Bastrop State Park

We are on a mission to find the most awesomest place to go tent camping here in the hill country. We don't want to drive more than about an hour away. This past Saturday we headed to Bastrop State Park also known as The Lost Piney Woods. It was very pretty and very serene. We had a picnic with no one else around and then took a walk with the girls through the woods. They both loved it of course. Neither are very sure about the whole bug situation in the world, but they'll have to get over that! Although it was a pretty nice state park, I think we'll keep looking for a better place to tent camp....a little too crowded and roads are too close to the camping areas. Weather permitting, we are headed to McKiney Falls State Park Friday or Saturday to see if it's nice enough to camp at.

a weird bug we saw on a rotten tree

throwing rocks in the stream

eating our picnic

falling for the one bazillionth time...she didn't seem to care one bit

How we found Ava

When I went in to get Ava up from a nap a few days ago, this is what I saw as I looked into her crib. What's great is that she didn't wet the bed while the diaper was off! When I woke her up, she did seem a little perplexed as to why her hiney was out in the open.

"Behind" the Bumpy Beginning and other Short Stories

I just love coming up with titles for my blog! Well, here's short story #1:

This morning it finally happened....I fell down the stairs...while carrying Ava....knocking Elle down the stairs in the process. I figured why not take us all down since I'm for sure going down. Well, to start we are all "fine". I fell to my left side since I had Ava on my right hip. My feet hit Elle knocking her down a few stairs, but she was able to catch herself somewhat. I landed REALLY hard right on my tailbone. For a good minute, I truly couldn't move at all except my head and I think it sort of knocked the wind out of me. Everything froze in the position I fell it. It's as if I jarred a nerve which froze everything else. Elle was crying but stopped quickly because she wasn't hurt, just scared. Ava was crying because she was scared and because she saw that I was hurt. She is SUCH a sympathetic child. She bawls her eyes out if she thinks anyone else is hurt. Once I started trying to talk to her, she calmed down a little, but kept hugging me and rubbing my face to help me feel better. After a few minutes when I felt like I could move my legs again and my back wasn't as bad, I got up. I was a lot slower after that. I am feeling like I was in a fender bender. My whole spine hurts and of course my booty is killing me! I can't sit in almost any comfortable position and I feel like my insides aren't too happy either. Everything hurts and is really tight. But, it will pass. Anyway that was as I was bringing Ava down for breakfast so needless to say, it was a bumpy start to the day.



Here are a few pictures from today:

The best toys in the toy box are each other! I found them in there together this morning. I love watching them grow closer every day. I really believe they will be best friends growing up. They absolutely love each other.

Second, here is a picture of the canopy I made for Elle for her birthday. She is SO into books, so I decided to make her a book nook for her bedroom. It's going to go in a corner of her room and then also for her birthday we are hoping she gets, or we get her a bean bag chair like the picture below that will be inside the canopy: Here's how we had to hang it in order to get a picture of it...quite funny.

The official picture from the McCall's website. This is what a "professional" one looks like. As you can see it's meant to go over the bed, but I don't make a habit of following the rules.

The little, yet very expensive chair, that's I'm sort of lusting after....something like this at least. Doesn't have to be this fabric, but this kind of chair is what I have in mind.

We have to find one that's less expensive though. We'll see.

Chuck E. Cheese!!!

Maybe I just won't ever grow up, but I still LOVE Chuck E. Cheese. It's the last place on Earth, where you can still play a huge amount of different kinds of games all for only one token each. And to make the deal even sweeter, every game you play gives you tickets for doing good and even tickets for doing not so good! My mom came in the weekend to see the girls and babysit and took all of us to CEC's yesterday. We all had a lot of fun!

Lots of tickets....321 to be exact!
With all those tickets, Elle wanted one simple ring that costs 10 tickets. It's her money ring, but she doesn't know that and called it the white ring.

So we spent the rest of the tickets buying Ava a troll dressed us as a ballerina...she loved it.

You know you're in central Texas when....

...even the Valentine's Hearts are all in Spanish. Some I knew...but some I could only guess.

Valentines and Elmo

I had a great Valentine's yesterday. Shawn made me a CD of songs that reminded him of me. I thought it was very sweet. Later in the day I received a PajamaGram, which had pj bottoms and a tank top with candy hearts all over it. Also very sweet. We gave the girls each a book for Valentines and they both loved them. Last night, I took Elle to a Sesame Street Live! production. It was in Austin and it was wonderful! She was so excited to get to watch all the Sesame Street characters dancing and singing. I am so thankful that we are able to do things like that sometimes for the girls. I know it's totally uncharacteristic of me, but I didn't even take a camera so I have no pictures from the evening. I figured that since I was going to be alone with her, my hands would be sort of full, plus it was dark most of the time. Anyway we survived Austin traffic and loved it! Today, we are all just hanging out and waiting for my mom to arrive. She is coming in for the weekend to see the girls and also to babysit tomorrow nite because we have a Valentine's MASH event. Enjoy the weekend.

