My kind of mom/daughter date

We signed up for a GS adventure day months ago hoping others from our troop was also sign up.  There ended up being 4 girls that signed up...and then everyone but Elle had to cancel!  I was actually kind of excited to spend a day just with Elle having fun together!  This is what she craves at this age...I don't know how long it will last but I'm going to hold onto it as long as possible!  

We headed to a place called McKinney Roughs Nature Center and got right to the business of having fun!  We were able to climb a rock wall that challenged both of us.  We both wanted to give up on the second wall because it was really hard...tiny finger holds which weren't really even holds and tiny foot holds...but we both kept going and made it to the top!  We were both excited and it was fun to share that together!

Then we got to do a zipline.  Feeling the wind in our face was wonderful.  The harness...I could do without. lol

After lunch, we headed out in four rafts, down a two mile stretch of the Colorado River.  Even though the water wasn't moving very fast, we still had such a great time.  We spotted two Diamond Back water snakes (eww.), Egrets, Herons, and an Eagle!  It was a lot of fun!

 The day was long and tiring, but so much fun to spend together and I'm so thankful for these times!  Life pulls us in a lot of directions and it was nice to just take a moment and have some fun together!

Ava Kate is Eleven!

I've taken a different approach to birthdays as the kids have gotten older.  When they were little, I could completely control and plan exactly how there birthday would go.  But now, they have opinions, strong opinions.  It is just easier to let them tell me how they'd like to celebrate their birthday and just go with that.  Ava is the only one that I have to reign in at this point.  She plans it down to the tiniest detail and it's exhausting and no fun!  So, I let her have some say and I take care of other details so there is at least a little surprise involved!  She plans her birthday exactly 365 days in advance.  You heard that right.  She starts planning on next birthday on the day of her birthday.  Either way, she turned 11 and loved how her day went down...and why not?  It was EXACTLY how she wanted it! LOL

Since her birthday was on a Wednesday this year, her and I did a special pre-birthday thing to celebrate.  This of course was her idea.  She wanted a manicure.  She'd never had one before.

She picked a purple gel nail polish that changed colors with heat/cold.  It was pretty cool.  At the typing of this blog, the nail color made it exactly six days before she peeled it all off.  I informed her that that would be the LAST time I paid for her to have a manicure.

After the manicure, we headed to Chic Fil A, her choice, for dinner and a coffee shake.

Then she wanted to go shopping at Target, Old Navy, Bath and Body and Michaels....and so we did.  Then we came home and showed the family all of her new treasures.  She was on cloud nine.

On her actual birthday Shawn and I brought her Panda Express for lunch at school.  Again, her choice.

After school, FINALLY it was time to open gifts.  She could barely contain herself!!!

The thing she wanted more than anything else was a pocketknife.  She got her 1st official pocket knife in cheetah print....and a box of bandaids to go with it.  Let's hope that's all she needs....hasn't cut herself yet.  

Then she wanted to go eat sushi for her birthday dinner.  She picked Beluga to eat at and for the second year in a row, hated her restaurant choice, after getting her food.  Last year it was Chuy's and she hated it too, even though she picked it.  Good times.

 Then we headed to church and after church, invited any random people who were still at church after it was over, to come to the back and enjoy some icecream together in honor of her.  She prefers icecream over cake so that's what she got!

It is both exhausting and awesome that she plans every detail of her birthdays!  Either way, we survived another birthday and our middle child, is moving quickly away from childhood!!!  Yikes!!!

Adventure Day with our Troop

Our troop has really tried to transition to a troop that is all about the outdoors this year so we are learning lots of new outdoor skills and it has already been a lot of fun!  The weekend before Ava's birthday, we met out at the lake to learn all about the outdoor skills of water purification, knife skills, how to build fires and how to cook and clean out in the woods.  We're ready for  survival reality TV...almost.

Our troop has swelled again and has daisies, juniors, cadettes and seniors!  Huge span of ages!!!!

Labor Day Weekend

My parents came down to celebrate Ava's upcoming 11th birthday and hang out with us over the long weekend.  We kept them busy and made sweet memories!

We headed out to our friend Craig's house and made dinner over the fire and fished.  It was such a quiet laid-back evening even though I didn't catch a single fish.  sigh.

My dad loves to hunt for arrowheads and flint.

This is how you do Labor Day.

Impatiently waiting on dinner!

The perfect burnt marshmallow.

Sunday afternoon was 1st Sunday so we didn't have worship services that night.  We took a little road trip to Apache Pass because we'd passed it before and were curious what it was.  Well....it's pretty much a piece of land that has a long foot bridge and some shallow water.  The whole thing was pretty underwhelming, but we can check it off our list and it gave us something to do.  No need to return though.

I was there too...according to my selfie!

Harvey visited

It looks like Hurricane Harvey will be one for the books!  Thankfully we are far enough away from the coast, that all we got was some rain.  It's weird that as it was destroying so many other areas, in our area we were very thankful for the rain in the midst of dryness and heat.  We took advantage of the rainy Saturday and planned a whole lot of nothing!  It was glorious.

Levi created things with Legos.

Ava and I repainted our toenails.

Shawn and Levi FINALLY put together a wooden boat kit that we've had forEVER.

Ava and Levi experimented with a Disgusting Science kit that someone got for Christmas.

I got to watercolor by candlelight, which wasn't really necessary but was fun.

I also got to read a book uninterrupted and it was magnificent.

Elle went out with some friends to celebrate a birthday and then they came back to our house to hang out for a while.