Yard Work Saturday

On Saturday Rick and the boys tackled all the yard work. It has been sitting since November, not needing much attention. But now spring has come. So he mowed and mulched the flower beds. I also went out and bought a new tree. A rose tree. I've never seen one of those but WOW its really pretty. I bought my favorite and Judy's (Rick's mom) favorite color rose, a mango color. So this tree will be "Nano's tree". We have designated all the trees in the yard, Griffin's tree, Carson's tree and so on. I even have a tree, my purple crepe mertal. Rick is the only one without a tree at this point, but I don't think he's too sad about it. Really that just means another tree for him to plant. ha!

Griffin took care of this little worm most of the day, pretty cute.

The "Nano" rose tree
It came all decked out with at least 15 or more blooms. The tree is about 3 feet tall and that is about as tall as it will get.

Scoping out New Places

Today we went on a hunt for new backgrounds for my photo shoots. I have a session this weekend and they asked if we could go to the Arboretum in Austin. So I wanted to scope it out before I went out on a session, and yes its a winner!! In fact this place will be perfect for all my little "6 monthers" on my baby plan coming up. There is lots of really soft green grass and very pretty cobblestone walkways (GREAT for B&W shots).

Here are a few of my little guinea pigs that were up for the task of helping out their mommy!

And a few with an urban finish just for the fun of it!

Easter Storyboard

Click to enlarge

Easter Egg Hunt

The famous "Nano & Grandaddy"

What a nice Easter Sunday our family had in Houston. Thanks to Calvin & Judy (R's parents) for hosting all of us. It was a small crowd this time, only 13 of us as opposed to our regular 22! We are a big family and proud of it. Here some shots of the kids before, during and after their egg hunt in the front yard. Thanks to Melissa & kids for stuffing all the eggs and making it a really fun event for our kids. They really had a great time.

Avery, Parker, Kelsey, Cooper, Griffin & Carson
Griffin
Carson
Parker, too busy to look up at me. :)
And don't forget wild man, Benny running off with someone else's eggs, as he laughs. ha! Just filling his "brotherly role"

Fun at the Family Farm

We had a fantastic weekend in Houston. I took lots of fun pictures, and will post them through out the week. Our first stop was Rick's sister's horse farm. We love spending time on the farm. Its so beautiful and peaceful. Unfortunately I did not have my good flash with me so I only have a few pictures to show you this time.

Mommy & Cooper petting Max
Daddy and Cooper walking over to the barn
Cooper in front of Aunt Melissa's Azalea's that were in bloom all over Houston. You'd think you were in anther state. Houston is so much more tropical. Everything is green & blooming there with lots of color. Our grass is still brown here in Austin. And I just noticed today some green leaves trying to pop up on our trees. I am happy to report I have about 8 blooms on my rose bushes that should appear next week. I will blog more on that later.

Happy Easter from our Family

Headed to Houston for a long weekend. Wishing you all a Happy Easter from our family!

Colored Eggs

We colored our eggs today. What fun it was! One of our nieces, Avery came back with the boys to spend a few days during spring break. The kids LOVE their cousins so this was a real treat for them and for Rick and I too. She is a big helper at 10 yrs old. Here are some shots of the kids from this morning.

Cooper 19 Months

It's still hard to believe that 19 months have gone by. We are loving our "baby" who is smack in the middle of toddler hood. Cooper is still the most loving, cuddly boy. He is however, turning into a toddler with a capital T. He has learned to hit his friends with a toy, ugh!! And he now yells NO all the time. We have finally stopped the bathroom, turning on the tub episodes, as long as the door is shut we are fine. Cooper's favorite thing to do is just walk around outside with no boundaries. His new words, we lost count at 35 words, are blanket, peekaboo, milk. But the one phrase you are guaranteed to hear over and over again is "bye bye" and "wove you".
As you can see in the above photo, Coop has this focus when playing with his cars. It reminds me of Griffin who has a very long attention span. They both line up their cars and roll them along for a good part of the day.

Baptize the Dolly

There were several people that were baptized at church on Sunday. Parker watched on but didn't say anything about it. On Monday she and Cooper were playing quietly on our deck (see post below) and I was taking pictures. I noticed that she was at the tree with her doll from her doll house set. I said "Parker what are you doing?" she replied in song "I'm baptizing the dolly"

So its not exactly immersion in water, but hey its pretty sweet.

