Let's Go Rangers

At nearly midnight Friday night my older brother Jeff and his family arrived at our house from Austin. He'd been in Belgium and France last week and had quite a scary flight back, so I was relieved to see their car in front of our house. Audrey was already asleep but her trundle was out so Maddie crawled into it. Imagine Audrey's surprise when she woke up Saturday morning to find Maddie there! The boys were sleeping on the sofa bed in the game room. Audrey was in heaven. She loves those kids, especially Bristol. 

Barker and Hudson ran to get donuts and before long we were off to the Ranger game!

We arrived early and all the kids got bats! Then we decided to try out the new restaurant inside the stadium, Captain Morgan's Bar and Grill. It was good. And air conditioned! 

 Audrey's kids meal came with cotton candy. No lie. Ugh. That's the last thing any one needs to eat, especially a child. Luckily for me, Audrey was not having it. She tried a tiny bite and then wanted nothing to do with it. Score!

Very quickly it became super hot so in the 3rd, I think, we went off in search of some shade and ice cream.

 100 degrees but mom of the year Holly didn't mind them all sitting on her lap 

: )

I can't believe Madalyn is already so grown up. Seems like just yesterday I was waking up to My Little Ponies in my face. Now she's tall, slender and beautiful. And being 12 she can fit into my clothes. She wore my jersey to the game. Crazy!

Eventually we decided to take the little kids and go back to the restaurant for some dessert, water, and of course air conditioning. 

Audrey and Bristol had the best time. 

They love each other. It's so sweet. 

Also sweet: the chocolates Jeff brought me from Belgium. Yum! I've had to ration them out. We'll see how long that lasts.

You Say It's Your Birthday

A few weeks ago Jo's hubby asked me to help him plan a surprise birthday party for her. We put our heads together and came up with a guest list, he booked a huge Hummer limo so anyone that wanted to drink could, and didn't have to drive (can you tell he owns a bar?) and I picked the activities. 

I had everyone meet at D's house so we could hop in the limo and pick up Jo together. I also had to meet Jo's very generous husband Adam there cause he wanted to give me an envelope full of hundreds to cover our expenses for the night. Yeah, he rules. 

I also went to San Antonio (Johanna's hometown) the week before and bought a carton of cascarones. Cascarones are confetti filled eggs you smash on someone's head at a birthday party. I knew Jo would take an hour to perfectly straighten her hair just for us to smother her in confetti. So I really needed her to enjoy the night so she wouldn't murder me over the cascarones. 

She looked really surprised at the sight of all of us, and the limo (she thought it was just she and I going out for the extremely rare kid free dinner) and then she looked really mad about the confetti when a moment later we all hit her with them. Ha! But she quickly went back into her state of shock and climbed into the limo.

First we headed to dinner. I wanted to go to Gloria's on Greenville cause the birthday girl loves it but we ended up leaving at least 45 minutes later than we had planned. I got lost on the way to the meeting spot. Twice. In traffic. On a Friday night. Surprised? I wasn't. Story of my life. 

So since the bar we were going to after dinner is in Fort Worth Rene suggested a restaurant called Tillman's. She said she knew for sure they had a dish called the Tree Hugger (Johanna is a vegetarian) so we told the limo driver to head that way. And oh my word. It was soooo yummy! Def some place I'm anxious to visit again. My tummy hurt a little bit after dinner because it's no longer used to fattening food. I had skillet meat loaf, which was half pulled pork. Yum, but fatty. It had fried green onions on top and macaroni n cheese with bacon. Yeah, taste buds were in heaven, my tummy, not so much. So I showed it who is in charge with tableside smores. So good.

After dinner we headed over to Capital Bar's roof top patio called The Backyard. Which reminds me of a funny story. When I was at Stephen F Austin a band from Fort Worth that I liked, Alligator Dave, was supposed to be playing somewhere off campus. I used to see them at The Aardvark in high school. So I asked around and found out they were playing at a bar called The Back Porch. Apparently it was a smaller bar attached to the back of a larger bar that faced the street. I wasn't familiar with it cause we always went to Sports Shack.

So to find out where it was I stopped by the computer lab in the library after doing some research and googled the bar. Only instead of typing in 'The Back Porch' I typed in 'the backdoor' and up popped a man's bare ass! Then it started flashing all these hairless men in royal blue man panties shaking their hineys in a line with their arms around each other's waists! Then all these pop ups started. I couldn't make the pop ups stop in this filled to the brim computer lab so I just grabbed my bag and ran. Ugh. Humiliation.

