vroom, vroom

our kids love to play in our cars, especially when dad gets home from work. they run out the front door to warmly welcome him and then they take over his car.

when reese was only two years old she was telling us she gets to drive when she's 16. watch out!!

she's so funny. here she's showing me how she can reach the pedals. ha!

this usually ends with screaming tantrums when they have to get out. i'll spare you photos from that.

strawberry pickin'

i love going on family outings on saturday mornings and i've recently vowed to do more of them, so this weekend while grandma was here we took a short 45-minute drive to a strawberry farm to pick strawberries! it was fun to show reese where strawberries actually come from - not the grocery store! here grandma is giving her a quick lesson to pick the red ones from the plants with the little white flowers. they're the best.

matson buddy got his own bucket too and off he went!

it didn't take him long to figure out he could eat them right off the plant! they don't get fresher than that!

the problem was he would take a bite of one and throw it in his bucket, take a bite of another and throw it on the ground, take a bite... you get the picture! :)

this picture turned out way overexposed (not sure what happened) so i changed it to b&w with a focus on the delicious red strawberries! reese was pretty proud.

it took her a little longer to figure out she could eat them, but once she did...

this photo absolutely cracks me up! it's captures exactly how the morning went. matson wanted to gobble up all the berries and the rest of us simply picked them. he's a hoot!!

matt, i caught you sneaking a bite...

say, "strawberry!"

this was reese's favorite strawberry. she would only let go of it to put it on the scale and then she found a nice little chair to relax and enjoy her giant berry.

matson wore himself out...

bye!

peeping matson

spying on our neighbors is not the norm for us, but when mr. s turned on the lawn mower the kids were at the fence in a flash!

a princess gardening in rain boots

as the title says, she's "a princess gardening in rain boots". this is very normal in my three year old daughter's mind. isn't she precious?!

water play + a friend

saturday afternoon we enjoyed more outdoor time and water fun with friends. and, i practiced on shutter speed a little more...

matson and ana cracked each other up splashing!

water play

this morning i experimented with shutter speed for an assignment for my photography class. the perfect prop for this was water and i had two more than willing participants!

this is only a small taste of what's in store for us this summer!

can you hear the laughter?!

baaabaaa!

who knew a goat farm would be so much fun?! last friday reese, matson and i joined several moms and kids from our neighborhood on a field trip to a goat farm in field store, tx. (it's near waller, so an easy 45 minute drive.) a friend found out about the farm at a local farmer's market where she bought some fresh goat cheese from the the couple who runs the farm. we got to taste some fresh cheeses that were less than two days old and they were delish!

we played with the baby goats first - they were so cute! they were only four days old, two days old and one of them, i kid you not (pun intended!), was born as we were pulling up to the farm! here he is...

the little kid in the first photo was only two days old and stayed right by my side after he let me take his picture. then he took to reese and chased her. she loved it!

matson's experience was quite different. he was completely fascinated with the big goats' behinds and their poop! this picture is proof! (it didn't help that there was poop ev.er.y.where. we went barefoot after we left and disinfected our shoes later.)

he even took a turn and milked a goat! reesey opted out - understandably!

to finish off the visit matson stumbled into a stinging nettle bush. :( if you know about these, you know they HURT!! it feels like bees are stinging you. it still makes me sad thinking about him screaming. after we got some anti-itch stuff on him he was fine and then didn't say a thing about it the rest of the day. the farmers were so sweet and emailed my friend later that day to check on him.



other than the incident at the end, we loved the goat farm and have been baaaa-ing a lot since!

the spider web

we like to play at the park. have you figured that out yet??? there is one park in particular that is sort of a treat for the kids that has a climbing thing that we call the spider web.

reese can get to the top in a flash.
seriously, the first day we were at this park i turned around and she was at the top! i stayed relatively calm and held my breath as she climbed back down.

matson is still learning, thus staying close to the bottom.

mother + son

i don't have many pictures of me with my children b/c i'm the one behind the camera most of the time. my mom snapped this one while we were at lunch this week and i LOVE IT. matson was grabbing my arm, pulling me over and giving me big hugs - a sweet moment i never want to forget!!

i changed the photo up quite a bit from the original b/c the color of the wall behind us was very bad for our complexions and it was a little blurry. picnik is a great website for free photo editing.

story time

while gram was here playing with us this week i caught a couple of cute photos of story time. i love the look on reese's face in the first one. she loves the stories gram tells (or reads) and is always listening intently soaking up every detail.


as for the photography class influence on these photographs, i was practicing taking my pictures from different viewpoints. it's pretty neat to see the difference moving over a few feet makes.

easter

this easter matt and i enjoyed learning the words to "christ the lord is risen today" while teaching reese and matson. i can't count how many times we sang it over the last week or so. it's been pretty special teaching our kids about our lord's death and resurrection this easter and seeing reese's understanding of christ grow. one of the sweetest things to witness is reese teaching her animals about christ.



we also enjoyed some time with our neighbors for an egg hunt at the park down the street on saturday morning. the kids had a ball - i'll let the pictures speak for themselves.