August Awesomeness

Before we fall into autumn {like what I did there?} I thought I would do a post to highlight some of the fun our family had in August. I typically dread August because its that last month of summer where it's so hot but you are kinda over the pool, but this year it wasn't so bad. Let's see....what did we do this past month?

We made trips to the grocery store. Little man was finally able to sit up in the cart! I also have reached the point where I do not enjoy a trip to the store with one mom and two children. Back up from Daddy is always nice.

Jensen sat in the swing at the park! I have a photo in our playroom of Eva in the same swing her first summer too. 

We swam with friends! Lots of friends. And then we said goodbye because they moved away : (

I bought a plastic pool on clearance at Aldi and we enjoyed watching movies in it before it went in the backyard.

Eva did Vacation Bible School for the first time and LOVED it. She asks every week when she can go back....and it's possible we still do the VBS songs that we found on YouTube.

We served with Ryan at Hawaiian Falls. Each summer Ryan is a Connections Pastor there and this summer we had a blast serving together as a family.

We embraced "Thirsty Thursdays" when our Chick-fil-a gave away free frosted lemonades every Thursday. I miss this one already.

We visited the A-MAZ-ING new Cinemark theatre right by our house and enjoyed a free screening of Minions in 3D.

We played at the splash pad with friends. I hope these babies grow up to be best friends!!!!

We went bowling for free thanks to the summer reading program at our local library!

We went on a Mama-Daughter date to ride slides at Hawaiian Falls. I had so much fun embracing my giggly girly side with Eva that night. She is big into "dates" and loves one on one time with either me or Ryan.

We bought lots and lots of fresh peaches at the Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.

My kids wore hats....to keep the sun out of their eyes....okay really it was because they look so cute in hats! I mean, right?!

My uncle Paul came in from New Jersey and spent a fun day with us. 

We hosted youth Bible studies. This moment cracked me up...everybody got out Bibles and Ryan told them where to turn. Somebody helped Eva find the right spot and she turned and sighed, "I can't read this." It was so funny because she said it with such disappointment like she was expecting to be able to suddenly read it. 

We surprised the lifeguards and staff at Hawaiian Falls with sooooo many M&M cookies as our way of saying thanks for a great summer!

We went to a free snake show! Woah. This guy was hilarious and possibly a bit crazy. But it was very interesting and all the kids got to touch this snake.

We went to story time at the library. Wearing matching t-shirts...because you only get so many opportunities to do that when you have girl/boy kids.

We got ready for football season at Meet the Bobcats with some of our favorite cheerleaders!

Buddy prepared to become a crawler. It hasn't happened yet but oh boy, it is coming. 

And finally this handsome man took me on a wonderful date to Downtown Dallas. We walked around, ate pizza, strolled through the church I grew up in, and went to Late Nights at the DMA. 

Goodbye Summer! 

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!

Clowning Around {Making August Count}

Last Saturday we took Eva to the circus for the first time. I don't know why but a few years ago I got it into my head that we would take her to the circus the August before she turned 3. I think maybe it was because I was figuring we would have another baby soon after and it seemed like a fun "big girl" thing to do and that being almost 3 was the perfect age to see a circus. So this year when I started seeing circus advertisements I knew we would be going! We were able to get 2 free tickets for me and Ryan and a discount ticket for Eva so it worked out nicely. 

Our tickets were for the show at the Fort Worth Convention Center and it was fine, just different than the American Airlines Center.  On the plus side it is a smaller venue, so really any seat there is a good seat. We got there about an hour early so we were able to walk around and see some of the animals before the show started. Eva kept asking, "Is this the big show?" every time we saw something different. We assured her that she would know when the show actually started.

During the early part of the show Eva kept asking if it was almost over every 5 minutes...not because she was ready to go but because she didn't know what to expect. The show itself was over 2 hours which I figured was a good length for a circus.

 The circus was mostly as I remembered. I think Ryan and I went about 5-6 years ago and I would say every 5 years is a good amount of time between circus experiences. It is fun to see, and even more fun to see through the eyes of your child, but the show doesn't really change too much. Pictured above is an act where a group of people are riding bicycles across a tight rope. I kept thinking, "Did they wake up one day and decide this was what they wanted to do for their life? Did they do dangerous things as a child? Did their mother worry about them walking across rooftops?"

