Season 3, Episode 11

- Hi there. I hope all you Texans had a wonderful spring break! It's amazing how the meaning of "spring break" changes as you transition from student to parent. I remember how we so looked forward to that glorious week in March. Had big plans, travels of all sorts, and tons of fun. Now it's more like Oh, it's spring break? Really! I wonder if anyone I know is doing anything cool. Hey, maybe we should do something cool too. Like uh, well, uh. Ok, life as normal. Pitiful, I know. Once the boys are in school it will change again, but for now, that's the summary of my thoughts on spring break. We did manage to have a little more fun than normal this past week though. So all was not lost. And we did traditional spring things like work in our yard, too. Yard work is one of those things that I never have the desire to do but feel so satisfied once I've done it. Living somewhere as green as The Woodlands makes yard work a little overwhelming. As in we could spend a few hours out there every.single.weekend and it would still not look completely kept. And as I've mentioned before, that's one of my husband's only dreams when it comes to home ownership: a nice yard. It looks even rougher than usual right now because it's still recovering from the sprinkler install. But maybe, hopefully someday....it will be the beauty of Mark's dreams. We're working on it!

- As I mentioned, we did have a little extra fun this week. And by "we," I mean "the boys." Their week was filled with lots of fun. The largest event being a fishing trip out to Uncle Kirk's ranch with Pa. I hung behind with Grant, because, well...Grant is not exactly lake behavior ready. (Code for "I would have spent the entire time trying to keep him from drowning.") Pa picked them up around eleven and they didn't make it home until after ten that evening. A full day of fishing fun! And from what I hear, they both hung in there like champs, never giving up or losing interest. Not surprisingly, my little competitive Kolbe loved it the most. They came home with stories of catching fish, riding in a paddle boat, riding a "real horse" (as opposed to the pony they rode at the rodeo), and getting to stop at McDonald's on the way home. Oh and some little tale of Kolbe going #2...in the forest. If only Pa would have managed to get a picture of that spectacle! I'm sure it would have been one for the scrapbooks. That Kolbe, he's a true man's man, I tell ya. Meanwhile, Grant and I ran several errands and I was thrilled to have a full nap time to get orders done without big boys interrupting. A chance to get ahead! But instead I spent the entire afternoon watching coverage of our new pope, Pope Francis. I'm so excited for our church and what's to come with our new shepherd! Sure, I may now be behind in filling orders but it was well worth it!

- Another fun thing we did this week was take a ride on The Woodlands trolley. We've been planning a trolley ride for roughly four years now. Since Kolbe was a baby! Every time we came to visit my parents we'd talk about it. Then when we moved here we talked about it even more! Just somehow never did it until now. It's just a fun, free twenty minute ride around the heart of The Woodlands. Some people who live down in the town center use it for public transportation too. It goes right by many common amenities like the grocery store and popular shops and restaurants. The boys loved it and I'm sure it won't be our last trolley ride!

Sorry for the picture explosion this week. Sometimes I can't help myself. :)

Two brothers on a trolley.

Three brothers and two grandparents on a trolley.

Three little wild guys on a trolley.

Cutest kid ever on a trolley.

The lady behind the camera and her crew on a trolley.

Rudy at the ranch on "the real horse."

My little anglers.

Riding the paddle boat with Pa.

Kolbe's big catch!

Rudy's big catch!

The other happenings for the week? Snuggling and acting silly in bed with mom.

Margaritas with my man.

Building monster trucks at Lowe's kiddie workshop!

Out to eat with several of my aunts and uncles who were in town. (Kolbe is my little twin.)

Visiting the koi garden this evening. On scooters, of course.

Rolling down one of the waterway hills. Bring on the summer!

