May 2017

One morning, Evan and Ellie both woke up with weird issues going on! Evan woke up with a fever and no other symptoms. It lasted a day and then was gone! And Ellie broke out in hives! No idea why or what the cause was, but I kept her home too just in case! Benadryl got rid of them right away, but they returned a day later! Weird! We never figured out what either issue was! Our sweet friend Mina dropped cute color books and new crayons ... they were so excited!

On Thursday, I made an appointment to get the kids checked out just to be sure nothing weird was going on. They both seemed to be fine- probably just a random virus!

And they love their doctor! It's nice to go in sometimes and give them a good experience at the doctor's office (with no poking or prodding!).

The next day Ellie broke out in hives again- benadryl again did the trick, and we didn't see them any more! What a weird thing!

Drinking her benadryl...hives are all over her face :(

Boys making us mini-pizzas for dinner!

Evan started piano lessons!!! In order for our piano teacher to continue coming to our house for lessons, we needed to move from 30 min lessons to 45 minutes. But LJ seems to max out around 30 minutes of lesson, and Evan said he wanted to start learning. SO we decided to start giving Evan a quick 15 minute lesson every week. He is starting slow but seems to be enjoying it so far!

Oh Ellie!! She makes me laugh every single day!! She dresses herself, sneaks her pacifier and blankie out of her bed every chance she gets, and always has an opinion!!!

We have soccer practice on Friday nights, and one week we had an impromptu post-soccer practice swim at our coaches house!

Evan earned a dollar... very excited!

LJ's obsession with making paper airplanes continues!! He makes them and then shows me how well they fly. Sometimes we even have competitions with all the planes! He is so cute!

Love when these two dress alike!! They do it all on their own now-makes me so happy!! Haha!

Date night downtown with my handsome hubby!

Our church has been having ice cream parties after the service to help everyone enjoy the new play ground and get to know each other. The kids are obviously very upset about this!!

Evan gets so excited to go to his Tball practice and game on Sundays!

Ellie had a play date with a neighborhood boy! He is the younger sibling of one of LJ's kindergartener friends and a little younger than her, but she loved teaching him the ropes of jumping on the trampoline!!

We have a mama deer and her little fawn hanging out behind out gate... almost every day! Skye thinks she is playing, but we are pretty sure she is just protecting her baby!! We have been surprised by how close she stands to the gate though, and we have been feeding her! We named her Sawyer...

Evan had an afternoon birthday party at Catch Air... and the favor was a great pair of socks!! Evan loved it!!

Singing to his buddy!! It was such a great year with these sweet kids at HOPE! Sad Evan will not be with any of them next year (all are going on to kindergarten).

One morning we got to have Brinkley and Beckham come over before school. Brinkley rode the school bus to Sommer with LJ, and we got to take Beckham to school on the way to HOPE.

Kids running out to the bus stop!

Waiting for the bus... Evan and Ellie will still asleep, but got up soon after Brinkley and LJ were oof to school. They were so excited!

Then after some breakfast and playing, we headed off to school!

We dropped Beckham then Evan off, and then Ellie and I had our usual morning of playing!!

I love my mornings with this sweet girl!!

Friday night fun... fishing and playing at Brushy Creek!

ALL LJ wants to do is FISH!!! He and Barrett are currently obsessed!! It is really cute!

The other three of us, however, are more into playing... so we got them started and then headed to the huge sand box thing next to the creek!

I can't stand the cuteness!!

Meanwhile, LJ and Barrett were having so much fun- and success!!

LJ is pretty much fishing on his own now! He loves it!

Saturday morning Tball game before heading to Disney on Ice... this girl is ready to go!

We made it to Disney on Ice with the boys last year, but this is Ellie's first year! She seemed to really enjoy it!!

Seats on the floor were fun!!

Uncle B and Charley!!

Happy LJ!

The dads!! This may be the last year I get Barrett to join us! Hah!

Uncle Joe helped to install the very elaborate and awesome audio-visual system at the new Tumble Tech in Cedar Park. They had a free play day as their grand opening, so the boys and I headed there to jump, play, and see Uncle Joe for a little while!

Too much fun!! This place is awesome!!

Ellie found her new bathing suit, and came downstairs wearing it! haha!

Mother's Day at church!! They had a cute photo booth set up - they know how much moms love their picture (although I wish I had been warned so we could've dressed a little cuter!)!!! These three little faces make my heart want to explode!!! I feel like the luckiest person in the world to get to be called Mom by them!! Thank you God!!

Sooo... Ellie now insists on dressing herself many mornings! She seems to love red and pink together! I pick my battles, and while I may not like some of her choices, I do love her independence and determination!!! She also LOVES pigtails!! It's her favorite way to have her hair right now, and I love how cute she looks!

Another day of a red shirt (on backwards- so we will have to fix that!), and pink tights! Silly girl!

Our last evening with Queenie and Grandad before they leave for the summer ... We got to have a nice evening at our house so they could meet our crazy new dog Skye before they left! . We will miss them so much!!

Oh Ellie!! I jumped in the shower and she started putting on all my clothes! Haha!!

We enjoyed going to a wonderful event raising money for rocking chairs in Dell Children's Hospital.

They had a several fun activities and things to do... LJ loved making HUGE bubbles!!

Even Ellie could do it!

Shooting game!!

Ducky game...

Ice Cream!!

All Evan wanted was to have his face painted... the line was so long, but he ended up being the last kid that got to have it done!! Yay!!

A 'Tiger' Wood was created!! (Barrett and his word play!!)

I found these pictures on my phone... obviously taken by LJ! Makes me laugh!

Birthday party for one of LJ's classmates at Bass Pro-shop... bowling, pizza, and cake! Great start to our Saturday!

Super fun time celebrating our neighbor's 1st birthday!!

The kids loved painting bird houses...

LJ eating a carrot out of our garden!! Yay!!

Backstreet Boys, Paula Abdul, and New Kids on the Block concert with the girls... fun!!!

Popped into LJ's class and found him making some pretty cool things during 'choice-time'!

Spring Sing at HOPE ... take 1! Since Evan goes to school 5 days a week, both Thursday and Friday of his last week / days of school consisted about an hour of class and then their performance. The big day for us was Friday (since Ellie would be performing too), but Ellie and I attended the Thursday performance too! Evan was excited to see us!! Big wave...

Ellie watching the show!

Then we ran several errands together to prepare for their last day of school/ complete teacher gifts for their classes... I asked Ellie to stop singing and just smile...

Evan tried to help quiet her down!!

Didn't last long... she's back to singing!

Stop at Juiceland for a smoothie cheers!! Yay!

Looking at the pictures made me realize how badly Evan needed his hair cut! Decided to get it done before his Spring Sing the next day... he LOVES getting his haircut (maybe because he gets to watch a movie while it's happening, or the lollipop after?!)

Handsome boy!!!

And Ellie insisted on getting one too, of course!!!

These two little hams!!!

An ice cream date with my Evan!!! He could pick anywhere he wanted to go, and he picks ice cream... Yay!! That is my boy!!

First swim in our neighborhood pool this year... super fun family morning!

Barrett had a great game of football going with several of the boys in the pool... so cute!

We tried a puddle jumper on Ellie... it lasted a very short time, but we had to try!!

I got to take a nap on the couch one weekend, and I woke up with a little Evan snuggles up next to me and a Bella dog on top of us! Barrett got a picture (that I found later). It was pretty cute!