Our Garden!

When my mom came to visit in March, she helped us start our first garden. The kids were so excited when they started seeing things grow and even more excited when we got to harvest our tomatoes, cucumber, and bell pepper.
But the most fun for them was pulling up the carrots. They waited so patiently for them to be ready.

Time To Cool Off!

On Monday, our playgroup went to a water park at a church called Noah's Ark. It was so much fun! Just the set up is impressive! This kids can climb into the ark and slide down. The animals squirt water out and there is a whale and frog in the water to play on. Sophie spent most of her time there, while Noah was in the bigger pool jumping off the diving board. After three hours of swimming, we came home and took a long nap!


Noah showing off his cool diving tricks




Sophie taking a break



Perfect pose!



First time down the slide!

4th of July

This 4th of July, we started out the day making our traditional holiday flag waffles. Robby does the cooking and the kids get to decorate their own using strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream. Yum!

Later in the day, we went to our neighbor's for a barbeque. The kids swam in the pool and played outside most of the time. In the evening, we went to the school across the street and watched the fireworks. Noah and Sophie loved it and Noah kept telling his friends that this was his 10th time seeing 4th of July fireworks...you know, him being 6 and everything...

Everything's Bigger in Texas!

Check out our huge sunflower! It is a least a foot taller than our roof! We planted it in March, from a seed. I guess it is true that everything is bigger in Texas!

Battleship Texas

This summer, our play group has a bunch of Summer Play Dates planned to keep everyone busy and the kids from driving us moms crazy! Last week, Noah and I went with 4 other boys to Battleship Texas. It was amazing! The ship is huge! But even with it being so big, once we went three levels below deck, I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic. Noah loved it and didn't mind at all, especially when we found the jail. But his (and the other boys) favorite was definitely all the guns and cannons. They got to sit on them and pretend to shoot. A boys dream come true!

Camping in Austin

This last weekend, we went camping near Austin at Pace Bend Park. The park is right by a beautiful lake called Lake Travis. It was our first camping trip as a family, and we had a blast! The lake was very refreshing, but not too cold, so we spent a lot of time swimming. And swimming with us were a bunch of turtles. At first I thought it was a water snake, which would have put an end to our swimming, but then I realized it was a turtle. Robby and Noah were quite facinated with them and kept chasing them in hopes to catch one. And to my surprise, Robby did! They move so fast, but somehow he was able to get one. The kids were really excited to see it up close. The turtle was less excited, frantically trying to "swim" out of Robby's hands. Of course we let it go and never got quite close enough to catch another one.

The turtle was our second encounter with wildlife, the first being a scorpion near our campsite. Definitely reminded us of Arizona. Noah found it in a hole. Thankfully, we didn't see any others and it stayed in its house.

Robby and Noah also went fishing. And Noah, being and expert fisherman, caught the first and only fish, just 30 seconds after casting. It was too small to keep, but he was very excited to have caught the only fish. We still aren't sure what kind it was...

On Saturday, we went to a place in Austin called Barton Springs. It is basically a giant natural swimming pool, the water coming from underground springs. It was freezing cold! I mean, colder than the Pacific Ocean. I don't think I have ever swam in water so cold before. The pool has a diving board, which Robby and Noah loved. Sophie and I ended up sitting out most of the time because it was too uncomfortable.

After that, we headed back to our camp, swam a little more in the lake and headed home. We were going to stay two nights, but it was very windy and hot, which made it hard to sleep. But even that by itself would have been okay. What was really annoying, is the millions of cicada bugs in the trees right above our tent. It was so loud, it made it impossible to sleep. Even for the kids...so we headed home a day early. One day of camping still takes a lot out of you. We were exhausted coming home last night! It was very nice sleeping in our own beds.





Cooking hot dogs
Fishing
Noah's fish
Sophie hanging out
Barton Springs

Our campsite
Lake Travis
Sophie enjoying the water.
Robby caught a turtle!

Kindergarten Awards

Today Noah had his Kindergarten awards. The classes sang a few songs about what they had learned and each child got a certificate. Very low key, which is what I was hoping for. I am not into a huge Kindergarten Graduation when they treat it like high school....cap and gown, slide shows, speeches, money. It is just too much for me. Anyway, it is hard to believe that he is almost done with school for the year. Time has gone by so fast. But, we are very excited for summer break. We are kicking off the summer by going camping this weekend. This will be our first time going as a family. The kids can't wait! I will post pictures of that when we get back.

Family in Town

My mom, sister Alex and her baby girl, Isa, came to visit us last week and stayed for almost two weeks. We had so much fun seeing them again. We went to the beach and watched as Isa (almost 8 months old), had her first experience in the ocean. She was a little scared at first, but then seemed to enjoy it. We had beautiful weather and so, spent lots of time outside in our little kiddy pool and sprinkler. Noah and Sophie loved entertaining their cousin and she loved watching them. They left today and we already miss them. But hopefully we will be able to visit them this summer.

Meet Yongi and Yonga

I would like to introduce you to Yongi and Yonga, Sophie's monkey twins. Yes, they were the inspiration for her birthday cake. I thought I should include them in our blog since they are part of the family (adopted of course), and also because they recently were given new clothes and would like to show them off. My incredibly creative and talented Mom made clothes for the twins and Sophie loves to dress them. They have pajamas for bedtime and casual clothes for day to day wear. Aren't they cute?

Sophie's New Kitchen

Well, Sophie finally got her new kitchen, the one that was supposed to be here on her birthday. We assembled it last night and she has been busy cooking ever since!