busy, busy, snow and park

currently my house is in pretty good order and i like that. a lot of times if there is a lack in blogging, i am busy keeping up with household chores, running lots of errands, and in general organizing my life, which means there's not as much time on the computer. so on the flip side, if there is a lot of blogging going on, it is safe to assume my house is a wreck - toys everywhere, beds unmade, dirty dishes on one side of the sink and clean on the other, piles of dirty and clean laundry hanging around waiting to be washed or folded. i could go on and on, but i'm sure you all know what else there is to keep up with! it's the ebb and flow, good and bad times, peaks and valleys, wax and wane of my life!





last friday it DID snow!! we missed it at our house though. no snowmen or snowballs for us. :( we had plans to go to spend the night with my grandparents that night and visit matt's parents the next day, so we went ahead with our plans and we are so glad we did. we'd do it again. we left our house right as it started snowing and drove right through the winter storm. if i hadn't taken this picture i wouldn't believe that this house is on I-10 between houston and beaumont! it's a winter wonderland! we had a wonderful visit with my grandparents that night. i'm so bummed i didn't even take any pictures! thankfully i have these from not too long ago. after the kids went to bed the four of us stayed up and talked and watched t.v. until after 11:00. matt and i love hearing all their great stories! they have lots to share from their 88 and 83 years of life! (my me-maw is my inspiration for keeping a neat and tidy home. her house is perfect, no dust anywhere! i will never claim to have a dust-free house, but i can aim to keep things straight. and ya know, i think her house has been this way her whole life, even when she had eight kids at home!)



the next day we headed over to nederland, where i grew up to visit matt's parents. we hadn't been to their place yet, so it was time. grandma had the perfect activity for reese - icing gingerbread men. she bought the pepperidge farm gingerbread men, so no work there, and then little icing tubes perfect for little hands. reese ate it up! pun intended!!



we braved the cold outside at the park i used to go to a lot growing up and where my dad played tennis every saturday morning. fun memories.





we got home just in time for the snow to have all melted, but in enough time for the texas game. matt loved it!

the desert

what's my excuse for slacking off on blog posts? my mom was in town last week and we had lots to do! she has a few pictures on her camera from last week so when i get them from her i'll post them. but first i finally got to the pictures from our trip out to arizona to visit our dear friends, the dobbins! and since i'm so late in posting i'm going to steal teri's words from her blog. :) it's just too easy! i'll add more to explain the pics, but she sums it up quite nicely. just be forewarned that there are a lot of pictures, but i think it's worth the wait!







Week before last, we had our good friends from Texas out for a visit. Matt (a friend of Justin's from college & beyond) & Hilary (she's my girl!) & their absolutely adorable & utterly edible children, Reese (3) and Matson (1) came to check out the desert. The last time we visited Houston, Lilly & Reese had a less than stellar interaction. But this time, those girls were sweet, sweet, sweet to each other....with only a tiny bit of requisite toddler bickering. And Lilly and Tyson got a big kick out of having a "baby Matson" in the house. We hit the high points in town, lounged around the house, enjoyed the awesome weather, shared parenting stories, and just REALLY had a great time. :) Justin and I both commented that it felt like we were on vacation in our own town.





oh my goodness, the morning of our flight it was pouring down rain! we thought we were going to have a repeat of our flight to pittsburgh in april when we were delayed a few days. we loaded the car in the POURING down rain - we had the huge golf umbrella out and i had on rainboots. it was comin' down! - got the kids up and drove to the airport. we devised a plan - matt would drop the kids and me off at the terminal with one the carry-ons, the stroller and one suitcase. he'd go park the car and take the shuttle over and meet us. it just seemed crazy to do all that with the kids in the rain. the plan worked great! he was on time and we made it through security and to the gate on time. thankfully the plane was able to take off b/c it wasn't very windy and we were only about 30 minutes delayed. here the kids are amusing themselves. reese is spinning matson around in the stroller. his face tells how he liked it!



