Our Little Fish

Well, this was waaaaay back before Summer even officially began, but I don't think I blogged about Evan's first trip to the swimming pool! He is our little fish; he just loves to be in the water! Here he is with brother at the Nadatorium for our church's annual pool party!

The silly boy loves the water so much, he'll dunk his head in if you don't watch out! Here he is after a quick head dunk - "this is great!"



And here he is just laughing at big brother in the water! Preston is also a huge water boy! He'd be in the pool every day if he could.... and so would mom and dad actually! Hopefully we'll be able to put in a pool one day...

Summertime Fun

Just wanted to share a few random pictures of our Summer so far... I can't believe that school starts in less than a month! There are still so many things we want to do!

Here we are above and below at our church's Mother/Son baseball game. We went and saw the Roughriders play a truly amazing game!! We were up the whole game, but then the opposing team hit a grand slam and were up by one at the bottom of the eighth inning. Well, then we answered them back and hit a home run to win the game by one in the ninth inning! It was so much fun! It was a Friday night, so they had a great fireworks show afterwards too. We had hot dogs, nachos, soda, Dippin' Dots - you name it. Oh, and after the sixth inning my friend, Summer, talked all of us moms into going down on the field and competing in the Hula Hustle with another group. And we actually won!! T-shirts were won by all! It was a great time with just the older boys and moms! Below is Preston with his buddy, Ethan - they were glued together that night.



And here we are at Color Me Mine painting pottery. Preston is such an artist, can you see - they are really concentrating on their pieces. Preston painted a jet, Skylar painted a horse, and Trevor painted Lightening McQueen of course!! And it also happened to be Trevor's birthday that day - whoo hoo! It was such a great place, so fun - but I have to say, very overpriced... hopefully they'll go down on their prices to get more return business!



Here are Trevor, Preston and Skylar walking around in the park after a picnic lunch and playing on the playground...



Here's a whole group of us that play every week... enjoying some time at Jack Carter pool - one of my favorite places to go! Can you believe they are all looking at the camera!! And thank you to big brothers, Ethan and Preston, for holding the babies so they could be in the picture too!



And my sweet boys enjoying some time in the backyard... our pool was closed in the neighborhood for cleaning, so we did it up right and used the blow up pool! Hee hee! Evan loves the water - his face lights up everytime he sees a pool.

More Celebrations

Almost caught up on my blogging - whoo hoo!! Just wanted to share a few pics from Mother's Day and Father's Day this year.

Thank you to my boys for the beautiful Mother's Day flowers and cards - Preston picked out the flowers himself. I am very proud to be your Mommy!



On Father's Day we went over to Todd and Susan's for a double celebration! We celebrated Father's Day along with Trevor's 3rd birthday! Happy birthday big boy! You are no longer "Baby Trevor"! I know your Mommy is sad to see you getting so big... Susan, you can get your baby fix with "Baby Evan" anytime you want!

One of our yummy treats for the evening! Happy Dad's Day to all you wonderful Dads! I am especially thankful to my wonderful and amazing husband. He is such a phenomenal father; he makes me be a better mother. You are the best, Daddy!



All the Dads with the kiddos! That's Susan's dad "Pop Pop" in the middle.



And the birthday boy himself! But of course, with a Lightening McQueen cake. He is obsessed with Cars, which made it easy to pick out a birthday gift! Happy Birthday, Trevor! "Ka-Chow!"



And one of Preston's favorite things - "Thunder and Lightening" from Uncle Todd! Thanks Uncle Todd for always indulging the kids in this game! You are a wonderful father, and Preston and Evan are lucky to have you as their GodFather.

Hopping Back To Easter

Yes, I realize that Easter was in March - but hey, better late to blog than never, right!! Seriously, I have this smaller camera that I keep in my diaper bag for those "man, I wish I had my camera" moments - and sometimes I forget to download the pictures from it - i.e. some of these Easter pictures!

So above is Easter morning - can't you tell, the boys are still in their PJs. Sorry, Daddy - I didn't even give him a chance to do his hair! And Evan, he's just eyeing his bottle like "hey, I was eating before this silly picture!"

Easter was a little crazy this year because we had just moved into the house, so the house was still a wreck and pure chaos! But let us never be too busy to celebrate the resurrection! And as we always do - we celebrated with our friends, The Bradleys. Of course, our day started with Easter baskets - followed by a lovely service at church, a delicious lunch and Easter egg hunt! Thank you, Aunt Tasha, for putting on the hunt this year as my Easter stuff was still buried in the garage! We have so many special traditions with the Bradleys, this is just one of our annual events...

The thrill of the hunt...





Here's the whole gang... Preston is laughing because I had to set the camera timer and then RUN to get into the picture, literally throwing him onto my lap! Evan is eating, as was usual at this time in his life!



