Sunday Snippets

Our Week in Review

• When I asked Isaac to go grab a shirt and some shorts, so we could get him dressed, he looked at me and said "HOT".  I've let him run around in just his diaper the last little while, so apparently wearing clothes makes him hot.  
• I broke down and bought the kids a plastic pool to hold us over until our neighborhood pool opens next month.  They have had a riot in it, best 17 dollars I've spent in a long time.  
• A friend from the ward invited us to join them at Zoobilee this week.  We were all so excited to be able to go to the zoo down here for the first time.  I was warned about Houston traffic and that I should leave as early as possible, but despite my best efforts we left our house very late, almost an hour later than I had planned.  At first the traffic was light on the freeway and I had myself convinced we had some how got lucky and that we wouldn't be as late getting to the zoo as I thought.  And that my dear friends is when I hit the 610 freeway traffic.  Despite being like 8 miles from the zoo it took us almost 45 minutes to make it through 610 and downtown traffic.  (I'd like to take a moment and congratulate myself for driving by myself to downtown Houston in 5-O-Clock traffic no-less and not completely melting down.) Trying to find a parking spot became our next great challenge.  As soon as you would see someone backing up there would be three cars lined up behind it to take the spot.  After driving around watching spot after spot being lined up for I decided to take a slightly less time consuming approach.  I found an old couple walking through the parking lot, asked them if they were leaving and followed them to their car and finally got a parking place.  We entered the zoo an hour late, which left us short on time, but we managed to take a very quick tour of our local zoo.  The weather was perfect, we were with good company and it turned out to be the perfect little outing.  

Starting next week the zoo is doing Dinosaurs at the Houston Zoo, we got to see it free (and a few days early) as part of the zoobilee admission.  Alivia was really concerned and uneasy when we first went through since the dinosaurs move and make noise, but I think her and Dylan really enjoyed this special feature.  Since we arrived late and the zoo closes fairly early we only had a small amount of time to cover most of the zoo animals.  Isaac roared with the lions, and enjoyed most of the zoo.  The older two were generally more excited to see squirrels and wild rabbits that roam the zoo grounds freely, then they were to see exotic animals from far away lands.  From the minute we walked into the zoo, Dylan hounded me about finding the Komodo Dragon.  We waited until the very end of the tour to find him, but you would have thought Christmas had come early for Dylan, he was so excited to see "Smog"  that he was jumping and screaming like a winner on the price is right! 

• We like to have the missionaries over for dinner once a month.  We have new elders and they really made my kids laugh.  My kids look forward to having the missionaries over and as a mother who some day hopes to have missionaries of her own, I can't help but hope someday my sons (and maybe a daughter) will have members who will invite them over for a good home cooked meal and some words of praise and encouragement. 
• Miss Alivia had a terrible accident/ learning experience this week.  One of her favorite lunches is a cup a noodles.  She's been trying out her hand at adding the water and cooking them in the microwave by herself (with my permission).  Each time they are done cooking I insist that she not touch it and that I will get it out of the microwave for her, this week she decided to get them out by herself while I was busy finishing up something else.  While I admire her drive to do things by herself my heart nearly stopped when I heard a giant thud and splash in the kitchen followed by hysterical screaming.  Thankfully she got out of it with only a minor burn on her upper arm.  She told me later that evening she would never get things out of the microwave by herself again.  
• We truly are watched over in this home, and while we always seem to hit every bump and dip along the way, things never turn out as bad as they should or could have, and for that I am truly grateful! 

Sunday Snippets

Our Week in Review

• Alivia, Isaac and I were invited to join a family from our ward to go strawberry picking.  It was the first time I've ever drove any kind of distance and used the tollways down here.  The whole thing scared the heck out of me, none-the-less, we were all thrilled to be out of the house and having an adventure.  

 

It was a great day to be out and the kids had a great time picking and then eating the strawberries.  We were so glad the Oehring's invited us to join them!

• On our way home from strawberry picking the sky turned a nasty black and severe thunderstorm warning were issued.  We stopped by the grocery store to grab a few things when the rain started pounding.  Just the minute run from the car to the store left us soaked to the bone, we were dripping water from head to toe.  The kids were so wet and cold they started shaking uncontrollably, teaches me to think I can just run out in the rain down here and only expect to get slightly wet.  
• When we got home from our trip Alivia informed me that our trampoline was missing from our backyard, I thought she was kidding until I went back and looked and sure enough our tramp was gone!  At first I was sick thinking someone walked into our yard and stole it, when the thought crossed my mine to look in the neighbors yards, since we just got lashed and beat upon by the wind and rain.  And sure enough there in our next door neighbors backyard sat our trampoline.  I can't tell you how relieved I was that the tramp didn't hit a house or do any damage.  We got really lucky is all I can say!  Now I'm trying to figure out what to do for fear of having our tramp blow away again, I don't think we'll get so lucky the next time it happens.  
• My vegetables are starting to perk up and grow now that I put a layer of mulch down.
• I'm starting to have panick attacks that school is almost over with and that a long HOT summer with three kids at home all day, is almost here...YIKES!!!

The Tour

Six months later....

For those that have been asking for some pictures of our new home, here they are, and there are A LOT of them. 

WELCOME

 

 

 

Just across the front room is the laundry room.

 

Just before you enter our bedroom off the family room you will find the 2nd bathroom.

 

And since the master bath closely resembles a pig stye right now you get the pre-move in picture.

And that concludes the first story of the tour.
On to the second story.
The windows from the balcony.
I love that I can see our neighborhood lake from out my top windows.

If you turn 360 degrees you can view the front door.

We have a third bedroom upstairs just beyond that closed door, sometimes we call it an office or the spare bedroom, but really it hides all of our belongings that have no home and right now it's beyond a mess so this is as much as you're going to see right now.

