Weekend Update {4.12.15}

This weekend we started off the fun by taking our kids to the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville. I had heard of this zoo several times. Lots of people recommended it but always with the preface, "It's not the Fort Worth Zoo...." so I honestly went into the day excited but with low expectations. I was wrong - this was a really fun zoo! No, it isn't the Fort Worth Zoo, which I'm pretty sure is like world acclaimed or something like that, but it had lots of good animals and you could get really close up to many of them. We also picked a great day to visit the zoo - not too many people with cool weather. My favorite kind of a zoo day :)  

One of the things we were looking forward to was the giraffe feeding. Eva got to give the giraffe a piece of lettuce. It was a tiny bit anticlimactic in that it was over in about 5 seconds but Eva still really liked it.

 She also got to spend some time feeding goats. 

 Pretending to be a giraffe. I liked that she laughed at herself when she saw this photo on my phone.

 Bears! {in the top left corner} That girl and her daddy are so silly together.

The day before the zoo I finally learned how to wear Jensen in the ring sling I sewed before he was born. Let me say that I LOVE wearing him in this sling. I have a Moby wrap and an Infantino front/back carrier and this is definitely my new favorite wrap. It is so quick and easy to put him in and it is very comfortable to wear. I wore Jensen in it the entire time we were at the zoo and it didn't hurt my back at all. Plus it was chilly so wearing Jensen helped both of us stay warm. 

After the zoo we rode the train goes all around the park right next door.You can somewhat tell in this photo that after 3 1/2 years Eva's dark blue eyes are suddenly turned hazel green like mine. Her hair is also growing in a much darker blonde. Crazy!

Ryan over excited, Jensen under excited. A perfect duo. Jensen seriously slept through most of the day. That baby can sleep through anything.

And lastly we played on the playground! I may have gotten stuck trying to climb out of this tire swing. Awkward mom moment. Note: I'm not wearing Jensen on the swing, I just left the carrier on. 

Friday night we all went to the varsity baseball game up at Byron Nelson. I wore Jensen again....and he slept through most of the game :) We all had a bunch of fun with friends, until Eva jumped in a giant mud puddle. After that we had to call it a night.

Ryan's parents came up to play on Saturday morning which gave Ryan time to do yard work and me time to run a few kid free errands. Running errands without kids is so much easier and faster, but while I was out I looked at the photos of Eva and Jensen that Nana has posted and it made me miss them so much! So then I hurried home with some lunch for everybody.

Saturday night was spent on a date with my handsome man! We hadn't gone out alone since way back in January so we were really looking forward to it! Some friends gave us a Brio gift card and offered to baby sit on whatever night we used it - double awesome! We enjoyed some wonderful steak and walked around Southlake listening to the live music.

Weekend Update in iPhone Pics {10.5.14}

Last Friday we spend the afternoon and evening in Denton so we decided to take Eva by our Alma Mater, the University of North Texas! I may not be an extremely active alumni but I do enjoy taking Eva to see things and walking around campus. I would be so happy if she decided to be a UNT eagle in 15 years. 

Then we were off to watch the Bobcats play the Ryan Raiders. We got to the game about 30 minutes early so Eva got to spend some time playing with her cheerleader friends. Too bad she totally hates being the center of attention :) These girls are all so sweet to her and it makes her day to get to hang out with them.

Also a weird side note - some of my former second graders are actually old enough to attend Ryan high school now. Crazy! I didn't run into anybody but I did have a former coworker post a picture of her son in the Ryan band.

Saturday morning we enjoyed the nice weather by going to the Roanoke Fire Safety Day. Insert cute photo of Eva on a firetruck. Oh...mom fail. I did get a picture of her inside a firetruck but it is really dark and you can't even tell it's a fire truck. So instead here is a photo of us riding the tiny train! We saw all the scenic parts of the parking lot. Woo-hoo! Totally worth the 20 minutes I stood in line. 

Saturday night we celebrated Greg's 36th birthday and Ryan's 28th birthday at Nana and Papa's house. We also did a gender revel party but I will blog about that separately. 

All those cousins played hard and then settled down to watch a movie in Nana's bed. Eva ended up with no clothes on...I'm not surprised. 

On Sunday morning I got to watch the most handsome pastor in the world preach it! Ryan taught on James 5, and I always love hearing him teach. I'm a lucky bride :)

Weekend Update in iPhone Pics {9.28.13}

Last Friday we started off our weekend by taking a family visit to a park in Keller. This was a new park for us to check out and let me tell you, as a professional park connoisseur, this was an awesome park! Ryan and I were even talking about how lucky we are to live in an area with so many fun parks. There are at least 5 parks within 5 minutes of our house, and probably another 15 good ones if we are willing to drive a little bit. What did kids do back before they had amazing parks? I love seeing Eva climb and use the strong little kid body God has blessed her with.