And here we are at the Sipes' house for a grand Easter egg hunt and party! Thanks for hosting all of us - you are such amazing friends to us, we can't imagine not having you in our lives! The Sipes have three boys of their own... we must all drink the same "boy" water because we sure have a bunch of them in our group!



Evan chillin' outside... oh, the days where he was happy to just sit and "be"... they are no more!



Two buddies - Mason and Preston. They have literally grown up together. They are five weeks apart in age and have known each other since birth. I hope that they will always be friends... I have great visions of them going off to A&M together!

Scrapbook Weekend

So, I guess it was about three years ago when my dear friend, Tasha (in the red shirt), invited me to a "scrapbook retreat". And although, at the time, I was not a scrapbooker and didn't know what to expect - I decided to go to just catch up on projects and really just get away for a relaxing mommy weekend! Well, I am so glad that I went and after going to about two retreats I decided that I would give scrapbooking a try - and of course, I have been addicted ever since! And since I never do anything half-way, I have been collecting every whosit, whatsit, gidget and gadget for scrapbooking since I started this madness! I love all the great papers and embellishments too - I would have never thought I would have become such a scrapbook junkie! Hee hee! And even though I am sooo far behind on scrapbooking, it is just a relaxing, creative outlet and a great way to spend time with good friends! Check out these pictures below... this is our view from the crop room, sooooo beautiful.





As you can see, this place that we went to last month was absolutely gorgeous. I guess I've been to about ten retreats now and this is my favorite place. Plus, it is near Canton and we always go shopping while we are there! You can't beat that with a stick! If you've never been on a scrapbook retreat you must go! Even if you don't scrapbook, it is such a fun time. It is a total mommy weekend! We go up on Thursday or Friday to scrapbook all weekend - we have delicious meals cooked for us, we get massages, go shopping, watch tons of movies and are silly staying up until all hours of the night!

Thank you, Tasha, for showing me the world of scrapbooking! You are such a great friend and I know my boys will enjoy their scrapbook pages for years to come!

And here are some of the usual suspects... Ashley, Cathy, Kim, Sheryl, Summer, Susan, me, Tasha, Wendy and Kendra.

Last Day of Kindergarten

Just a couple of pics of Preston's last day of school - it was a fun-filled very short day where the kids just got to have fun and get WET! Above is Preston with two of his best friends... Aiden and Madison. Oh yes, apparently Madison is the "girl he's going to marry"! Ha! But Preston will also tell you that he's got another girlfriend in the SIXTH GRADE! What?!? He met her in the carpool line and thinks she is the coolest! Oh, brother... we are in trouble.

Here are boys drenching each other!

And here I think they've found a bug!

Kindergarten Graduation

I know we are almost half-way through the Summer... but I had to get around to blogging about Preston's sweet Kindergarten graduation. It was so cute and I truly can't believe this first year of school went by so quickly. He has grown and matured so much, and he just couldn't have loved Kindergarten anymore than he did! Thank you to his wonderful teacher, Mrs. Wonsang, and to everyone at his amazing school!

So pardon me if I brag just a bit... but I am so proud of this excellent student! He even got a couple of "excellence" awards this year. He got one in P.E. and then right before graduation he was honored with the "Art Excellence" award for all of Kindergarten. This one was really special because he is so passionate about art and drawing! Way to go Preston! He left Kindergarten reading at a second grade level; and let me tell you that he loves to read. He'll read whatever is put in front of him - novels, magazines, etc... it's pretty funny sometimes the things he chooses to read aloud! We were in the mall a few months ago and he just starts reading a poster, "How To Look Good Naked!", he just laughed after he realized what he had read!

It is so inspiring and overwhelming to see this little boy grow up before our eyes. He is a great kid and I pray every day that we will be the parents that he needs us to be for him to walk down the path God has chosen for him!

Oh, and I always wondered growing up how kids got perfect attendance!?!? Well, Preston only missed one day of school this year! And he had a pretty good excuse for that one day - Mom's water broke at 5:00am and he was at the hospital welcoming a baby brother into the world! Hee hee! But every morning Preston woke up happy and ready for school! Thank you for that! I'm sure there will be years down the road where it will not be that easy to get a growing boy out of bed for school!!!

Thanks Aunt Susan, Skylar and Trevor for celebrating this milestone with our family! It was very special to have you there - we love you. As Preston said right after graduation, "I'm now officially a first grader!"



And here's Preston with his P.E. coach - Coach Sladecek... he adores Coach Sladecek and P.E. is one of his favorite subjects! I guess we can forgive you Coach for wearing the Longhorns lanyard! Ha!



Can you believe it... graduating Class of 2020!