Kids Bowl Free

This summer Ella and Cavin were able to participate in bible school. There is a Methodist church in our area that offered bible school to children for free for 5 days from 9-12 and they loved every minute of it. It was a good experience for them to learn with other kids about the bible and they had fun making crafts and playing. One of the perks was that they got a coupon to bowl for free through September. So....on Tuesday we checked it out. They had a fun time and Tyler and Tyson came along!

Ella used the ramp and also bowled on her own...she couldn't decide what she liked more. She only worried about one thing....can you guess.....winning!

Hoping for a strike.... although she did get a spare!

Cavin loves numbers as you know, so you can imagine how excited he got looking at the scoreboard after each time and seeing that his score would get higher and higher :)

Here is Cavin and his buddy Tyler

Channing is now our little walking buddy, so she was having a hard time staying still. She does however love to sit in big kid chairs!

Here are the kids, Cavin, Ella, Tyson, and Tyler....not pictured were the two cute girls, Channing and Emma. We sure enjoy their company!

Blueberry Picking

 This year some friends of ours were going blueberry picking so we decided to join along. We all like blueberries and in our family you can never have enough. There is a place called Moorheads  Farm about 40 minutes away so we waited til evening when it "cooled" down (if there is such a thing in Houston) and enjoyed picking away!

Ragnar is going to town picking here in the back of this picture. He was on a mission to find some!

Ella was so worried about making sure she had the most!  She was working hard to make sure she would ...she is our competitive child!

Cavin is obsessed with numbers so he pretty much counted every single blueberry that landed in this bucket. I think we hear numbers more than words come out of his mouth!

Here are a couple of my friends who we joined...Brittany and Emily

This was mostly a mixture of Channings two faces. She would smile so big because she would be eating all the blueberries from the bucket.....or.........

She would give you a grumpy face because she was eating them all and I would tell her she had enough. Oh we love this little girl! We picked about 7 and 1/2 pounds in about an hour, so we had plenty to take home!

Home Sweet Home

Well here it is....our new home! We love it. It had only been lived in less than a year after it was built so it is in great shape and still has the new home smell. Unfortunately the lawn needs a little tlc! We are still working on decorations and yard work and such, but I wanted to give you an idea of where we now live! Enjoy!

    I love the Texas star on the door!

Our backyard is a good size, but the grass will need some help. There is also a little porch that I didn't get in the picture!

When you walk in this is what you see. There is a large utility room to the left and also a half bathroom.

    On the right of the door is a space we are using as an office

    Here is the kitchen

   This is the family room. I love all the cut outs and arches up the stairs.

 

On the bottom floor is also the master bedroom

   And master bathroom (I love having a huge separate closet :)

    When you walk upstairs, here is the view looking down from the banister!

    Right at the top of the stairs is the gameroom......here is one half....

 and here is the other                                                  

          The kids bathroom

Here is Ella's bedroom, she loves having a queen size bed!

  Here is a glimpse at Channings room

And here is Cavins room! (And since he is the only boy, he says his imaginary friend "Pants" sleeps in the other bed :)

Out with the Old, in with the New!!

On June 14, 2012 we officially became home owners again! We were so excited to have been able to finally find a home that we love and were so excited to move into. It has felt like an extremely long process to find a new home. We have been looking for the better part of 4 years. We knew that Heavenly Father was aware of our family and we felt several "tender mercies" throughout the process of finally finding our home. In the end, we got all the things we wanted. We found a bigger home, in a subdivision we really wanted to stay in, in a ward we really wanted to remain, with a gameroom, and backyard, and 4 bedrooms, and all the essential things. We are feeling extremely blessed and very grateful for the house search chapter in our life to be over. Ragnar wanted to document our house moving process so I will post a few pictures of trying to pack our townhome up to move. We literally only moved about a street away, it was like 30 seconds in the car!

We began putting the boxes we had packed into Channings room.

Then eventually they moved to the garage and then the truck!

This was the last night in our home.....packing up all the frames. It was a wonderful townhome for us and we have great memories of it. We just simply outgrew it and wanted to feel settled in something of our own.

Here is Ragnar and I about an hour after we signed the papers and this became our home. Our realtor was kind enough to take this picture. She was amazing and the process went incredibly smooth which we felt was a testament that this was truly the home we had been waiting for! We love it! I will update you with pictures soon!

Sweet and Sassy Girls of Mine!

Last Saturday Ella was invited to her friend Audrey's birthday party. They went to a place in the Woodlands, TX called Sweet and Sassy. She had a lot of fun. She is a girly girl for sure and it was right up her alley! First they got their nails done!

Then came the makeup!

Then was the hair!

Doesn't she look beautiful! She had so much glitter in her hair!

Then they got to pose for the picture!

Last they did a fashion show and dance down the runway! It was followed of course by cake and icecream! She loved every minute of it....and I am horrified at how I am going to keep up with her as she gets older! I think she will be teaching me how to put on makeup at 8!

I can't do a post without the other cute girlie! Channing is moving EVERYWHERE! She is so not like my other children! People would say the things their kids did and I would be like...really? I was serious...Ella and Cavin were really good/easy children. Channing does most everything she is not supposed to and has a cute cheesy grin after! Even just this morning I went to her crib and her diaper was off and she was just smiling at me with her bare bum in the air...??? Oh I think I am in for it with her!

Here is her first attempt at a little pony tail! Isn't she adorable!

I have been lucky to have two cute and VERY different little girls!

Ella's 6th Birthday!

Starting her birthday right...with donuts and getting her nails painted

On May 5, 2012 Ella turned 6! I can't believe our not so little girl has only two weeks left of kindergarten. For her birthday, my parents and Natalie came over to celebrate. It just happened that her birthday fell on the first day for the pool to reopen for the year, so we went to the pool to celebrate, then had a bbq, a cookie cake at her request, and a pinata...because it was on Cinco de Mayo after all!

Here was her "favorite" present....a bunny from Oma and Opa. She has been asking me for a real bunny for a while now, thankfully we have been able so far to use the excuse that we are renting a home and can't have pets....now we will have to come up with a new one. For now, she loves "Carrot" and feeds her and has me take care of her when she is at school. She loves that she can hop and move!

Strawberry Shortcake house from Grandma and Grandpa Speers. She has been loving playing this with her brother....and yes I said her brother :)

Here she is after the pool and bath!

Pinata time!!! Aunt Natalie helped get it broken for us!

We were so glad that my parents and Natalie could come to celebrate Ella. Even better was the hula hoop entertainment from my dad :) Ella is such a smart, creative girl and still loves to dress up. She loves sports and is pretty coordinated, but she also cries during almost every movie! She has this new thing where she likes to do her own hair....it is definitely a work in progress....but go her for trying. I sure do love spending time with my little emotional princess!