1st drum concert

For those that know something about drumming, ignore the mess ups and for those that don't, enjoy this perfect piece of music!

Help please!

I have uploaded my first drum "concert" to google, but after posting to the blog, it just shows a black screen and won't play the video. Anyone else having problems? I haven't been able to put a video on the blog for months and this is the closest I've gotten, but still no video :( I know you're all on the edge of your seats waiting for that concert.

See...I'm being nutritious

In an effort to show my kids how to eat healthy, I made sure that for lunch I ate Cocoa Pebbles with a bowl of canned veggies. I felt way less guilty about eating the sugar cereal in front of them when I ate the veggies with it!

The wise man built his house upon the rock.....

...But the wise man also wanted to plant trees....which wasn't such a great idea.

We are working to make our yard our very own and Shawn bought a Red Maple this weekend to plant in the front yard next to the driveway. It is a gorgeous tree and perfect for what we wanted. Here's some pics. Everything was going so well...until the rock.
Here it is up close. It looks like we found the foundation to an old house, but this is what is under the ground around here.
Shawn was so excited about planting the tree that he had a little accident.

Hard to see in the shadow, but here it is all planted. We are so proud of our little tree!

Sweet Sisters

I was playing with Adobe Photoshop and this is what I got. I was going for something alittle different, but it still turned out okay. Sweet picture if I do say so myself.

Aunt Emily will be proud!

Elle goes for a layup...I might could make a layup if someone would do this for me.

Daddy teaches Ava to dribble.

Trying it on her own.

Shawn decided it was time to teach Elle the fundamentals of basketball. I just don't get that game...it's one of the only sports that I truly can't even try talking smack in because I just stink big time. I'm hoping our children inherited Shawn's genetics in that arena. Anyway, weird thing...Shawn was talking to our neighbor across the street a few days ago about wanting to find a basketball goal on Craigslist. Long story short, our neighbor said "You find a good one under $200, I'll pay for it if you get it. Then we can both use it because I've been wanting one too!" Well Shawn was on that like fly on fly paper. We keep it across the street and Shawn has been coaxing Elle out there to learn how to play. Ava is "interested" too...mostly in caring the ball around and standing in the way. It's cute and hopefully our children will have some athletic ability. Shawn and I always say that we hope they have his athletic ability and my heart for trying!

At the present time, Elle would rather gather rocks and pretend to cook than do the basketball thing.

What's so Super?

Cheerleaders

Players...so they'd like to think!

We had a MASH Superbowl party last night. Don't ask who played or who won...I couldn't care less...I was there for the appetizers and girl talk. We had A LOT of fun as usual. Elle and her friend Kimmy stayed in the master bedroom watching Disney movies all night while all the women pretty much hung out and all the men pretty much hung out...Ava roamed from group to group...whoever would feed her most. Every girl told her engagement story and dating story and of course somehow we migrated to birthing stories, but we stopped quickly because three of the girls haven't had a baby and we want them to have babies one day :) It was a lot of fun and I LOVE MY FRIENDS! Here's a few pics from the Bowl Party that was Super!

This was acutally hard to capture....there were very few times when any of us were watching the game!

I'm High...

...on drumming! I am so so so excited about my drumset. First, after I got the drumset I was excited about it but nervous that after a few days the newness and excitement would wear off and it would be thrown into the garage with all the other have-to-haves that I no longer use. But, I have actually played my drums every day since I got them. Finally this weekend after much patience, Shawn took me to a music store and I bought a book that would further teach me the fundamentals and beyond so that I don't always look like I took only 10 minutes of lessons. I have been studying the book religiously and am gaining knowledge, confidence, and skill fairly quickly. I played my first full "song" today which was a full page of sheet music. It's hard, but I'm determined. I'm going to say this so that ya'll will hold me to it: I'm going to eventually do a blog concert so you can see that I'm not lying when I say I'm learning to play the drums! I'm not sure how soon it will be, but hopefully in the next few weeks!
In other-side-of-Emma-news, my chitlens are doing much better. I believe everyone has nice normal whites to their eyes again....although we are all dealing with allergy symptoms. It must be bad here right now because we all have itchy eyes, sore throat, runny nose, cough, and headaches...tis the life of a central Texan.
Some of you have been very quiet in blogland lately....are you still there?