Sunday after Church, part 1

We made 6 individual servings of fake snow for play in the back yard. The kids all where so impressed as their tiny bit of flaky powder turned into a cup full of snow for throwing. The dry stuff was the same stuff that is in disposable diapers and changes to gel when wet. We got the little snow present from Jenny and Nate a couple of Christmas's ago and have been holding into it for a fun with the kids day. Sunday was the perfect timing. It starts with sodium polyacrylate. Check out this link to make your own backyard snow: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/ht/fakesnow.htm
After our backyard fun including snow
we brought the kids in for a short wind down period of popcorn and a movie. They watched Alice in Wonderland, the one with Johnny Depp. Then a walk to Audubon Park with my bigs and niece Zoe. Of course I trekked it through Loyola. The rest of the crew met us there. I Love that Mima is only a short walk from the park.

Spring Break in NOLA, First Morning

The kids, the ones in public school, have spring break for the week March 11-15. As soon as the new year started, Amy began mapping out her trips for the year including plans for this week. She proposed this trip for us from Texas and just hoped that there was a possibility that Jenny in Florida could make it with her munchkin, Zoe. Jennifer, Jenny, didn't bite on the invite and we didn't expect she was going to be able to get here from so far with extra budget constraints (expecting new baby and starting military ministry).
What a trip! Oh my word, the drive from Texas to NOLA always has a 70% chance of getting very irritating as soon as we cross the state line. This was one of those trips. It took us 3 hours and two movies to move 45 miles. Ugh!!!! Crazy enough our kids were fantastically patient during this delay. Amy and I on the other hand had a hard time keeping our cool. And we were hungry. You would think knowing the likelihood for traffic we would know to eat early. I don't know, we had plenty of snacks. I just was craving a horse, I mean a burger.
Best part of day 1 was the fantastic patience of our kids on a torturous 12 hour trip that should have been 8. Close second and maybe actually tied for first was getting to stop and meet up with my friend of 20 years, Kari. 20 years!!!!! 20 years pass so fast. We had an awesome visit and meal but we did have to cut it shorter than I would have liked based on the ticking time bombs that were our kids. The littlest girls were asleep in the van within minutes of getting back on the road.
And then again also tied for first was getting to Mima's however late to find out that Jenny was there with Zoe after all!!!! Great surprise!
So we all celebrated, unpacked and crashed for the evening exhausted. We did change clocks and set alarms for church in the morning. Mom and dad haven't settled into a church here yet and mom brought us to one they had tried once. Cool thing, it is pretty much named the same as our home church that we love. We went to Journey Christian Church. We totally loved it and I hope mom and dad do too. The kids went to Sunday School after praise and worship and the message delivered was focused on doing life in community. Read Proverbs 20 verse 13. Toward the end of service I had to run to the ladies room and found a wall hanging with one of my favorite, perhaps THE favorite, scriptures on it. Great morning at church.

Mother's Day

Lucky me, mom is in Texas!!! So for Mother's Day this year I actually got to spend a little bit of time with the woman who fooled me all my life making it look like such a breeze. Amy's baby is due this month so mom has been in the US for a couple of weeks helping with last minute preparation and just general everday things to try to make Amy's life easier. Mom is thrilled that she is greeting two new grandchildren within the next month or so. Jenny's due at the end of this month.
The Force family drove up to Austin on the morning of Mother's Day and Kevin kept the kids while mom Amy and I had a great LARGE lunch at Steiner Ranch Steakhouse. It was really awesome. Emaleigh joined us too because that little girl alone is a handful and I love my husband and hope to be married to him for the rest of my life. Our lunch was just perfect and we even got some great pictures of Amy's legs. Pregnant women are so beautiful.
I met Kevin and the kids back at Amy's where I changed clothes very quickly and headed back to San Antonio with my family to catch a Sunday afternoon missions game. We got there just in time to catch the last 30 minutes of the hottest part of the day. Man was it hot. Luckily the sun eventually dipped down and we got to enjoy the last half of the game in relative comfort. We got gloves for both kids and brought a baseball. Lucas eventually got restless watching the game and went over to the lawn over the outfield fence to throw his ball at kids hoping they would catch it and throw it back to him.