A few weeks later I saw the Toadies in the larger bar in front of the bar I was looking for and discovered my mistake and why that website popped up when I typed in 'the backdoor' instead of 'The Back Porch.' Oops.

Anyway- I picked Capital Bar's roof top patio cause, duh, roof tops rule. And because there was an awesome 80's tribute band playing that night that I thought Jo would love. And I don't mean obnoxious old women singing Walk Like an Egyptian or We Got The Beat in neon leg warmers, cause that would make me throw a chair off the roof. But an 80's hair band! Yes! Sing in your head 'Panama', some Guns n Roses tunes, everybody's fav, The Outfield's 'Lose Your Love' and mine and Barker's fav song by Rick Springfield 'Jessie's Girl.' (If you know the story of how we were introduced then you'll understand our fondness for the song.) Oh my gosh it was so fun! 

Jo and Nicole danced up a sweat. D was quite the photographer. And Brooklyn, Rene and I laughed till our faces hurt. Ashley even showed up later since she lives not far from there. She didn't arrive until after 1am and the line was down the block to get it. So Johanna made me con a doorman to get her in the back door. Not my finest hour. I was so afraid he was going to give me the lecture the bouncer gives in the movie 'Knocked Up' where he says "You can't come in. You old. She's pregnant. I can't be lettin' a bunch of old, pregnant bitches run around." I felt if Johanna said 'It's my birthday and one of the members of our party is late. Can she come in this way?" he might let her in. Because Johanna always gets what she wants. But she disagreed with my plan of attack and instead pushed me at him and said, "You're brown and skinny. Go get her." So you can imagine my relief when I didn't get the "You old" speech and he let us go get Ashley out of the never-ending line.

The limo got us home safely (I crawled in bed at 3am) and I was still laughing 3 hours later when Hudson woke up for the day. It was the most fun I'd had in a long time. Man I wish Johanna had birthdays more often.

Time Out

We have been swamped lately. Barker has been working days and nights lately because it's summer, and that's their busy season. We miss him but it evens out because he's home much more than most daddies at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and can usually work from home some if I have an emergency (like the surgery that put me off my game for weeks after Huddie was born) or if we're all sickly. But in the mean time the kids and I have had to go go go non stop from one thing to another. I'm so ready for some down time where we can turn off our phones, don't have to be anywhere, and don't have anyone knocking on our door. Do not disturb.

I haven't taken many pics but we've been to the libraries a lot, ballet, soccer, baby showers, play dates, doctor visits and birthday parties. Here are some pictures I've got from Audrey's 2nd VBS.

 Week before last she had VBS at our church. Last week she went to the one at the Methodist church where she goes to school. She had a blast, learned a lot and donated her own money from her piggy bank to buy (in her own words) 'mosquito nets so kids don't get bit by mosquitos and get sick, and clean water so kids don't have to drink dirty water with stuff floating in it.' I guess both churches chose to raise money for causes in Africa and Audrey asked to go by boat. I don't see that happening.

But she did go down the huge water slide after the parents appreciation dinner and worship at PUMC Thursday night. She went way up, changed her mind and couldn't get down. So I sent an older girl up and Audrey slid down probably 5 times in her lap. Man do we need to adopt a 12 year old!

6 Months Old

1/3 of my heart is 6 months old. 

Happy half birthday angel. 


Hudson is into everything these days. He's a typical boy. He will stand if you let him hold onto your fingers. He's scooting and rolling all over the place. He likes food, a lot, but not as much as he loves his sister. Son enjoys being outside but now it's too hot in here Texas so the poor thing is stuck indoors, just as well considering his blue eyes, blond hair and fair complexion. He looks chubby (especially when you see him next to some of my friends babies born within 10 days of him) but the nurse that weighed him swears he's still long and lean. She said he's 16 lbs and 11 oz (which would put him at 30-something % for weight) but any where else we weigh him he shows 18lbs. Strange. She said perhaps she looked at the scale wrong, maybe it said 18, not 16, and she would weigh him again but I wasn't about to undress him a second time and risk him peeing on me. So I voted against a recount. She also said he's still in the 70th% for height. No shock there. So tall and slim it is and I figure that's how he'll stay until he's in his 20's and away at college living off midnight pizza.