And in case you haven't lost interest, here's a little video of my Grant-ness that I've just got to archive. In front of most people he says very few words. "Mama," "Dada," etc. But at home with me, he says all kinds of stuff! When I ask him to say the words for someone else (like Mark, for example) he'll never perform. So I tried to trick him and made a little video of us practicing his words. Animal is finally starting to communicate in English instead of various pitches of screaming. :)

TTT: Season 4, Episode 10

- This past Wednesday, the boys, my parents and I took a trip to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Our only previous experience with fairs/rodeos was the South Plains Fair in Lubbock. Not to slight the South Plains Fair or anything...it was always fun when we went...but the Houston Rodeo is just something else! It's the "real deal," so to say. Very well run, very clean, very educational and entertaining. We arrived around 10:00am and stayed till after 2:00pm. And really, we could have stayed much longer, but we did have one sleepy little twenty-month-old on our hands who could only be pushed so far, figuratively and literally. I'll let the pictures do the talking:

Two adorable cowpokes.

They had a little shop that sold these neat ride-on horses. You pressed your feet up and down and it propelled the horse on little wheels.

And of course I had to give it a shot too.

Had to stop by the Texas Tech ag booth!

My favorite part (animal-wise) was the birthing center. They had many different kinds of animals who had either just given birth, were laboring, or were due within days. So fascinating! These little lambs had just been born a few hours prior.

Hiya, there, Lady Cow.

Ru on his pony ride...no hands!

Lookin' like a true cowboy!

My heart went out to this poor mama pig. She had ten piglets who just would not back off! Every time she tried to get up they knocked her back down. Life of a mom, I tell ya.

This poor baby, he was such a trooper! He was stuck in the stroller most of the day but hung in there and didn't put up too much of a fuss.

The super slide!

Pa and Kolbe on the ferris wheel. 

The boys LOVED the spider swings.

No, this is not Kolbe, but he has vowed that it will be next year. He and Ru loved watching the mutton bustin' competition and swear they're going to sign up next year. They've been practicing ever since Wednesday on the arms of our couches. 

My Rudy riding a motorcycle.

- As I mentioned previously, our biggest resolution for the year is healthier eating. No fad diets or trends to follow...just healthier eating choices. Period. As part of that, we decided to start our own vegetable garden in our backyard. Last weekend we built a raised bed in our side yard and then later in the week filled it with veggie plants. We're starting very basic and hoping to grow from there. Tomatoes, jalapeños, bell peppers, cilantro, and a few other herbs as well. Can you tell we like Mexican food!?! Our neighbors that share a fence with our vegetable garden have an entire backyard full of raised beds with both flowers and fruits/vegetables. We figure if she can grow them just two feet away, surely we can too! I took this picture the day we built our bed. I need to get another one now that it has plants in it but it's rainy right now so that will have to wait. Hopefully I'm not writing mid-July with a photo of dead plants and dried up soil. Wish me luck!

Our humble little un-finished veggie bed.

Maybe if we're successful, our produce haul from the store with shrink in lieu of fresh-from-the-yard!

Tantrums, Treasures, and Tidbits

- I'm thinking it might be easier for me if Three Thought Thursday turned in to a weekend thing instead of a Thursday thing. I'm quickly finding out that as we get busier and more involved, the less likely it will be for me to pull of a blog post every week in the middle of the week. The weekend affords me a little more flexibility. But then it wouldn't be Three Thought Thursday, would it. Ugh.

- Yesterday morning a little bit of coolness occurred. I woke to a few shop orders in my inbox. This is nothing out of the ordinary. But upon closer look at my totals at the top, I discovered I had reach my 2000th order. Two thousand. That's a lot. Two-and-a-half years and two thousand orders. I'm a proud little shop owner.

And I'll leave you with this. Maybe we should attempt to grow corn!

TTT: Season 4, Episode 9

- Dear Diary, I promise I haven't forgotten about you! Thursday turned in to Friday, Friday in to Saturday, and now it's late and I should be crawling in to bed but instead find myself typing away. This time I can't argue that things have been so busy that I haven't been able to find the time to write. Instead, they've been somewhat normal, which is actually code for "not-much-to-write-about." Normal life stuff consists of a doctor's appointment for a baby who I assumed was teething and instead had ear infections. (yes, that's infection with an s at the end.) Normal life is soccer practice. Grocery store visits. Picking up toys for the hundredth time in the same day. And oodles of loads of laundry. And for a special spin on normal, my dad picked up all three boys early on Friday morning so I could have the entire morning to have a clothing intervention. My crew was in need of major dresser/closet overhaul and that's just one task that cannot be accomplished while children are awake. And doing it while they're asleep is just as impossible. After roughly three hours, five bags and several boxes hadn't made the cut. The "to go" pile was impressive. Yet their rooms still somehow looked the same. One of those projects where you feel like you worked your tail off yet when the hubby arrives home it doesn't look like anything has been accomplished at all. Hey, at least when I pull open the drawers looking for a 2T pair of pants, I'll be successful instead of pulling out something in 18 months. So that's normal for ya. Life is normal, and normal is good.

