hail and storms for a while, but the kids slept for part of it, until someone had to go to the bathroom! Ahhh! So sad, then of course everyone woke up! 

We watched through my phone, but it was hard to hear through all the storms. When it finally cleared up, we had about an hour and a half to go. That's when Deacon said he felt bad and so I sat by him. He threw up everywhere! He's never thrown up before! I think too many goldfish and a little car sickness got the best of him. It was not a pleasant last hour home, but we made it!!

We feel so lucky to have Daphne in our lives and we had such a great time visiting her. We are so grateful that she is only 4 hours away and we can see her often. It was a fun weekend!

A visit from Marisa!

This past week we got the pleasure of having Marisa come to visit from Arkansas. We enjoyed seeing her and her cute family. We got together with everyone who lives in Houston on Sunday and had a nice dinner with everyone. On Tuesday we went to the park with the kids who didn't have school.

Deacon was loving having Liam to play with.

Grandpa took them out to the water.

Here was the fun playground that they played at.

Kate and Addie stayed home, but I got to play with them and they are adorable!
Thursday Deacon came down with strep and so I was bummed and afraid of who we would spread it to. We stayed away that day, but Marisa came over for a birthday party my friend was throwing me. I was really grateful for her support as the whole event hadn't panned out how it was supposed to and another event was planned the same night. Most of my "friends" were committed to that, so I was already super bummed about it and didn't want to go. My friend Becky made the best of it and I really appreciated the women who came to support me. We played laser tag and got drinks at sonic.

Everyone came and hung out at our house Friday night and the kids all played together.

Saturday was a busy day! Ragnar's client was able to get us 4 tickets to the rodeo, so we went with Marisa and Ethan to the rodeo. My mom and dad took the kids for us, and thankfully with my brother's family support, they survived!

They took them to the park to play red rover and duck duck goose. The kids said they had a great time.

Ella made dinner interesting by losing a tooth!

Then they watched "Moana"together.

As for us, we ate and enjoyed the rodeo and Brad Paisley.

I think this is the longest I have ever seen Marisa's hair!

I was really happy they came to visit and we really had a nice visit with them. I love Marisa and the relationship we have, but I sure wish they lived closer.

Spring Break week 2017

I love Spring Break. I think it's a beautiful time in Texas and I love having a week with the kids. Thankfully the weather was gorgeous so we could play outside all week!! The weekend before Channing went to her best friend Avery's roller skating party. She is constantly talking about Avery from school and really loves her!

Channing did an amazing job trying to roller skate as she has never been before! I was so proud of her!

I started off the actual week on Monday taking the kids to Jumpalooza to play and thankfully there was hardly anyone there so they had a great time!
That night Ragnar's client from work gave us tickets to see Sam Hunt, so we went down to the rodeo to see him perform.

I love the livestock part of the rodeo before the performance when the bull riders and barrel racing happens. It was fun to watch!

The concert was fun, but I didn't know a ton of his songs. 

We got a funnel cake and enjoyed our time away.

Tuesday morning I took the kids back down to the rodeo so they could participate in the fun!

We went in to see all the animals first. They loved the chicks.

 The pig races are a must! We love piggies in our family!

 We also enjoy the "fun on the farm" exhibit where they get to pretend they are farmers.

Deacon loves the water station!

It was a fun time at the rodeo. They played carnival games. They were trying to win a big pokemon character but ended up winning a stuffed animal for each kid instead. Really Cavin won them all and was kind enough to share each of them with his siblings. I was proud of him!

We came home and cooled off with smoothies and eggs for dinner ;) 

After dinner I got to have a fun sleepover with Ella! She earned enough points from her Garmin and wanted to use part of them for a sleepover. We played games, worked on a puzzle, had icecream, and talked and laughed. I really enjoy being with her. She is a great kid and I sure love her!

The next morning we went to the park with our friends the Smith's. We built fairy houses. Ella loves to read about and study fairies and she and Jaemi wanted to create houses. The other kids joined in and spent several hours creating!

Deacon was accomplishing other things, such as reaching the highest point on the playground.

We had a picnic because the weather was so beautiful.

They finally completed their houses and I loved how creative they were!

That evening I took the kids to meet their dad who had to work the Rockets game. We love going as a family and the boys especially love it. Sadly a man spilled half his beer on Channing right before it started, so that was a little bit annoying!! She handled it well and we still enjoyed ourselves! Plus the Rockets beat the Lakers by 39 points, so they did great!! 

Thursday was my 34th birthday. This picture of the cute poster the kids made together was the only picture I got of that day. It wasn't a great day. Birthday's tend to be hard for me. They were so wonderful when I was younger. The older I get, the harder they are. I think you just seem to look back on the year and realize you are older and still haven't accomplished some of the things you thought you would. Also, I feel like you always feel like a loser when no one remembers. It was a rough day, and thankfully it is over.

For my birthday, the next day the movie Beauty and the Beast came out. Ragnar was excited and bought us tickets a month ago. We went to Texas Roadhouse and ate dinner and then headed to the movie.

It was a great movie and we loved it.

Friday the boys wore there shades and we played with water under the trampoline. Aren't the boys cute! HAHA!

Saturday we went to a wedding for Ragnar's co worker, Sarah. It was an all day event!! It was at a Catholic church and it was very different than anything I have been to before. They basically held a mass with their wedding and he priest was very animated and sang most of the words. It was unique. They seemed happy though and that was great.

Many of Ragnar's co workers were there so we enjoyed watching them and talking to them. Thankfully I wasn't completely bored as we had Andre and Christen to hang out with us at our table.

Finally I finished the puzzle that we had been working on all week. It was 1000 pieces and I did most of it on my own. The kids and Ragnar helped here and there, but I had forgotten how much I love puzzles. We had a nice week. Ragnar and I had 3 dates this week which is more than we've had since before we had children! It was fun to go out with him, but man we forked out a lot of money on babysitters! It was a good Spring Break with the kids.