the flight over was pretty good. i had all kinds of treats and snacks to pull out when matson started getting loud. matt calls that the smoothness mom touch. matson did NOT like sitting on our laps, so we strapped him in reese's car seat and let her sit in our laps. that worked very well. unfortunately the flight attendant wouldn't allow that on the flight back so matt graciously sat with matson in the very last row of the plane with an open seat next to him. matson wasn't so good on the that flight. he cried a lot, but finally fell asleep the last 30-45 minutes.







here's another shot trying to get all four kids together. this was our first day there play outside in the backyard. the dry desert weather was wonderful - in the shade! best of all, no mosquitoes!

here's an example of how the girls shared so well. they are in a boat sharing an oar. reese had her first sleep over with lilly. they slept together in the playroom the first night and i think they actually went sleep b/c they were so exhausted from all the fun stuff we did!
matson's first real bike ride. the dobbins have all kinds of fun toys, including this bike with the child's seat and an extra mountain bike for matt to ride with justin. i'm glad they got some good guy time in.
sabino canyon.
the crew.
sweetie purple girls.

reese was too funny running with this hat on b/c...it would fly off and she would just laugh hysterically! she'd then get the hat, put it back on, run down the trail and the hat would fly off and she'd crack up again! and again! and again! precious thing!

moms resting.
two dawgs with their little male pups. (not sure what was going on with matson here. actually, come to think of it i'm never sure what's going on with him! :)
the little cowboys...

this is one of my favorites. three clean kids (matson was clean too, but doesn't do movies yet) in their pjs eating popcorn and intensely watching a movie.
tyson up close and personal with a rattle snake. here we are at the desert museum.
matson eye-to-eye with the snake. he loved it!!
lilly looks like the one not so sure about the tarantula, but really it was reese!
da desert.

giant saguaro cactus. here's a bit of trivia for ya: the saguaro cactus doesn't start growing a side arm until its about 75 years old! that makes this cactus pretty old! teri, did you know the blossom on the saguaro cactus is the state flower of arizona?oh the kids loved the "kid crawl through" or whatever it's called. they did it at least 10 times.
watch out in the desert! everything has spikes!
when i get a good shot of my girl i have to post it!
all dressed up for church with reese not wanting to take a picture - again. thank you, lilly, for standing so sweetly.

more of the beatles: rock band by wii. sing it matt!
and last but not least, the part of the trip that reese talks about the most...hunting for bugs with flashlights in the dark in lilly and tyson's grandparent's backyard. they were all into it!

thank you justin + teri + lilly + tyson for a fun vacation and for letting us invade your house! you were the best hosts!

big kids and little kids

i haven't had a whole lot of time to get through all the pictures from our trip (nor our halloween pics), but i thought i'd pull out a couple to share. first, the little kids...lilly, tyson, reese and matson. it's so hard to get a picture of my own two kids together so when i had to contend with getting four kids in one photo i had to take what i could get! i thought this was was pretty good - although i had to crop the man in the back.
the big kids...this was the only one we got of the four of us (and darn it i just now thought how we didn't get all 8 of us. :( next time.) we were being little kids playing grown up games -the beatles rock band by wii. (teri's dad has it!)

more to come...

sneaky me

you'd never know we've been in the deserts of arizona. i was on a little blog posting roll last week so i scheduled some posts to go up while we were away. sneaky i know! i have a lot of pictures to sort through, but i hope to get to that soon. we have some good ones!

labor day :: texas hill country

i have a lot of photos from our labor day weekend in the texas hill country, but would you believe i didn't capture everything! i didn't get any pictures of the kick off dinner at our house with the dowiaks. matt's parents and two brothers came over for a little family dinner. we missed you aunt suanne, uncle bill, miles, katie, autumn and the newest dowiak, elizabeth rose!