This park also had a beautiful walking trail so we "hiked" just a bit (translation: we strolled slowly for maybe 10 minutes). 

Shoe love! I found Eva some tiny converse all-stars at a local consignment sale. Do I hate that they happen to match mine. No, I do not hate it at all. I love it!!!! 

Friday night was the Byron Nelson HS homecoming game so we dressed up our mini bobcat and cheered for our team!

With one of our favorite cheerleaders! Eva seriously adores so many of the cheerleaders and tries to cheer and jump right along with them.

Saturday morning we went apple picking at the Henrietta Creek Orchard. Ryan picked her up to reach some of the ones higher off the ground, which tended to be in better condition that the ones within her reach. 

A beautiful green apple! She really liked twisting them off the tree. It was the last weekend the orchard was open so I'm glad we made ourselves get up and go.

Ah, I love this photo. The daddy. The little girl. The trees. The apples. The sky.

After all our apple picking fun we went home and turned a few of them into mini apple pies. Yum! I can't say that I could tell a taste difference in picking my own versus the grocery store but it was a good experience. 

Then we headed to a softball game to cheer on Lillie, one of our youth girls! Lillie is doing a great job as catcher for her team this year.

Tiny friends holding hands. Lillie's little siblings playing with Eva. They are so funny together. 

Saturday afternoon we went for one last swim before our neighborhood pool closed. The reason you only see her putting her toes in is because it was FREEZING! We have gone to the pool often this month and this was the first time the water really felt too cold! Goodbye, summer, we enjoyed swimming while we could!

 

{Photo Source}

Saturday night we had a family movie night and watched Brave. I wasn't so sure I would love this, but it is a pixar film which usually means it is pretty good. It maybe wasn't as amazing as Frozen, but we did really like it. My favorite thing about it was that the princess is so strong and bold. Since my own princess isn't quite so "princess-y" I liked that it showed that a different type of girl hero. It also had bears in it which made it awesome to her. Eva liked the movie enough to watch the whole thing Saturday night and then again on Sunday before we had to give it back so I would say that it was a hit.

Weekend Update in iPhone Pics (8.24.12} {Making August Count}

This weekend update is going to expand a bit and start all the way back on Wednesday night. I know that is not the weekend, but I want to remember these good moments. Not the best picture, but my awesome husband planned a surprise date for us to try a new Mexican restaurant, Rio Mambo.  The food was delicious, my date was handsome, and I really appreciated the element of surprise.

Part of the surprise was that he completely arranged for our friend Gentry to babysit Eva. Her mom snapped this photo of the two of them reading outside and I just love it. Gentry headed back to college this weekend and we will miss her!

Thursday night we went to the Meet the Bobcats back to school pep rally. Eva was so excited. She kept calling it the "pepperoni" and asked me if she could bring her "cheerleaders" aka her pom-poms. She has another one that is red but told me she should just bring the blue one because the Bobcats are blue. Smart girl. Ryan actually got to emcee the pep rally, so we enjoyed nice air conditioned seats from the press box.

Eva really likes watching the cheerleaders and the drill team. She was dancing along to their routines the whole time from the press box. Afterwards we went down on the field to see our friend, Malin. 

Friday morning we headed to the pool with Ryan. We had bought a float a few weeks ago and we finally put air in it. Eva sure caught on to the art of relaxing in a pool float!  Like mother, like daughter.

An actual photo of us! A selfie counts as a photo right? I feel like we so rarely take a photo together these days. I like how the sun was setting next to us. 

A few of our favorite little buddies! Our friends, the Fords, came over to play games and eat ice cream Friday night. 

Saturday we went to Hawaiian Falls. This was the highlight of our day. Honestly, Saturday was such a rough day. I have been feeling so sick and in pain from being pregnant and it just got me down on Saturday. I spent most of the day on the couch or crying because I felt so terrible. I felt better Sunday night when I started thinking about all the other non-sickly things we did this weekend, so that's why I am posting all these photos.....

This girl. That dress. My mom's friend, Wendy, got it for Eva a couple of months ago and she has finally grown into it. She LOVED the pockets and walked around church like that all morning. 

Finally, we wrapped up the weekend with a BSM pool party. I love, LOVE, love these middle school girls so much! With all the good moments...and the hard moments...of this weekend, the highlight for me was probably watching them have a cannon ball contest. They are all so free and I'm so thankful to see the friendships they have formed. They are one loud mess of giggles! I am excited for them to start school these week, some of them going to middle school for the very first time. Praying for all our BSM students and my teacher friends this week!

Weekend Update in iPhone Pics {4.13.14}

Well we are all the way to Wednesday, but here is a quick share from our weekend. Friday was really busy for Ryan but we got to have a quick family lunch at Founder's Plaza. For those who aren't familiar, this is a neat picnic spot out by DFW where you can watch planes taking off and landing. Ryan and Eva both enjoy watching planes so this is a great spot for us.

They have these statues of children pretending to fly and Eva kept asking me to take her picture with them. She rarely ASKS for me to take her picture. She kept running up to each one and imitating it and saying, "CHEESE! Mama! CHEESE!"

Friday afternoon Ryan put me to work helping to fold tshirts and pack bags for the contestants of the Live Like Josh basketball tournament. I am pretty quick at folding and rolling up shirts now!

Saturday morning we had the Trophy Club Easter Egg Hunt. I personally do not care at all about the Easter bunny and think it's a bit creepy. I was telling Eva about it ahead of time just so she wouldn't freak out when she saw it. I explained just like, "Oh, some people like to see cute bunnies in spring time. Our friend is pretending to dress up like a bunny today just like you play dress up. She's just being so silly." When we got there she was so excited to see our friend be a bunny and kept wanting her picture taken. Again. She better be this photo-ready for Easter next Sunday :) 

The egg hunt cracked me up (pun intended). We rushed to get to the right field before they started. On your mark, get set....slowly look for an egg. Hahaha, they weren't even hidden, only laid about everywhere and Eva was SO SLOW to pick up any egg. She was very cautious and only picked up about 12 before she decided she was done. When we hide empty eggs at home she really enjoys stuffing her basket, and I told her these eggs actually had candy in them! Oh, well. She was way more happy to see her little buddy, Brewer and noticed that he could walk a lot more now. 

After the egg hunt we went to the high school to help serve at the Live Like Josh basketball tournament that Ryan helped coordinate. Our other buddy, Grayson was there. I told Eva that it was his half-birthday (he's 6 months old) so she sang Happy Birthday to him all by herself and then handed him a pretend cake and said "Blow it out!" 

My husband is one hard working man. I don't think most people realize how hard he works for his job. Like pretty much non-stop hard all week long last week. I am proud to be his wife.

Finally on Sunday morning we had the 2 year celebration for Live Like Josh. Josh's family spoke and hopefully we were able to encourage tons of people!

Weekend Update in iPhone Pics {4.6.14}

Here is our latest weekend update....Friday morning we got to take Eva to see Disney on Ice. I had never seen this before so I wasn't sure what to expect or how Eva would do sitting for 2 hours to watch a show. It was awesome and she did great! Thanks, Nana, for the tickets to the show! I took a million photos but tried to narrow it down here.

This one is kind of dark and fuzzy, but look at the excitement on her face! For me the absolute best part of the show was seeing how excited she was. I enjoyed watching all the Disney stars skate, but I loved watching her even more.

The iPhone pictures in the arena weren't too clear, but here you can see a bunch of big characters. We got to see most of the Disney princesses as well as characters from The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast and......

Toy Story! The only reason this picture is so clear is that I "borrowed" it from a friend off Facebook. This was definitely Eva's favorite part of the whole show! She likes the princesses but she LOVES Buzz Lightyear and the Toy Story cast. {The show had TONS of other characters but those were the movies that she knew the most about.} I'm sure this show was planned and created a while back, but I was a bit surprised that they didn't have any characters from Frozen. It seems like in this day and age you could easily switch out the costumes from any other prince/princess duet and put them in ones from Frozen. That would have been really great. I'm sure they will include them next year because we saw tons of little Elsa's dressed up for the show.

A short video for your enjoyment. {You probably can't view from an iPhone.} When I looked up about the show online they said that videos of the show were prohibited but at the show they announced that you were allowed to video as long as it wasn't for profitable use. I guess popularity of the iPhone has changed some rules over the years.

With Buzz and Woody. She was so happy to see them on this sign, I can't imagine her excitement if she ever got to go to Disneyland. 

Friday night we went to cheer on some Bobcat baseball. Our friends Gentry, Austin, and Malin were there so Eva spent most of the game sitting with them and not her lame parents. 

Saturday we let Eva go stay the night with my parents so that we could serve at the BNHS Taste and Talent Show. This event is a PTA fundraiser that is like a progressive dinner with food booths followed by a silent auction and talent show. Bara sponsored the chips and salsa booth. 

Sunday morning was a special one for Bara Church. Our friends Rachel and Alex did a baby dedication for sweet Grayson. 

Then we officially introduced our new worship leader,Brian, and said goodbye to our previous leader.

And finally Ryan got to baptize Malin, one of the girls in our youth group! What a special moment.

I love Malin and am so happy she has made the decision to follow Jesus!  

Sunday night our youth intern, Jesse, spoke at BSM about the upcoming anniversary for Live Like Josh. It was a night full of prayer and love. Our church will be hosting the 2 year Live Like Josh celebration next Sunday.