Father's Day 2012

Oh how they love their Daddy!

For Father's Day I always try to surprise Barker by taking him some place he's never been. I'm quickly running out of options. He's just the most wonderful Daddy and I'm so thankful for him every single day. It took a bit of tweaking to mold him into the man I wanted him to be but when it comes to being a Daddy, he needs no help. It just comes naturally to him. He's affectionate, kind, energetic, hard working, supportive, and outrageously patient, obviously, he's married to me so he has to be. 

So this Father's Day we loaded up the kids and headed to the beach at Isle duBois. It was a beautiful day and not crowded. We took turns taking the kids in the lake and really enjoyed our excursion.

 Audrey and her daddy

Holding hands and throwing rocks

Daddy and Hudson feeling the sand between their toes.

This was Son's first time in the sand. 

He doesn't mind me taking him into a pool as long as I'm holding him. He's not a fan of those little baby floats you sit them in to shield them from the sun. But the lake, he was having no part of it. I'd put his feet in and he'd yell at me. I'd lift him out and he'd grin from ear to ear. Stinker.

  Barker wasn't close enough to get a clear shot of his smile but he did catch him grabbing my face. He does this all the time. It's so sweet. He takes both hands and leans in for kisses. No complaints here. I'm so obsessed with our little sausage ball. He rules.

 He really enjoyed playing under the umbrella with his toys. He did a lot of people watching and was all over the place. I think I put down 5 beach towels and he was all over every inch of them. But we some how managed to keep him from eating sand. Parenting score!

Around 12:30 we decided to go grab some lunch. Barker decided he wanted to go to another place he'd never been, McKinney Trade Days. It's crap, fried, yummy carnival type food, antiques, crafts, etc. Not  something I ever thought he'd want to do but it was his idea so we went. I love it and go several times a year, just to walk around and enjoy the fresh air (that smells of fried food!)

If it's a special event I'll let her have lemonade. Being Father's Day Barker got to choose where we ate and I must admit, my girl didn't mind one bit. She got her paws on some of those Texas Tater Twister things and her beloved lemonade. That's a recipe for a happy, hyper girl.

It was a fun but exhausting day. Both of the kids were troopers but since Audrey was the only one that had a lemonade pick me up, Hudson couldn't hang as long as she could. He had a bath and was in bed by 6:30...which means he'll probably be up just before 6am. So I'm guessing my bed time won't be far behind his. 

Hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did honey! You're the bees knees!

On the Move

You know how you have that brief window of quickly being able to take care of things again (and by take care of things I mean pee alone) when babies can sit up and play with toys on a blanket for a few minutes but aren't yet mobile? 

Well my window with Hudson was more like a drive thru window. 

 Here he is playing with his favorite toy of the moment, a green ball Santa brought him.

But this never lasts long. He's only still for a moment, typical boy.

 He wants to crawl so badly but can't get his belly off the ground and onto his knees at the same time. So he just scoots all over the place with his elbows and monkey toes and pivots on his belly. So we can't leave anything out or be off our A game for a minute. So welcome back baby gate. Good luck containing our little meat pie. He may not be quick but he's on the move. And for those of you that are counting, he's 5 months. Heaven help me.

When he's not getting into his sister's toys he's gnawing on things. His favorite thing to drool on? Audrey.

 No teeth yet so she doesn't mind. 

They love each other.

He also loves toes.

His toes, to be specific.

 He also digs this dragon hat we bought him when I was pregnant.

 ham

 Audrey took this one. I love it. Too bad she cut the top of his head off. Oops.

Don't Feed The Animals

I know I always say we're busy. So in case you were wondering what I'm always doing... This is it. Feeding kids. Man do my kids like to eat. 

Mamma Mia!

I'm kinda behind with the blog, I know. But we've been super duper busy. 

Anyway- two weeks ago I took Audrey to see the musical Mamma Mia. She loves Abba. I didn't tell her what we were doing. So when they started the first song she gasped and said 'Mom! It's my show!'

She had a great time and did better than I thought she would. I was worried she'd want to be up dancing but she sat in her seat or my lap and watched. She was the youngest patron I saw but I had to take her now before she's old enough to understand some of the content that's not kid appropriate.