- I think I, like a lot of other bloggers, often give the impression that we have this perfect, idyllic life. We write about the highs and chose to skip the lows. Or they're too personal for us to discuss. Or we fear that people will cringe and scoff at us when reading of our failures. Or even worse, pity us. But I don't think it serves anyone well to paint us as perfect. We most certainly aren't. And more specifically, I most certainly am not. In fact, I have multiple failures daily. I'll give you a good example: Thursday was one catastrophe of a morning. It was "teacher appreciation day" at Kolbe's little pre-school and I had signed up to bring brownies and bread sticks, assuming I could make the brownies and find fresh bread sticks in the bakery section of the grocery store. After searching high and low and striking out, I decided I'd make them myself. The boys and I made the brownies on Wednesday night and I went to bed setting my alarm earlier than normal so that I could get up and make the bread sticks. Unfortunately, my phone is my alarm. And one sneaky little four-year-old woke up early and stole it away from my nightstand. His older brother woke me up at 7:45...also known as forty-five minutes prior to our load-the-car time. I immediately went in to panic mode. Kolbe had to pack his own lunch, he and Rudy dressed themselves as I barked commands while attempting to get the bread sticks in the oven. Poor Grant stayed strapped into his booster chair, witnessing all of the chaos. I scampered away to hurriedly dress myself and brush my teeth and noticed the timer going off in the kitchen. And not the first round of beep-beep-beep-beeps. The shorter ones that mean "hello....aren't you going to come get this out of the oven?" The bread sticks were burnt. We jumped in the car, abandoning the kitchen calamity and took off. I decided  I'd just take Kolbe to school, explain my epic failure and offer to run to Olive Garden. But as I plotted my explanation in my head, I sadly realized I had forgot the brownies...nearly half way to school. After returning to retrieve them, we finally arrived at school twenty minutes late. And despite my pledge to go fetch bread sticks, I was sent away with "It's no problem! We've got plenty of garlic bread to go around...and you already have your hands so full that the brownies alone were a feat in themselves." Gee. That made me feel so much better. So there. That's just one of many example of the real world that goes on around here. Sure, we have our moments of picture perfect. But they are moments. Not hours. Every peach most certainly has its pit.

- After dropping Kolbe off at school on Tuesdays, Rudy, Grant and I have made it a routine to go to the grocery store for our weekly haul. Over time, I've discovered quite the treasure. At least for me. On Tuesday mornings, the floral department clearances out all of the flowers that didn't get picked in order to make room for the new arrival. At the back of the department they always have several buckets of random bouquets up for grabs. I'm not typically a flower person. I do love wildflowers. But $50 arrangements that will die within a week aren't my thing. I always end up rifling off a list in my head of things I could have used that $50 on. But clearanced flowers are another thing. Especially ones that are just as fresh looking as the newbies. This week a dozen red roses came home with me. For $1.99. Last week it was tulips for the same price. Sure, even at just a few dollars, it's an unnecessary splurge to have fresh flowers in the kitchen every week. But for this lady living in a world of men, it's something special that brings a smile to dish washing, a sigh to lunch making, and a little sunshine to even the rainiest of days.

At least my chaotic Thursday morning concluded with a beautiful Texas sunset at soccer practice.

Roses in a mason jar. Can't go wrong.

My big boy has officially learned how to make his own lunch. He's been practicing for weeks and has finally mastered the art of sandwich making. 

The pitiful little beauty. Cutting eye teeth and dealing with ear infections. 

Reading stories with Dada.

He's going to be the cutest athlete ever. 

You've gotta love awesomely awesome baby bed-head. Especially when the face says, "Wha-where am I!?!"