What it's like to be a Toddler.

This is how he holds his gun when he shoots us.
If this isn't the epitome of summer, I don't know what is.

All that playing makes for a good long nap...or two.

Checking out those noisy scary long neck things....better not come any closer.

And what in the world is this?....I dont want to touch it but mommy keeps telling me to.

Now that all these plastic things are out of here, it's perfect for me.

A sign that your son may be spending too much time with girls and not enough time with boys. :)

In the first video, he's in music class working on his harmonica skills. Video #2 is him practicing his jumping skills in P.E. And lastly, he's in public speaking 101 working on his preaching skills.

2nd Grader

Can I just say, it was so wonderful to prepare for the first day of school today with not an ounce of nervousness or anxiety. Elle seemed as cool as a cucumber too! Upon walking in the door this afternoon, her first words were "AWESOME!!!! I loved school and I love my teacher!" That's all I needed to hear and any concern for what her teacher will be like has been taken away. Here's our traditional 1st day pictures and interview.
Starting the day with a pink #2 pancake, compliments to the chef...named Daddy.
First day of 2nd grade

Only 2 more weeks till Miss Ava starts Tues/Thurs school!

Next year at this time, 2/3rds of my children will be in school full time!!!

Untitled from Emma Montandon on Vimeo.

A Challenge

So yesterday, I had to do the big grocery shopping trip. I go about every 2 weeks and get enough food to prepare about 12 meals. Lately I have been feeling really uninspired....and then pinterest came along. Many of you reading this know what it is, and I had heard about it a lot, but never really checked it out. I stumbled upon it about a week ago and immediately it's like fly to fly paper. I'm hooked. And to bring all this back around, I found some great, simple, savory sounding recipes with ingredients I wasn't too scared of and so I began printing recipe after recipe off. Now, I have a 2 week menu that ROCKS and I'm actually back to being excited to look on the menu list and pick what I'll be making! So I say all this to say, I will now list ingredients that I'm almost ashamed to say, I bought for the first time in my life, yesterday.

1. celery (really!)

2. cumin (someone needs to buy me a fully stocked spice rack for Christmas--it's time to get daring!) lol

3. coconut milk

4. coconut flakes

5.egg roll wrappers

6.sweet chili sauce

7.panko bread crumbs

8. sausage (like the kind that you cook in a skillet that looks like reg. hamburger meat

9. frozen chopped spinach

I know some of you are reading this in horror that I've never bought these products. Oh well, gotta start somewhere. So now the challenge.....what have you never bought at the store??? Maybe it's time to figure out a recipe that incorporates an ingredient you've never used!

An Awesome Summer Day

Here we are ready to head out for a day of adventure and fun!!! A big thank you to my husband who worked from home this day and encouraged me to go out and have fun and even told me about the free movie! We made it to the Alamo Drafthouse...a movie experience where you also can order a meal. The girls were super excited to do this!
So the theater was showing Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and 3D---best part---it was FREE!!! Girls had never seen 3D before and they were super excited!

Next, we headed to the swimming pool and played and played and played!

Then after dinner, we headed over to our friends house and got to do something THRILLING!!! He took us up in his airplane and flew us all over the area!!!

Elle absolutely loved it!

Ava loved it too..though she did say she got hot and then kept saying it over and over. Oh and we just about had to take her headphones and mic away because she wouldn't stop talking in them....surprising, I know.

Not that you can tell at all, but this is a picture of our neighborhood and our house in on the right side, not too far from the white box.

Then after we landed, our friend Jeff, took Shawn and Elle back up and did a bunch of low passes and watched the sunset. Ava chose to stay with me and Levi. It was such a wonderful experience and Jeff even let me fly the plane. Can I just say, I love to be in control...until it comes to flying a plane. He wanted me to do a 180 degree turn and I maybe turned it about 45 degrees before I couldn't stand one more second. SUPER SCARY FOR ME!!! He seemed to think it was funny. I thought it would be a lot like being on the big airplanes but it wasn't anything like it at all...felt very scary especially on take off and landing. Wonderful wonderful experience and I'm thankful we all lived to tell the tale!

Playdate

In this last week of summer, I'm feeling panicky about our freedom and how we are about to be locked back in for 9 more months so I've been trying to really do some fun stuff. On Monday I invited the other SAH moms and their kids over for a water date. It was perfect and the kids all had a blast. Time went way too fast! Our back yard is now well watered!

Sweet Siblings

Before worship the other morning...it's the only time that we are almost for sure guaranteed that the kids will not look homeless in their outfit choices.

a typical lunchtime activity

The girls were watching a movie and Levi decided that he needed to be in the middle of it.

2 little helpers

Tea for Three

About a week ago, I could hear the girls doing a lot of whispering and scurrying around the house and finally figured out that they were preparing a tea party for me. After I put Levi down for his morning nap, I was met outside their room with smirks and giggles and they told me that they wanted me to come see their tea party. I was expecting the typical drinks on the table but they went above and beyond!

This was my seat. They looked around for lots of green washrags to cover my chair with since they know my favorite color is green. Then, Elle spelled out "Mom" on my seat with stickers. She only had the first two letters in stickers so she cut the third out of a napkin :) We started off acting very proper and sipping our tea and then quickly broke down when I began showing them how we should NOT act, by acting out bad table manners. I haven't seen them laugh that hard in a long time!

My newest nephew

My sister had her 2nd son on the 7th of August so as quick as we could go, we packed the car and made the trip to Tyler to meet him. We made this into a mini vacation and planned to do some fun things while there. Brooks is a sweet sweet little man and it was wonderful to be on this side of a holding a newborn. The kids were all interested in him for about 3 seconds and then it was back to playing with a cousin more their size. While in Tyler, we spent lots of time with Laura and the family, Shawn and I went on a few dates :), visited Gramme at work, painted a picture with Poppy, met up with our good friends the Campbells for lunch and a sprinkler park, and we took our kids to the Brookshire's Wildlife Museum. I feel like we really showed the heat that we would NOT be deterred from having fun even though it was rumored to be 110 degrees at some point while we were there! Now the countdown to the end of summer is on and though I'm so sad that another summer is behind us, I am excited for the things to come.
p.s. I had 20 pictures I was going to post on here, but seriously, I just can't take another hour to do that. I'd rather sleep. I will post them to facebook and maybe put a few more on here later!