1st Day of School

Time to go back to school! Alex is in preschool 3 days a week and Megan is in Children's Day Out twice a week. It took a week or so to adjust but she's catching on to the routine and no longer cries when I take her. We carpool with Alex's cousin Laurie. Lisa and I trade off driving depending on what our plans are for the day. Carpooling makes the mornings easy since Alex is always so excited to see Laurie. Alex has a great time at school and loves his new teacher. David and I attended the parent Open House recently to learn about the fun preschool program. With the kids in school, I work at David's office one day and the other day I have to myself. It's nice! Some days I run errands or clean the house, but most of the time I try to find something fun to do like meet up with friends for coffee or lunch or work on a crafty project like sewing or scrapbooking. Here's a few pictures of the first day school:

Meet the teacher day:

1st day of school:

Time for ice cream!

Lisa and I took the 7 cousins to Brenham recently. We started the day at the Blue Bell Creamery. It's a popular destination and they were busy. Our tour lasted about 30 minutes. They took us to two viewing rooms where we saw the machines making ice cream and the workers on the assembly line preparing and packaging the ice cream. After the tour we enjoyed a small bowl of ice cream outside. We got a few pictures of all 7 but they were not very cooperative!

For lunch we went to a popular spot in downtown Brenham called Must be Heaven. Great sandwiches and the kids were very well behaved. We walked off our lunch and Lisa and I found a cute boutique where we bought bracelets and got more crafty ideas for our future business. :)

It was finally time to drive to the Monastery of Saint Clare miniature horse farm. Megan fell asleep on the way and Alex wasn't into the horses. It's a neat place and worth the drive but I think they kids were disappointed that the horses weren't friendlier. After a long, hot afternoon it was time to head home. A stop at Starbucks made the drive home better!

Happy kids

I love that my kids wake up happy. They are so full of energy from the moment they wake up. Morning is my favorite time of day. August has been a busy month... we've had a great summer but I am ready for MDO to start and get on a more consistent schedule. I will work at David's office one day a week in addition to the work I do from home. The kids will be in school Tues/Thurs, Alex will go 1/2 day on Wednesday followed by swim lesson and our wonderful playgroup will continue to meet on Fridays. Here are my happy kids:




More summer fun:

David and our water baby

Future rock star:

Painting wearing his school smock

Talking on her cell.. must be a serious call:

Painting his ATV at the glazery

Oops! My skinny child 'fell' in the legos box!

David's birthday vacation

David and I had a wonderful romantic weekend last month to celebrate his birthday. We stayed at the Inn above Onion Creek for the first night of our getaway. It's beautiful and quiet with nice views of the hill country. They serve breakfast and dinner and the meals were very good. We met nice people but mostly had quiet time to enjoy being together. We took long hikes and went swimming. We drove out to the Mandola winery in Driftwood to buy a few bottles of wine. The wine is okay and it's a beautiful vineyard. We'll have to try out the new restaurant next time. The next day we made our way down to San Antonio. David wanted to stop in San Marcos to shop at Nike then we went shopping in Gruene and ate lunch at the Gristmill. We made it to San Antonio and spent the rest of our afternoon enjoying margaritas on the Riverwalk. We stayed one night in SA. We came home on a Saturday morning so David was able to enjoy the weekend with our kids. I love my hubby and think he had a very special birthday. It was a FUN trip and hopefully we'll do it again soon!

Our room was amazing. Furnished with antiques, has a big comfy bed, seating area, desk and french doors that open to the nice hill country view. The bathroom has another set of doors by the bathtub and the shower has a window. They really know how to take advantage of the view!

Picture taken from our hike. We love the rocking chairs on the big porch.

Zoo day!

Since the weather is finally below 100 I decided to take the kids to the zoo today. Alex was super excited - he asks to go there at least once a week! The zoo was not crowded and we had a wonderful day watching all the animals. Alex's favorite animal is still the elephant and he likes watching the zookeepers bathe them. According to Alex, Megan's favorite is the giraffe. After walking the zoo for awhile, we stopped and ate lunch, rode the carousel, then went to the Children's Zoo. It's been a long time since we've gone in that area of the zoo. The kids had fun brushing the goats, playing on the playground and I even let Alex run around the spray park (which is a first). Megan fell asleep and we finished our day by looking at the snakes... yuck!

July 4 ranch weekend

The guys were hard at work all weekend. The project this time was to clean up the ranch. They quicky filled a dumpster with trash then continued working on the fence. The fence posts are in and most of the barbed wire is run. Next time, they will run the last strand of wire and remove the old fence. Hopefully they will build our new patio/deck soon. When the weather cools, Lisa and I will have to finish painting outside. Here are a few pictures from our July 4th weekend at the ranch:

Papa riding the mule with 6 grandkids:

Megan sitting on the tractor - Alex is so proud!

Taking a break...

More summer fun!

Our busy summer continues! The kids had a great time at Jumpin Jungle this week. We met our playgroup friends for jumping then went for pizza afterwards. What a fun day!

It's fun to play at home too:

Playgroup swim party at Jack's house:

Riding Gavin's new ATV with neighbor Joey: