Summer Memories by Phone

What did I take pictures of with my phone? JE smiling, a trip painting pottery at the Mud Hut, the girls selling drinks on my parents driveway, and JE's favorite toy!

Chuck E Cheese visit, my aunt's 40th birthday (the one in pink), and checking out the cupcake place in Longview - Bake Cupcakes.

Happy 40th Aunt Debra!

Cousin A made the very cool tissue paper flowers!  Which of course my girls loved!  We discovered JE loves to sit on a bean bag chair with her sisters and watch loads of TV!!! hmmm...

Cousin J!  My aunt is the one in the pink dress.

A Morning with Bett

Feed the hummingbirds, feed the cats, make paper dolls and give coloring lessons. The last two are very common occurrences with Bett. Amazingly the girls settle down for it and realize they are going to do these quiet table activities or watch her do them as sometimes the case may be. Glad they are in Longview too so we can pop over for a visit.

Star Spangled Sisters

Houston Zoo - Day 2

GREAT ZOO! And did you know there is an ap for that!? haha I like saying that, but yes indeed there is an iphone ap for the Houston zoo. I want to go back in the fall as the weather is the drawback here, but we still saw enough to think it was a super zoo.

 New baby elephant, newer than JE. And the Lion's name is Jonathan. So, obviously hubby thought that was fab.  Jonathan, the king..yeah....

More fun and a sleeping JE.  Yup this is what you did on your first trip to the zoo honey!

Houston Children's Museum Day 1

Well, we wanted a quickie vacation and due to my museum and and zoo memberships I could get into those two places for free in Houston, so off we go! First up - Children's Museum and can I just say AWESOME! Could have stayed longer but we were wiped out.

And to be honest hubby wanted to go to Colorado and of course Houston is HOT HOT, but it is CLOSE CLOSE and it was as far as I wanted to drive with the entire family. I think it was a good choice. The kids had a GREAT time with minimal drive time.

Now hubby got onto me for letting the kids put their entry sticker on this sign like we were de-facing it. But, do you see how many did it before us? And I said something like "this looks like an Austin thing to do." And he said "But we aren't in Austin." Everyone needs a little Austin.

This is JE's first trip to the pool! We stayed at the Drury in the Galleria area, which also I will rave about. Great for families, good prices, lots of free food! But anyway, the pool..I think she liked it but actually was not feeling all that great on the trip, so we just had her in for the photo op really. She's a trooper. Hmm, how many times will I say that in her life.

National Night Out 2009

We always seem to live where National Night Out is a big deal.

And we bought a new bubble toy that works SOO great. I am going to use it at school with those bubble loving 2 year olds.

The Cuteness Factor

Double duty - watering the grass and playing!

Ice Cream

No summer is complete without making ice cream - at least in our world.

New Suits

Mia got the girls new suits and I just had to take pictures. I think they are super cute. They were in need! And we saw cousins again! Yay!

Great Wolf Lodge

The pictures don't do it justice. This place was awesome. We really enjoyed this as a quick get-a-way! The girls had a blast and didn't want to leave! JM did end up with a case of Swimmer's Ear though.

This Never Gets Old...

This seems to be Papa's favrite thing to do with the girls - feed the cows! And although we do it a couple times of year it always feel so foreign. I love taking pictures of Papa with the cows. He's so comfortable with them.

Familiar Picture

Farm Life

is the life for me...? Probably not, but we had a lot of fun.

Sunrise on the Farm

In the heat of the summer you truly have to make use of early morning hours. On this day we let JM sleep while we took JC out for a canoe ride.

The Great East Texas Balloon Race

Up at the crack of dawn for a new tradition! We actually can walk out my in-laws front door to see quite a display but I made everyone load up to take a closer look. I am glad we did.

The New Collin Street Bakery

Waco, Texas

FREE COOKIES! That's always worth a stop!

More at Mia's

Random photos. Up top they are making cupcakes..slice and bake cup cakes... Ever heard of such a thing? Squeeze the batter in, then squeeze the icing on top after they are bakes, throw on some sprinkles and wah-lah! They liked it, but I think I like the process of mixing and measuring with the kids. This was certainly simpler with more kids though.

Water Friends

One of my good friends from middle school and beyond lives in the Longview area and has a little girl, "E" JM's age. These 2 see each other maybe once a year. Sometimes more or less. Amazing when you are 5 you can be instant friends and have a blast though. I hope we can manage to keep up a friendship with them - pen pals or something. It will make it easier for us to hang out! My friend introduced us to this splash park in the area that we had never heard of! What a great find! JC is there too, but was sort of water shy. E has a new baby brother and a cousin with us too, but the big girls were the most fun for me to photograph.

Busy in the Berries

We went to Hallsville for the annual blueberry picking.. I think we got like... 10. We ate them and moved over to the blackberries where we had better luck.

Blazin' hot at 10 am.