Conference Weekend + Camp

This weekend was amazing! We just finished watching conference, at Nan's house with cousins. The am was at home with a conference packet & an after conference store to purchase prizes with their being good tokens. I am so excited to "Ponderize" a scripture...80% ponder 20% memorize. Well, actually the kids and I started tonight Helaman 5:12. Conference is always so inspiring and exciting, but this one was a little sad too, since Packer, Perry and Scott had passed away. Anyway the plan always just seems so real and easy in conference. We got to sustain Elder Rasbland, Steveson, and Renlund. I am excited to be better and dig in deeper. I am so grateful for the changes I've seen and felt in myself this past year. Especially as a mom. I am so so so grateful for the Atonement.

Here is Ollie, helping as usual. Here with strawberry syrup

 

 Saturday Cody's friend hooked us up with Angel's tickets. Which was cool because I had been wanting to take the kids, but then super cool because we had a rough end of the week with Rowdy and Elliot super sick. It was so sad to see them uncomfortable, and then Ezra had been feeling sad about feeling lonely at school, and Ollie was teething. He had three teeth coming in this week. My heart was hurting. Anyway it was so nice to have a fun family outing. Plus the game was really exciting too! yay! double yaay!

 Last weekend Elliot didn't have a game and the weather is finally getting nice, so I took the kids camping. Cody ended up having to work so it took a little bit of faith, but I am so glad we did. It was so nice to have the kids outside! Summers can be a little brutal hot especially at the end. They tromped around found tons of spiders. IT was just one night which usually is a bummer to pack and unpack for but I din't even mind. IT was liek we were supossed to be there and make some memories.

 Rowdy was a huge help! He was our activities director, wihtout me even asking him to be. He got the kids exploring and helping. I could not have done it without him. He is growing up so fast :(

What a stud though

 We love sand! This is camping at Lake Ray Roberts

 In the morning we explored some trails. the kids on their scooters and Ollie on my bike. He looooves his bike rides. he pats me on the back sometimes, and other times pulls my shirt out, but most of the time just checkin stuff out. so the only bummer about camping, besides Cody not beig there, was there was a burn ban. So that was lame becuase I only raw hotdogs, so we had to go out. but we ended up reading stories in the tent and that was prety fun too. and Ollie just kept walking around body slamming peole trying to rest. It was pretty fun

 

I did a little sewing this week, while trying to get Rowdy's badges on his cub scout uniform, I re purposed my old skirt for an Elliot dress. I love this picture of her. She is the cutest little tomboy.

I keep feeling that these times are fragile and precious.

January

Ezra learned how to ride a bike!  The look on his face is when he is riding.."Are you seeing this?! This is Awesome! Are you seeing this?" Like a joyful surprise.
He likes to ride Rowdy's bike the best, so he's learned how to fall gracefully with it since he can't reach the ground.  He picked it up in like an hour...thanks to Dad and all the practice with that little cruiser of his.

and the next hour Cody built a ramp, and he did fine on that too.

 

We also love to see our cousins over in Coppell. We were hanging out almost every Friday for a while. Its been nice having  them nearby. & Yay for Paravel! She is such a doll. Its fun to be close and watch the nieces and nephews grow.

Here are some more nieces and nephews w a game Cody made up. However old you were that's how many balloons you had tied to your ankles and everyone had to try and pop them..except Elliot...and later we learned Ezra... (they were a little emotional over the whole thing)

We turned gun owners in January. 

Cody was so excited about his mega thrift store find...I was not so excited. but after he showed me the glow in the dark one and we had a glow in the dark dance party for FHE (with our crazy black light form Halloween) and Rowdy stripped down to his undies, because they were white and glowed better, and proceeded to dance around super silly trying to avoid the glow in the dark bullets and I almost wet myself laughing, that's when I started liking them. Plus we do little nerf gun stuff in seminary sometimes, & I giggle at the thought of everyone having the little guns and me walking into the activity with the one as big as Rowdy. I haven't worked up the nerve yet.

The kids rediscovered the sand box. 

Elliot loves, even in 40 degree weather, to take off her shoes and socks and stick her toes int he sand. Got a little California girl in her ;) 

Almost everyday for the past couple of months they will go play with it in the front yard right before Rowdy comes home from school then a bunch of neighbor kids will come play too.

Miles and Rowdy play really well after school together. They are pretty creative.