To the left is the game room.

On the other side of the hall is the kids bedrooms and the third bathroom.

And I think that covers the inside!

Sunday Snippets

Our Week in Review

• Alivia was sorting laundry when she looked up at me and said with a disgusted tone, "I'm putting you and dad's stuff in the same pile since you live together".  Made me laugh.
• I finished our backyard, well almost, I love the way it turned out!  I have four garden beds left to fill with dirt but I think I'll wait until this fall when our funds aren't quite so depleted.  I got crookneck, zucchini, and spaghetti squash in.  Along with a bell pepper, a jalapeno plant, two eggplants and six roma's.  I also got blueberries, pomegranates, and raspberries in as well.  I'm probably the most excited about my blood orange and tangerine tree though.  
• There was a very small but ripe red raspberry on my plant.  It took Isaac about 30 seconds to pluck it off, shove it in his mouth and then come over and confess to me his crimes.  If he weren't so ridiculously cute as he was slurping and moaning over how good he thought it was I might have spanked his little tush.
• Our microwave freaked out and stopped heating.  It functions as if everything is working fine, but the foods comes out as cold as it went in.  I'm super sad/irritated that our "new" appliances are croaking.  Good thing I held on to our cheap-o microwave that cost us like 20 dollars, so at least I have something to warm things up in.  
• Isaac seems to be up-ing his mess making skills lately, the other day I was doing Alivia's hair in the front room because we were heading out the door to join our playgroup at the park, when Isaac came to me covered in brown gooey stuff, the look on his face was like "mom I'm pretty sure you're going to freak out", and he was RIGHT.  Apparently he found my long lost bottle of self tanning bronzer (that is like 10 years old) and he painted my entire bathroom with it.  It was everywhere!  He stepped in it too and tracked it all over the carpet in our bedroom. It was no fun to clean up either, it was like trying to clean up greasy dye.  Thankfully it came out of the carpet's in our room but my new bathroom rug is pretty stained up.

Sunday Snippets

Our Week in Review

• We are finally getting to know a few of our neighbors, all but one of them have been very kind and friendly.
• I went and bought about twenty bags of soil and miracle grow so I could get a few of my plants planted.  Here's my tomatoes!

 

• I finished up the kitchen wall calendar .   Instead of connecting them by ribbons I hung them individually and I painted the smaller frames red, I also painted the background of our family system silver.  

 

• The Mr. and I have never really done much for Easter in the past but this year we decided we'd put a little effort into making some fun memories for the kids.  We did an Easter egg hunt with the kids on Saturday, they each found eggs with quarters and clues in them.

 

• The clues lead them to an Easter basket with a few spring toys.  They got a kite, a huge ball, an outdoor chalk board (made by yours truly) some chalk, bubbles, their own water bottles and a box of peeps.

• It is HOT! I am baked a nice crispy red.  It's only hovering around 84 degrees, but it feels more like 99 degrees or so. We are going to cook this summer!
•  The kids each received a new Sunday outfit on Easter Sunday.

 

   
We tried to take a picture of all three of the kids together but Isaac fell fast asleep after church so it just turned out kind of creepy looking,  oh well...

Sunday Snippets

Our Week in Review

• The flowers in our front yard are just beautiful right now.  It's been raining and it is forecast that it will be rainy most of this next week so my flowers aren't as open or as brilliant in these pictures as they are when the sun is out.  But they'll have to do. I planted red begonias with bonzy red leaves and did a row of red petunia's behind that. I also stuck in some yellow marigolds and an orange hibiscus shrub, as well as a few azaleas (that are already done blooming). There are also red Gerber Daisy's, some sort of tropical red flowers, Indian Hawthorn, and the fig and lemon tree the previous owners planted.   Everything just goes so well together, I think it turned out so pretty!  Although it looks like I need to get out and weed!

 

 

• Home Depot had a spring version of Black Friday (the sale was a four day sale) this week.  I basically lived there this past week.  We picked up a ladder, sprinkler parts, potting soil, and tons and tons of flowers. I'm so close to having the backyard finished.  I just need to bite the bullet and spend a small fortune and get the 4 cubic yards of soil I need to finish filling the raised garden beds.  I also found a Moro Blood Orange tree there so I'm grabbing one of those too. 

• General Conference was so good! I feel so blessed to have the knowledge I do and I'm grateful for living prophets and apostles. 
• After pulling an all nighter I finally finished up my wall project I've been working on.  I need to go out and buy some more nails, I'll be painting the frames, and doing a little rearranging, but here's how it looks so far.

• Isaac was helping me plant flowers and dig up sprinklers outside Saturday night while daddy was at Priesthood.  He found a mud puddle and spent over an hour splashing and caking his body with mud.  Since he was only in a diaper anyways I wasn't too concerned, I figured it was keeping him busy.  The next thing I know he had stripped off his diaper and was standing there butt naked covered from head to toe with mud.  I shrugged it off and let him do his thing, it wasn't until I heard him open our fence gate and take off running to the front yard that I realized people might wonder about me as a mother.  Sure enough just about all of our surrounding neighbors were out watching my naked mud covered terrorist running wild.  Sigh. 
• I enlisted Alivia's help in keeping him in the backyard while I finished up and asked her to play with him for a minute.  After a minute or two of silence I turned around to see what they were doing when I realized neither of them where in the back yard.  Alivia had decided it would be easier to watch him inside the house so she let him in the house.  I cannot even begin to explain the M-E-S-S he made since he was still dripping with mud.  Lesson learned a naked mud covered two year old is BAD news.  
• I made a roast and threw in some rosemary (from my garden) while I cooked it.  It was so good!