This isn't my first rodeo....

...but today was my kids' first rodeo!  Before we get to that, here's a picture of us right after we met Gramme near Waco to transfer ownership of our kids back to us.

It worked out well that we had and hour and a half drive back home.  The kids had our full attention and we got to hear about all of the wonderful things they got to do with their grandparents.  It sounded like it was almost as fun as our week!

 Back to the rodeo...Tonight, one of our friends was singing the national anthem at the rodeo in town, so we decided to take the kids to their first rodeo!  They had such a great time watching all the different events.  We stayed as long as we could but had to leave at 9:45 to still deal with baths and tired kids and worship in the morning.  But, we might just be hooked!  We loved watching all of it and everything was such a new experience for us.  Some of our friends came to the rodeo too so our kids got to hang out and so did we!

Ava has decided that next year she wants to try the event where they run after the calf trying to get the ribbon tied to it.  That should be interesting to watch.  Levi has no desire to try mutton busting though I think he'd have a decent shot!  Elle is happy to be in the crowd!

Kidless, Last Day

Tomorrow we get reunited with our kids!  It feels like they've been gone a glorious month.  I love my kids and they truly give me such purpose, but this break has been AWESOME! (I'm absolutely positive that they'd agree!)  I'm so very thankful to all three sets of parents for taking the opportunity to spend a few days being with them!  Here's how we spent our last day. 

We started with a massage for me!  My friend gave me a gift card to get a massage so I jumped on that opportunity as fast as I could!  Afterwards, we headed to JoAnn's to buy some fabric to make Levi some bow ties.  So far, Shawn was just being a good sport and coming along for the ride.  

Then we headed to our favorite Mexican food place, Pappasito's!  We shared beef fajitas as usual.  They are still just as delicious as every other time!

Next we headed back down to the hospital to see precious Phoebe again.  I am absolutely in love with her.  I am so excited to watch her grow and watch Valerie and her family as they get into the groove of a family of five!  I will have to bond a whole lot with Phoebe this coming week, because we leave in one week for camp, and by the time we get home, Valerie and her family will have moved to start a new job as relief house parents at a children's home...I see many road trips in our future...they will only be about 1 1/2 hours away.

After making myself give Phoebe back, we headed to see Jurassic World.  It was great!  Scary, freaky, and awesome!

Then we headed to the grocery store to restock all the foods the kids would need that we haven't had all week...plus I bought a WHOLE lot of fruits and some veggies to help them detox from the "Grandparent diet."

After dropping off the groceries, we headed to an Italian place in town called Frankie's, which we've never tried.  We each just got a piece of pizza....nothing special, but might be worth going back and trying again with the kids.

Then we rushed home because our favorite show was about to come on....Alaskan Bush People!

To end our night, and week, we got REALLY crazy and headed to Chili's at 9 pm for dessert!!!  Well, really it was a bribe to ourselves to finish up our Camp Blue Haven lessons...and it worked.  We are officially done with them, with one week to spare...and very full bellies!

Tomorrow at lunchtime, we will get more hugs and kisses than we know what to do with!

Kidless Thursday

It's ironic that my "Kidless" Thursday revolved around waiting for a kid...to be born!  Let's back up a little though.

We started our day with a 25 minute walk this morning.  It was nice to talk uninterrupted.  I know this is soon going to be a thing of the past again.  As we were starting our walk, my best friend Valerie was checking into the hospital to be induced today.  

This is one of my favorite things in the world.  I'm working really hard to eat all the evidence of this, before Saturday when we pick up the kids.  I'm almost there.

Shawn and I ran errands during the morning and then tried a new place for lunch called Vertskebat which makes pretty much a Greek inspired flatbread type sandwich.  So very glad we finally tried this place and can for sure mark if off the list of places to ever take our kids.  They would hate this place, which made me excited that we went there without them!

Then we waited and waited and anxiously waited to hear news about Valerie's labor...and finally we couldn't wait anymore so we headed to the hospital.  We knew we'd have to leave the hospital by 4:55 pm to make it back to Georgetown for a dinner we'd been invited to.  Within 30 minutes of leaving, the baby was born!!!  Dinner was wonderful but it was hard to contain myself thinking about if she'd had the baby...I didn't even know until we went back out to the car to go back to the hospital and saw that they had posted a picture of their newest addition!!  They didn't find out the gender of the baby before having it so we were all shocked that after two boys, they had a GIRL!!!!  Everyone is thrilled and I'm already in love with her.

And then I needed to soothe myself that I had had to leave that baby, and that it had been such an emotional day...so more icecream.  I couldn't finish it though, which leads me to believe that I may have officially hit my limit on icecream for a while.  I'll test that idea out tomorrow and we'll see.

Kidless Wednesday

The day started with waking up at 8 (thanks to Tylenol PM) and watching Hoarders, where there was an unbelievable cockroach infestation.  Great way to start the day.  I headed to the pool later to meet a group of my friends and their kids...since I didn't get quite enough sun and water from the eight hours I spent at Schlitterbahn the day before. 

Here's most of the gang.  It was Valerie's (in the black) last day at the pool, since she's giving birth today!!!!

Later in the afternoon, I got a pedicure. 

I can not begin to tell you how much self control it took on my part to not jerk my foot away and laugh hysterically.  It was just about too much.  It tickled so badly and I've learned that I should always take a friend that will distract me while all of this foot touching is going on.

The finished product....notice anything....like that I have on two different colors of flip flops.  Yup, never done that before till now.  And the girl doing my pedicure only noticed when she went to put my shoes back on my feet and she gave me a look as if to say "How could you be so dumb."  Made me feel even dorkier.  Good times. All you can do is laugh.

For dinner, we met with Eddie and Mary Parrish, the first preacher Shawn was co-workers with at his first ministry job way back.  Eddie was speaking at our congregation last night so we took them to Dale's for a big ol' juicy burger.

After church we headed to our traditional summer Wednesday night location to eat sno cones.  No pictures of either of those things because I don't like to awkwardly pull out my phone to take pictures.

Kidless Tuesday

While many people only go to Schlitterbahn "for the kids" we like to do exactly opposite.  We wait until the kids are gone to go!  Let's be honest.  My kids are just as happy going to a rinky-dink $5 entry fee tiny "water park" so why in the world would I take them to Schlitterbahn and spend all that money....and also it would be hard to explain everything their little eyes would see.  Three words: So much skin.  Like, I know about thousands of stranger's freckles and birthmarks and hair, that frankly only your doctor or spouse should know exist. Moving on, we had a blast!  We got their about 10 this morning and left at 6pm.  It was a long, wet, wonderful day!

Here we are all bright eyed, non burnt, non waterlogged with so many hopes and dreams at 10am!

And here we are right before we left!

Okay, let's be real...this is what we really felt like.  We wanted to crawl back to the car...but the ground is so gross at Schlitterbahn that we didn't....it's just athlete's foot begging to happen.

And because we're just so young and full of energy not, we made a date night out of it in Austin on our way back home, because, well, we are acting like it's the end of times and we only have a short time left to live it up (which is sort of true because reality is coming back on Saturday.)

We started at Home Slice Pizza.  It's such a good cheap pizza. (and I love their huge hunk of rice krispie treat that I now have decided I must get every time we are near there.  Another reason I love Austin; it's perfectly acceptable to sit on the sidewalk and eat dinner.  No one bats an eye.

This mural spoke to Shawn.  I think it asked him to be Mr. Roger's neighbor.

After that we headed to a place called the Big Top....lots of candy and chocolate and all that yummy stuff.  I was running low on salt water taffy, so I "refilled" here.  Saving that till the drive to camp.

See previous post for the reason I got icecream tonight from Maggie Moo's.  It was wonderful.  It made the whole night perfect...of course.  

We pulled into the driveway around 9pm and Shawn dragged himself into the bed.  He is exhausted.  I am thankful that he drove home so I could enjoy my necessary end of date icecream.

Kidless; Day I've-Lost-Track-of-What-Day-It-Is-and-It's-Glorious!

Monday was an awesome day!  We went on a double date with some friends we don't get to see nearly enough!  Shawn performed their wedding a few years ago and I was a bridesmaid and they both just mean a lot to us, so when we were planning for this week without kids, we knew we wanted to go on a double date.

We started at one of our favorite, but too far away and too expensive to take kids, restaurants in Austin, called The Hula Hut.  After that we headed to a place called The Goodnight, for some bowling, ping pong and lots of laughing.

I loved that the bowling balls looked like pool balls.  We are definitely going back sometime to play pool!

I like to think that the ball is grazing the edge of the table and that we got that point.

Yes, I realize the ping pong table is opposite the direction that we were looking....both teams spent quite a bit of time doing this...as we searched for a ball.

No datenight I don't really need a reason would be complete without dessert and by the time we finished being extremely competitive or was that just me playing games, we were ready for something sweet.  We headed to Amy's Icecream.  It was delicious!  This is the most fun we've had in a while and it was wonderful to double date with fun friends!

Kidless Sunday

Sundays are a whole different ball game, when there are no kids involved.  This morning was calm, peaceful and leisurely as we got ready for worship.  I got to listen to my husband's entire sermon with not a single interruption!  We ate lunch together and actually had a continuous conversation!

We followed that up with a shared Strawberry Lemonade cupcake from Gigi's.

For the afternoon, I did my favorite thing.  I got in bed, and read a book until I fell asleep and woke up when I just woke up...which is why I'm still up at 12:10 am on Monday morning...but the nap was glorious!

After worship this evening we had a youth devo where Shawn talked about giving God 100% of our hearts, souls and minds.  He used the cups to represent those 3 things and how we are to have those cups not just filled to the top but overflowing. It was a great Sunday and I have so much to look forward to this week!

Kidless; Day 2

We started like we start most Saturdays...garage saleing!  This might have been the most successful garage sale we've ever been to.  More on that in a second.

To celebrate, we ate donuts.  I kept thinking about how excited I was not to have to wipe sugar donut sugar off of kids! (It's the little things)

So back to that garage sale....here's the haul.  We just happened to be in the right place at the exact right time.  A bookstore in town was liquidating all of it's brand new inventory through a neighbor and so we got all of this brand new stuff for a total of $29 dollars.  I'm guessing there was about $300 worth of items (or more)...all brand new....and all going directly into the Christmas closet....so shhhh! if you happen to see my kids!