I love these crazy clowns. They had a big bucket of free noses so of course we had to try some on. We did not take any pictures with actual clowns, as Eva was too concerned to stand next to one. Fine by me.

Saturday evening we drove to Rockwall to celebrate Ryan's grandmother's birthday. With cake, ice cream and plenty of little kids, it was a whole different kind of circus :)

Downtown Fort Worth {Making August Count}

Today's Making August Count post features our family morning in downtown Fort Worth. Fort Worth is an interesting concept to me...even though I've lived near it for over a decade I haven't actually spent that much time exploring all it has to offer. Our home now is technically in Fort Worth, although we are also considered Roanoke. We had vouchers for free circus tickets {which we get to use next week!!!!} but in order to use them we had to visit the Fort Worth Convention center box office. We figured this would be a bit of a drive so to make it worth the while we looked up fun, FREE things to do in the downtown area. PS If you haven't bought circus tickets yet and can go to the Fort Worth show next WEDNESDAY night (opening night), tickets are only $10 if you can go get them at the box office! Or if you need to go another day you can get a 20% off coupon from Carter's stores. 

After picking up our tickets, we let Eva play and run around in the Fort Worth Water Gardens. They have several pretty water fountains, although it did seem that some were turned off. Maybe to converse water right now? Even though it was a million degrees outside there was a breeze and some shade so it wasn't too hot. This would be a great picnic spot to visit again in the fall.

Hello down there! How creative was the person who designed this? 

We were able to leave our car parked at one meter spot for the whole time we were there. I think we parked for about 3 hours for about $2 in quarters we found at home before we left. To get from place to place we enjoyed riding Molly the Trolley. This is a FREE little trolley that takes you around downtown. I may have had to chase the trolley down for us to jump on initially - I think I ran more and faster in that minute than I have in the last year. Whew! After that it was smooth sailing riding. We ended up getting on and off the trolley at several places. Eva said riding the trolley was her favorite part of the day.  

One of our stops was for some Starbucks. I may be raising a child who enjoys the finer things. Vanilla box milk, anyone? She really likes to go to Starbucks. Really.

Cooling down our toes! We walked a bit around the Sundance Square area and visited the museum at Fire Station No. 1. Note: this is an interesting museum with old artifacts and photos. It does NOT have much to do with being a fire station. Glad I hadn't tried to pump up that part. I just told her we were walking around looking at things. 

Yee-haw! I married this cowboy because he always makes me laugh! This was part of the First Station museum. Definitely not a fire truck, but still silly. For a great list of FREE family (or date) ideas in Fort Worth click here.

Sandy Lake Park {Making August Count}

For this month I've decided to try to blog a series of posts called Making August Count. Most of our summer has been pretty low-key (aside from the whole moving process) so I want to try to squeeze in some special family fun before summer ends and my little girl turns 3. {Can we pretend for a second that having a 3 year old isn't right around the corner???} It's so easy to think of August as that crazy hot left over month of summer that isn't worth doing anything, but we're choosing to embrace it!

Today we embraced the cooler temperatures and took Eva to Sandy Lake Park. On our way there Ryan and I realized that both of our memories of Sandy Lake Park were going with our 6th grade bands. Is that some right of passage for bands? Neither of us had been back since but we figured, why not? Plus we found a free coupon online.

Our first stop was the carousel. Eva loves riding carousels and I love the old fashioned carnival music they play.

Next up, the train ride. When we were getting ready this morning we told Eva there would be a train and that pretty much sold her on the idea that this would be a fun day. 

 Family train ride selfie!

Watching Eva do the mini-rides was so funny. She did enjoy it but looked so serious most of the time. It's also hysterical to see a little human going up and down on a ride, usually as the only child on the rides (they weren't busy at all today). 

 Ding-ding! Here comes Captain Eva on her boat!

Eva's first pony ride. This took some working up to. We went over to pet the ponies a few times before she was actually ready to hop on.

Talking to the animals. 

 Miniature golf! This was a cute little course and Eva actually enjoyed watching me and Ryan play.

One final ride for the day! Afterwards we enjoyed a picnic lunch outside together. I love my little family.