Bella's birthday

 

 

 

We celebrated Bella's 8th birthday at the house.

 

 They played Mummy, Mummy, Come Alive on the trampoline.

 

 

 

 Freeze tag!

 Red Light/ Green Light

 

 

 

 I showed them how to draw Bella's favorite animal, a panda. Then they drew and painted their own picture.

 Bella wanted an ice cream cake from Baskin Robins- chocolate cake with cookies and cream ice cream inside.

 Instead of a piñata, I saw an idea of wrapping candy into a giant ball with Reynolds wrap- each kid has only so much time to unwrap the ball and get their candy based upon the player to their right rolling a pair of dice until they get two pair. The kids loved it.

 

 Their party favor was a squirt bottle.

 

I think she had a good time!

September news

Jer helped to give an ACTS retreat. Grandpa Dick and Gary were two of the retreatants.

Career Day at school- Bella wants to be a pediatrician and Victoria wants to be a fashion designer.

I found Victoria playing in my jewelry one afternoon.

We went to Vegas to celebrate my friend Chris's 50th birthday. We saw the spectacular musical Rock of Ages and dressed in 80s style clothing.

We went to Addison's Irish Festival. The kids enjoyed some high bouncing, while the adults enjoyed the beer.

First Day of School and Labor Day

 The girls went back to school last week with lots of smiles! They love their teachers. Victoria has her first male teacher ever whom she thinks is wonderful because he likes to tell stories and doesn't mess with organization too much. (At Meet the Teacher night we saw the difference between the way guy and girls run their classrooms and where they put their things. We finally ended up stuffing Victoria's desk with all her classroom supplies because we couldn't figure out where to put any of the materials that were to be place throughout the room.)

The Friday before school started we had some visitors at our house. My friend Angie went into Labor early and we got to keep her kids at our house for the night. We had fun making brownies and playing. We were also keeping Dave and Denise's dogs Sydney and Brigsbee. I think the girls now want more siblings and more dogs. Although it was very fun, I'm very  happy to have some time to myself now that the kids are back in school.

 Labor Day weekend was fun. We met Dave and Denise for dinner at Masu (a sushi and hibachi grill). The girls love to watch their meal being cooked in front of them; the highlight is when they make a volcano out of an onion and light it on fire. On Saturday we went over to Carol and Dick's house and got to have dinner with Jer's relatives Uncle Nick, Aunt Bev, Mark and Julie, and their kids Luke and Zachary. On Monday we went to Lake Texoma and rented a catamaran and went sailing. It was 30-35 mile an hour winds, and we went fast. The water was spraying our bodies the entire time and the wind made it feel freezing, so it didn't last long when the kids started to complain. I believe Victoria's exact words were- this is miserable! Well, we tried.

 So they played on the shore for an hour then we came home.

Carol and Cindy Birthdays

 

We celebrated Carol and my birthdays this past weekend with a delicious Mudslide cake! Victoria and Bella made the pretty pink birthday poster behind us. They also sang us the cutest song that they made up themselves called, "You're chilling! You're popping!" Earlier that day we ate lunch at Gloria's. (We love their black beans.) Carol and I then went shopping at Steinmart and bought each other our birthday presents. I got her an decorative egg platter and placemats and she got me a cute yellow lightweight cardigan, white swim pants, and a dress (gotta love the red dot clearance with extra 40% off coupons!) It was a wonderful birthday.

 

Miscellanious Summer Pictures

Here are a couple of random pictures of some of the things we've been up to this summer.

 Bentley came over and the girls jumped on the trampoline while having a water fight to cool down.

 

 Bella enjoyed making her food into letters. She turned her breakfast cereal into an "O" and her sandwich and cucumber into a "B" for Bella.



 

It was actually a pretty tame summer this year. We had a couple of 100 degree days, but the majority were pleasantly in the 90s. We also saw some much needed rain that cooled things off considerably.

One of our friends Mike Marowski raved about this new flavor of Blue Bell ice cream called Krazy Kolors, so we bought a gallon to try. It was florescent yellow with colorful confetti type balls of dough mixed into it. Very SUGARY! The kids loved it; the adults, not so much.

 

We kept trying to pawn it off on any kids we could find. We finally finished the gallon with the help of the Smith kids.

I went out with my Zumba friends Reva and Julie. We celebrated Reva's birthday at Pizzeria Testa. We had a wonderful Tiramisu on the house.

Go Cowboys!

Victoria and Bella bling out their new purses from Aunt Colleen. Victoria added a bejeweled dragon fly and Bella added a bejeweled letter B.

 

Lots of library time!

Kate and Abby spent the night. We watched movies, ate brownies and popcorn, and stayed up late.

 In the morning we had the whole neighborhood pool to ourselves.

 

Building a fort.

 

Guess who fell asleep in the fort?

 

Ice Cream at Racetrack

We meet Darla and Colleen's girls up at the pool. They made a damn by sitting in the current, then would stand up and jump off once the water started to spill over.

Braelyn turns 7 and had a Princess party.

We went to the ACTS family BBQ up at church. The girls got their faces painted and balloons. I won a bottle of wine and a Polish candy dish in the silent auction. Jer was super busy the whole two days before it making the brisket for it. Then he was MC for the event.