Then we headed to our friends house for a MASH event.  This was a water event for the kids, and even though we didn't have our kids to bring, we still wanted to be with our friends.

And I got to love on this cutie too....her cheeks are delicious!!!

For the rest of the afternoon, I piddled around the house and then got serious about getting the whole 1st floor of the house clean!  It felt so good to get it spotless...and know that it is going to stay that way for a whole week!  

This evening, Shawn and I each had different events planned.  Shawn headed down to San Marcus for a surprise party for his Uncle Cliff.  He said he had a great time and that he was fed well!

I had organized a church swap party!  About 15 of us met at the building and brought all the stuff we wanted to swap and had a great time getting rid of our "junk" and getting others "treasures."  We had a LOT of stuff!  My best find was a brand new DVD of Cars since the one we have is scratched so much that it stops often!

This kidless thing is sort of nice for now!

Kidless; Day 1

This morning we met Paul and Carolyn in Waco and handed our three kids over.  They were taking them back to Tyler to spend a few days with each set of grandparents.  Everyone was so so excited, but I think Shawn and I may have been the most excited!

Since we were going to be in Waco, Shawn planned a few fun things for us to do after dropping the kids off.  He took me to an antique store where of all things, I found the specific Mexican vanilla that I like to use and was almost out of.  Odd to find it there, but it was cheaper than where I usually buy it so SCORE!  After that, knowing my love for pulled pork, he found an amazing BBQ placed called Vitek's that was everything I hoped it would be!  I ordered a good ol' pulled pork sandwich and he got the pulled pork nachos...which were SO delicious!  I need to go back soooon!

After that we just aimlessly drove around downtown Waco (because you can do things like that when you don't have kids with you and no one even complains) and stumbled upon my favorite mural I've ever seen in my whole life!!!!!! (Corner of 10th and Columbus in Waco if you want to check it out for yourself!)

Once we got back into town, we made our now traditional run to the store to buy me some sugar cereals that I don't have to share with anyone for a whole week!

Then we headed home and mowed the lawn and then headed back out to do a little bit of window shopping.  We ended the night perfectly; with cereal, icecream and our favorite show, Alaskan Bush People!  Day one is in the books and it was wonderful!

VBS 2015

Tonight was night #3 of VBS at our church.  I have been in charge of crafts for the last 7 years (minus one year when Levi was about 1 1/2 months old). I've forgotten to think about taking pictures of the crafts this year so I don't have much to show for all the work!  But, I did need to bring my camera tonight for part of the craft the kids were doing and got a cute shot of Levi working on his craft (while wearing a superhero mask, which has nothing to do with the theme of VBS this year?).  We will meet one more time tomorrow night for the slideshow and icecream (!) but as far as my job goes, I'm done!  What a relief...now to try getting finished with our CBH lessons...

First week of Freedom

Summer finally got here!  We started out fast and busy and are now working to be on summer time....which is hard when fill your summer up with activities before it's begun.

We started our summer with a trip to San Marcos for our annual day of peach picking.  We met up with Shawn's uncle and aunt and got straight to work.  After about 4 minutes, the kids were over it.  Luckily, Uncle Cliff asked Levi if he wanted to help mow and without a moments hesitation, Levi was up on that tractor mowing away!  

We had to set small goals for the girls to keep them motivated to keep picking.  They were much more interested in cousin Scotty.  He's like the big brother everyone wishes they had.  He loves playing with the kids and they love him back!  It's a win-win every time we get together.

After a few hours, we came back to the house for lunch.  Levi fell in love with these 4 little kittens.  I almost wanted to take one home with us but remembered how I don't even want to take care of bread starter in the fridge, so I thought it best for the sake of the kittens, to leave them right where they were.

Uncle Cliff is telling me one of his millions of stories.

 That afternoon we headed to Wimberley to see the flood damage.  I didn't get a good picture of the main bridge in town where so much of the devastation is visible, but it was breathtaking...and not in a good way.  I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that fast flowing water did all that damage.  We did find some beautiful, unravenged areas of Wimberley and stopped to take a few pictures.

For dinner, we cooked out hamburgers and were able to spend some time with the Joneses.  We don't get to hang out too often with them, but its always so nice when we do since our husbands are both preachers.

Tuesday morning, we headed out bright and early to work with the church of Christ disaster relief effort, helping those affected by the flood by handing out basis necessities to help them start over.  It was a pretty slow morning but we all tried to find things to do to help out.  Ava helped put together a wheelbarrow.

Then all the kids tested out the wheelbarrow.  It held together!

Here they are "managing."

Finally when we had shoo'd them away enough times, they got creative and found a corner of the building and set up their own office.  I love seeing them pretending.

 We got home Tuesday afternoon and rested.  Wednesday morning, we made our inaugural trip to the pool.....something we'll probably repeat 50 times or more in the next 2 1/2 months.

I will most likely write another update at the end of August, with this same title as this post.