saturday morning we headed to my parents house, aka the holmlund b+b. who wouldn't like to sit out on this patio with a cold drink on a nice fall-ish day?! mom and i took advantage during nap time.
sunday morning the light coming in from the window above the front door was great, so i sat and got a couple of pics of my handsome matson. it's hard to believe his feet will one day fit in shoes that size!
he's even so handsome from behind!
the front office had some good light too, so it was reese's turn. this is the best picture i got. little girl toes - chipped paint and all!
mom and dad took the kids to church {matt and i played hookie for the first time in YEARS} and started our 36 hour getaway by heading over to my brother's house. i didn't get any pictures there, but brody, jessica and i had fun making hot dogs, hamburgers, cokes and fries out of play dough - i'm addicted to the kid stuff! just kidding. i'm not really. i just started making stuff with him while jessica and i chatted. i only got a peek at baby emersyn b/c she was sleeping. erik + matt talked yard stuff most of the time. your yard looks great, e + j!



after that we headed down to the drag in austin. we stopped in the crowded co-op and splurged on UT tees for the kids for football season. strange that we've missed two seasons of texas football, but not to worry we are definitely making up for it with football on all.the.time. i don't mind it though. if you are ever down on the drag, this is a great place to eat.
after a walk around campus, through matt's old stomping grounds at the UT business center we headed down to our friends' mario + andrea's in new braunfels. they moved there while we were gone, so it was fun to see their new home. they shipped their cute little daughter, ana, off to her grandparents for the night, so we enjoyed some adult time. where did we pick to go? a biker bar of course. are we bikers? no, not so much, but there was a decent live band, cold coronas and the guadalupe river. add in our good friends and it was a perfect sunday afternoon, sans kids.
later we were joined by the lee's and we enjoyed dinner at the famous gristmill restaurant in gruene, just minutes from m+a's house. i love that place. it's has great food, beautiful scenery and funny memories. i've been to the gristmill several times in my life, but i will share the funniest memory i have from there. it was back when my brother graduated from southwest texas state university {now known as texas state} in 1997 {golly!} and our family celebrated with a dinner at the gristmill after the ceremony. as we were looking over the menu and the waitress asked if we had any questions, the new graduate piped up and asked, "what's the difference between chicken fried chicken and chicken fried steak?" i think she was polite enough to tell him the difference, while the rest of us haven't stopped raggin' on him since! love ya, e!
back at gram + papa's the kids went swimming with cousin brody {i hear there are cute pics of reese, matson, brody and emersyn together, but i haven't seen them yet.} and played in these antique cars. they loved the cars, but had zero interested in a quick photo.
if you can't tell, these are the cutest little cars you've ever seen! at this visit reese was able to really get going with the pedals.
the slight uphill grade was tough, but the downhill slope was fun!
buddy boy L-O-V-E-D the fire truck. so much so that he'd really let ya know he wasn't happy about getting off!
he likes to ring the fire truck bell.
while reese can do the pedals now, matson's little legs don't quite reach so the adults take turns pushing him around {it's killer on the back!}.

even reese took a turn. she doesn't look like she's enjoying it though! i'm not sure what was going on there. silly girl.the other part of the trip i didn't get pictures was the best part - schlitterbahn!! oh my gosh we had so much fun! we had a great group of 13 people, a half empty waterpark and short lines. we all decided we love the "old" park, schlitterbahn west, the most. there are longer rides, big tubes, slides, lots of bumping into each other and flipping out of tubes! i think everyone had at least one spill. such fun!!



after schlitterbahn matt + i had to go back to the b+b to rescue gram & papa take the kids back home. the report from the last time gram + papa kept them was that they were perfect angels. this time apparently they were a little less than perfect - meaning there was a lot more crying. thank you mom and dad for taking care of our little ones! we all love you!



they were pooped after the fun weekend. the car ride home was pretty good...


a little more fun began when we got home. grandma + poppy's air mattress was still in the living room, so it became a climbing wall,
a tunnel,
and a slide.
they wore themselves out again!
lucas, we enjoyed your visit! mario + andrea, thanks for having us! everyone else, thanks for the wonderful memories, whichever part of our trip we spent with you!