We're Short 2 Kids

We sent our "big" boys to Houston to be with Rick's parents for 4 days. This is our first time ever sending them off without us. They were SO excited. Nano (R's mom) took them swimming, bike riding, to the museum to see the dinosaur exhibit, and the list goes on and on. They then went to Melissa's horse farm (R's sister) to play with their cousins & fishing with Granddaddy. What a great time they are having.

In the mean time.... Life at our house is really well, quiet! We spent our last 4 days with 2 kids saying wow this is really easy! What do people do with 2 kids? Well for one they have conversations! Imagine that?! I don't know how many times we said "it's so quiet" over the last 4 days.

Here is what it looks like to have 2 kids.

They play quietly. There is NO fighting. I have not referred a fight since Sat.
They share their toys. There is no competition between them. They are not the same age. ha!
This has been refreshing. I think I will sign them up for summer at Nano's! :) Don't get me wrong we miss our little buddies, they add a lot of life to our house. But sometimes a little break from 1,000 questions a day, and the constant fighting between child #2 and child #3 can be a good thing to keep a mommy sane.

More Outdoor Play

More shots from yesterday. The weather is GREAT! Feels like summer today. We even tried to get into our neighborhood pool today, but they put a special lock on the gate. ugh!! Its not open until May. How frustrating!!

Sweet Parker on a pretty day.
Parker LOVES to push Cooper up and down the culdasac
Putting gas, I mean grass in the car
Carson in the cozy coupe
Coop, don't look so excited!!

Big Griff

The amazing weather is back again!! 77 and sunny, what more could you ask for? I took a few shots of Griffin on his bike with no training wheels today. They've been riding this way for a month now, but we had no pictures of it. So here they are. Griffin is feeling really comfortable on his bike. We live on a culdasac that goes downhill so it can be a little scary, well not to him, to his mommy who watches on nervously.

The Birthday Easel

Last Friday we received a huge box at our door. We did not tell the kids. After we put them to bed Rick and I opened it up and it was a fantastic new Easel for the boys for their 5th birthday. This great gift is from Nano & Granddaddy (R's parents). It's a good thing we didn't tell them, because it had a TON of little pieces and took us over an hour to assemble. Its very durable and has a chalk board on one side, a magnetic dry erase board on the other. The middle has a big roll of paper for painting, and there are even shelves for the paint & chalk on each side. We are very pleased with it. They have spent lots of good quality time with their new easel. For example here is a lovely drawing of Maggie, our Golden Retriever.

Carson "Daddy does Maggie have four legs?" Both "look Daddy we even drew Maggie's boo-boos". I was upstairs and could hear Rick laughing hysterically, saying "get the camera". Most golden retrievers have really dry skin. So they chew on their legs for relief or it could be out of boredom. Maggie has been doing this since she was a pup. We call them "hot spots". Well take a closer look at the drawings back leg. Yes that is a hot spot. They didn't want to leave any details out did they? ha! Funny boys!

G on the left C on the right
Carson describing his creation
Yelling up to me, our "Masterpiece"

This one's for you Scott...

Rick's cousin Scott (from Richmond, VA) is in town for business. He came over for dinner tonight, to hang out, see our house and wrestle. Yes I said wrestle. When we told the big boys that Daddy's cousin Scoot was coming they wanted to know one thing and one thing only.

"Does he like to wrestle?" Well seeing that Scott & his wife Meghan have 2 yr old Boy/Girl twins, we said "Yes he does". So he was signed up for wrestling before he even arrived (poor Scott, just wanted a home cooked meal). We told Carson NOT to ask him to wrestle the second he walks in the door. So he patiently waited and told Scott at dinner, that he had to wait to ask him to wrestle, because Mommy told him not to ask when he walked in the door.

So they wrestled. Rick took pictures on Scott's camera, so maybe he'll email them over so I can add them to this post. Anyway Scott is a dedicated blog reader of ours, he may be the only one in our family! ha! But he reads it so Scott this ones for you buddy. Thanks for coming over we had a great time talking "twin talk". Oh and when you left Griffin came out of his room crying because he wanted to say goodbye & hug you. They said they watched you from their window and they were so sad. Carson's exact words were "I wanted him to stay for 50 days". ha! Not sure Meghan would go for that. :)

Two Girls and a Brother....

Beautiful family! Another set of friends from The Woodlands. We were pregnant with our first babies together and then ended up in Austin together.

These big sisters are precious little models & super sweet with their baby brother. We had a good time on Saturday at the capitol. I would have posted ALL the pictures if I had more room. ha! So if you want to see more click the link... http://cozyimpressionsphotography.com/Billingsley/

turn up your volume. Great song to go along with this session.