It Isn't that hard, but it isn't easy

I am pretty much full time holding Emaleigh when I am at home. I do get breaks to run the laundry and cook dinners. So keeping this blog up hasn't been a piece of cake. Another complication that I let be an obstacle to me is that I don't ever know if I have a good photo to post and hate to post without. So today I am posting anyway. It is lunch, I have some time. The Force family is fully houseguest free now after having the pleasure to host Mima and Papa for the holiday extended. Mima went to the airport to join Papa in the jungle last Wednesday. She arrived at her temporary home in time that she and Dad could celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary together. We missed her immediatly, I think she misses us too. It was nice having extra hands around not to mention extra hugging arms. Mom will be back in May to help Amy and Jen with their newborns as has been the tradition with all the grandkids. Dad is hoping to come for a visit this summer too.

We had a full weekend in Converse and about. Friday night was coffeehouse night at our new church. Our new church, Journey Fellowship , is located right off of IH-35 across from Costco. We have really been loving this addition to our hectic weekly schedule. The church has a great program for the kids and Kevin and I can hear the message in the huge gathering place or we can go to the coffee house and get it on a screen while we comfortably sip coffee (decaf please) on a soft couch nursing Emaleigh if necessary. Needless to say we are really comfortable here. Addie and Lucas are loving it too. So we were excited about Coffee House Friday to get a chance to meet some folks and see if they were maybe going to open up the cool activity center for the kids to play. That was a big NO but Addie and Lucas had a great time coloring with Teddy and Brogan while Kev and I got to chat with a few other parents. There was live music and ofcourse plenty of coffee and cookies.

Saturday morning we got together as quick as a family with three little ones does to head to the Sears portrait studio. It was time. We had yet to do baby portraits of Emaleigh and she has already started to crawl. That fact combined with Ms. Addie's earache made the session rather difficult. But it's over and done with now and I think we got a few or a couple of cute shots. We may need to try again with a better photographer but I atleast have relieved that nagging sensation that I was somehow being unfair to the baby. She's so cute.

She kept crawling out of the shot to chase her daddy or Elmo. I did order prints to share and got the CD with all images as well. Check your mailbox for photos sometime before March.
Well the rest of the day was packed too. We spent a few hours at Mrs. Nelly's house. It was her 35th birthday and a good excuse for our kids to play together. She has a two story house so the big kids spent half of the time going up and down the stairs and the other half of the time playing on the trampoline out back. Neither of which managed to wear them down a bit. We left that hopping party and headed out to Grandpa's by 7 to see cousins Jessica and Kayla. They played there for another couple of hours before they begrudgingly went to bed at ten pm.
We winded down the weekend with Church on Sunday morning, lunch at On-The-Border and long naps for all followed by a family movie then bed time. It flew by and so did my lunch hour.

Back to Work, Everyone

I returned to work this week after the holiday but welcomed my folks back from their family trek to the south. Mom and Dad arrived late Tuesday night after visiting the Prewitts in Mississippi and Aunt J and Uncle Stinky in Florida. Dad really has to go back to work I guess. I was hoping they would become permanent Texas residents. So I left work early to spend a little time with them. We have plans for tomorrow with Aunt B and her family. This evening we headed out to San Antonio near Fiesta Texas. I drove us through some projects I have worked on at La Cantera and others that were projects for my company before we parked at the Rim to head into the Bass Pro Shops. A couple of hours later we had dinner. Bass Pro Shops is amazing. The big kids could stand in front of the big fish tank and talk to fish all day. I think we covered the entire floor space and between the three adults and three kids left with only a shirt. That's pretty good holding onto our wallet for two hours of shopping. But I think Dad put a boat on lay-a-way when we weren't looking.