Happy Birthday!

I can't believe the twins are four and Lily is two.  Time has flown and I'm sad to see my babies grow up so fast.  My sweet little Lily has been catapulted into the two's with major attitude.  Not nearly as bad as the twins, but still, sad to see her independence come out.  I liked my sweet, cautious mini-me.
We ended up doing a combo party for all three since their b-days are only a few days apart and at this age, we can still find enough things that they all like.  Since we had a mild winter, I was banking on a great spring and booked the party at Owens Spring Creek Farm.  We had visited once before with my mom's group and the kids LOVED it.   We had so many friends and family celebrate with us, we had such a great time. 

 I had some coloring sheets and stickers set up for kids to do as everyone arrived, but the goats quickly stole everyone's attention and so we all jetted down to the pens. The kids were so excited and eager to feed those things. I think we were actually giving them breakfast as the goats were quite hungry!

Chicken wire surrounded the horses next to the goats so little hands couldn't get bit, but leave it to Abby to find a small hole to feed that horse.



Ah, bunnies, that's more my style.



After the goats, we headed over to see the Clydesdales, ducks, and chickens.  They also had pigs, but we never made it over there, lol.

Lily's buddy for the day.

Abby's best friend had a soccer game in the morning so she showed up a bit late, but Abby was SO excited when she finally did arrive.  She stopped and showed Landry the goats, horses and birds.  These two are so cute together.

After we saw and fed the animals, it was time for our hayride.  Everyone was super excited and even the moms and dads jumped on for a spin.

Landry, Abby & Nicole - pre-k buddies

Jack & Will - more pre-k buddies (Abby)

Our lone ranger - not sure how he got seperated from Noah

A little nervous but loved looking around from Grandpa's lap

Three cousins goofing off

After the hayride, we all ran back up to the house for snacks and cake.  My mom and I carried on the tradition this year and decorated some great animal cupcakes and a barn for the party (all organic :-).  Such fun!

Lily wasn't sure what to do.  Daddy finally had to blow her candle out for her.



All our wonderful friends and family.  The kids actually go like this on their own!



Joy of Luck

Since taking the photography class with Treva I really wanted to put my learnings into practice. I'm not good with giving myself projects though, I really needed someone to give me "homework". I then found this free week long class and thought I'd give it a shot. It was great. Each day it gave me a new task and allowed me to practice with my camera. It was fun seeing how quickly I "improved" as the week went on. I think for my first shot I originally took like 50 pics before I landed on my fav and it took me a while to get the settings where they should be. By the end I was much quicker, not great, but better :-). One note, all of these are "raw" - I have an editing software, but don't really know how to use it other than the auto correct and I don't like that feature (it always does funky stuff to my pics). I really enjoyed this journey and hope you do too. Maybe next time I'll get braver and shoot people :-).

Day1: What "thing" is something you take for granted on a daily basis?
For me, that's the ability to stay home with my kids.

Day2: Find something green, literally the color or something that brings newness.
What better than a new little strawberry in our garden.

Day 3: Find a lucky token.

This is an old worry bean I've had since high school. I used to carry this thing everywhere before I gave it to my hubby a couple of years ago to help him.

Day 4: Capture 7 of your favorite material things.

our sandbox, a daily shower, my old grey sweatpants, kombucha, the baby monitor, my iPhone, and popsicle molds

Day 5: What brings you luck?

For me, God. Not really luck though.

Day 6: What's your biggest blessing?
My hubby. Without him I would have nothing (or no one) that I have in my life right now. Lucky for him he's in Minnesota right now so he couldn't be photographed, but I snagged his favorite shoes.

Day 7: What's your rainbow? What are you looking forward to?
Lots of people took pictures of their family, but to be honest I'm not looking forward to my kids growing up. I like them little right now, so the next thing I thought of was my camera. I'm excited to see what will come and what I do with it in the coming year.

Photography Class, FINALLY!

Yay! I finally took a photography class this weekend to learn just how to use my SLR and I am so happy I did. It was a full day and my head was spinning by the first hour but I slowly started to get it as the day progressed. I need to practice A LOT, but at least now I know what to do to take a good picture, even if it takes me 5 minutes to set it up, lol. I will never be as good as our fearless leaders Treva & Bob, but that's okay, I just want to take some awesome pictures of my kids. Here's a couple sample shots from the day. They aren't much, but we were practicing different things with our aperture, shutter and ISO. Fun times definitely!

The creative genius :-)

Working with depth of field. Love playing around with aperture. And of course I left the classes wanting a new lens that would let me open my aperture to a 1.8 (mine only goes to 3.5 at 18mm).

Taking our skills outside. Underexposed all the first shots, but I figured it out with our second "volunteer" (with the help of my meter though, would love to get good enough that I didn't have to cheat :-).

Dallas Children's Museum

During spring break my parents came up with Noah and Addy so we headed to the Dallas Children's Museum. I think Noah could have spent all day there if it weren't for the younger one's short attention span. They (including Addy :-), were done with each exhibit in 2 minutes. Whitney will have to take him by himself one of these days :-).
The dinosaur exhibit is going on, but we didn't pay extra to see that, however, they had several dinosaurs in the entrance the kids could look at. Abby's favorite by far!

The girl scount cookie displays were also out :-)

The dino dig :-)

That's one big nose! And it's purpose...to sneeze :-). The kids LOVED that.

POP!

Oh How our Gardens Grow

I really want a garden to grow our vegetables, but I'm a little nervous about taking on that project. So, I thought it would be great to start with container gardening. The kids had a blast planting their gardens and just this week we spotted a few little green strawberries and one little green bell pepper. They are SUPER excited about that and check on the strawberries and pepper at least once a day. Check out my full post at my new blog!

Party at the gym!

Earlier this month we helped celebrate our friends Caden & Dylan's 4th birthday at a local gym. The kids were so excited and of course showed no fear. We don't do our weekly gym class anymore since the kids are in school so it's a special treat when they get to play around in the gym. I really should get them in structured gymnastics classes, but I'm not sure how well they'd actually listen. I take that back, I'm not sure how well Abby would listen. Jake is doing so well in structered environments now.

Fearless!

Their favorite part of the gym. Of course this boy was the first to start this and the rest of the birthday party followed.

Lily jumped in from the side :-) She's actually mid-air if you look closely.

Later she found a ballon and that was a lot more fun than jumping into a foam pit.

Another favorite was the long trampolines the kids could run on. Lily got knocked down a few times, but it didn't stop her.

And of course I didn't get a SINGLE SHOT of the birthday boys!!