Elliot put her hand on the stove after we had made popcorn :( She fried her palm and most of her finger pads. It was so so sad, but she was a little trooper. She called it her hot hand. and was so excited when she got "new pink skin!"

This girl is unstoppable.

A sweet love note I found from Rowdy. He does and says the most thoughtful things.

He takes after his Dad

Also so proud of Rowdster for passing off all of his sight words! He made his own goal to finish, because he wanted to go to the principal and pass them off for his dogtag. Way to go!

There was also an after school camp night...Read S'more or something cute. When we went, so many teachers knew Rowdy and told us how great or thoughtful or polite he was. It was a great feeling. Thanks Rowdy for being such a good kid.

Elliot is getting better about eating real food, but she still loves her sugar... daddy

It snowed in January but not enough to call in a snow day. I took this picture after seminary
and there was a day with funny little dip n dot hail.

Ezra and Elliot admiring Paravel

 

Ezra and Elliot have been at odds lately (January-ish). Elliot knows how to push his buttons and sometimes she is mean. Hitting or biting mean, just because she knows he will cry. She realize it hurts. Time outs aren't cutting it. So even though it felt weird I told Ezra to hit her back. He was such a gentlemen and would just sit there (crying though) while she railed on him. I had to remind him quite a few times. Sure enough it only took a few times and they are back to being mostly buddies. 

A few weeks ago I was in & out of a seminary nap stupor, and I heard a smack and a crying. These days I am very slow to conflicts. I just let them try and work it out. I could hear Ezra crying, they were the only kids home, and Elliot says,"Rowdy did it! Rowdy hit Ezra!" !!  Then when she realized no one was around, & she wasn't getting in trouble she apologized to him! :)

We got to see Yaya for a few hours in January. She flew in for Paravel's blessing & we got to see her. Its nice having her around. We've got to see her 3 months in a row!! 

After Paravel's blessing we went over to Locke and Katie's for a lovely brunch. mmmm. We should do brunch more often. That was delicious.

 

I really should stay on top of the blogging. I'm hurting knowing I have already forgotten sweet bytes from my littles.

Mario Kart

We pretty much spent the whole week of spring break outside playing.

The kids rode bikes in front of our house for hours. Cody got out some wood and made "Mario Kart" obstacles for them.

The bridge was short lived

The girl had to get a turn on the jump.

The boys like to wear Cody's "Summer Penguin" work gloves on their feet and pretend they are penguins. Turns out Elliot is a fan too.

Post-storm

Yesterday was windy. So windy it started blowing up some shingles on our roof. 

By the time we were done w our second trip to home depot even more shingles had blown off, and there was a flash flood, severe storm, tornado warning for the next 30 minutes. We totally felt like Heavenly Father held off the storm. As soon as Cody finished caulking the shingles down it started to rain. It was a little scary with the wind for a minute. The 30 minutes he was up there saving our house, the temperature dropped like 15 or 20 degrees. It was crazy/ exciting. Thank you Cody for your bravery. And Thank you Heavenly father for our dry house.

Our neighbor Casey, who was mostly reffering to the hot & humid once jokingly said,"This weather is necessary. It weeds out all the riff raff." 

The storms are usually exciting though :)

Ezra actually did good with all the lightning and thunder, maybe because it wasn't totally dark outside yet. I did miss him snuggling me a little bit, but Cody was a nice trade.

Elliot was squealing and giggling and yelling at the pouring rain when we took her to our doorstep to check it out. and she kept making her "oooo" face for the thunder and lighting.

And Rowdy kept picking her up and putting her in the rain. She would just scurry back and stand at the edge of our porch again and check it out.

So today we went to go check out the creek and enjoy the after storm clouds

  

Yeah..the creek was pretty full. We had gone to a spot earlier on our trek and thrown some rocks and Cody noticed a big fat water moccasin eating a fish, right in front of us!

 

Dads are so fun

 

So are mud puddles

 The kids rode through this one for a half and hour

 

This is our neighbor J.R.

 

 (she found Elmo)

 

We went to check out the creek under the bridge by Lynda's house. The sunset took up the whole sky 

There wasn't much water there but Cody thought he saw some fish so he took the bigger kids down.  

They were crawdads! We were both surprised how fearless Rowdy was

 

The post storm sky was amazing

 

It's Montana whose nickname is Big Sky Country, but I find myself thinking that about Texas. There is nothing to impede the sunsets so they just blanket the sky & reflect off whatever they can. 

I think it is so beautiful