Lately

We have finished school for the year, and summer has begun. I have to say, it feels pretty good to not have a "schedule". Days have been lazy, and it has been great.We have been playing outside a lot, and talking about a summer vacation. I love summertime!

Our fam and some friends went out for dinner on my birthday. It was a great evening. Here's Matt and I that night outside of the restaurant.

A mommy robin built a nest in the wreath on our porch. At first I wasn't thrilled about it...but actually it has been kind of fun watching the little birds grow. The first two birds actually hatched on my birthday! Here they are just a couple of days old...

 and now the 4 of them barely fit in the nest! I'm sure they will be flying away soon.

Corinne is a kid with a personality. Organization is one of them. The other day she put together a "to-do" list and hung it on her wall. Super cute.

The girls play with Playmobil toys almost daily. Audie has found it a convenient excuse to not pick it up because "we are going to play with it later today". Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesnt. :)
I had Playmobil toys growing up. I loved them. They are so cute, and the toys have great detail. Though the sets are a wee bit pricey, they are great!

Corinne is really good about practicing her piano songs. I usually don't even have to tell her to do it. She has done great with piano! I hope it is something she will want to stick with.

Last week a pretty nasty storm rolled in. The hail left us with needing a new roof, new guttering, and a new window that broke out. Leaves blew like crazy...after the storm there were leaves plastered to the fronts and sides of all the houses on our block (and neighborhood). It did have it's beauty...

Selah has kept us on our toes...she is fully in her two-year old stage. Throwing fits, hitting her sisters, and giving her angry eyebrow scowl is much of what she does these days. And as a result, time out and swats are her gift in return. A disobedient child definitely humbles you and your need for wisdom in child rearing! Still, Selah is sweet and loving and so much fun.
Story: When the girls take baths, we squirt the soap from the bottle into their hands. It always forms some type of shape, and the girls like to see what the squirt turned out like and name the shape. For instance, a moon, or the letter "C", etc. The other night, Matt squirted some soap into Selah's hand and she asked, "What is it?" Matt told her it looked like Goofy (you know, from Mickey Mouse?) and Selah said, "Gorsh!" in the best impression of Goofy she could do. It was great. I love my kids.

Dallas Roadtrip

Last weekend, we took a little road trip down to Dallas. I was wanting a change of scenery, and we were looking for somewhere within reasonable driving distance, but still feeling like we were "getting away". Dallas fit the bill, and we put together the trip that week.

Are you familiar with urbanspoon? It's a website that features places to eat in your local city. I use the app on my phone. What I like about it is that you can search restaurants by user ratings. People give it a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down", leave reviews, leave recommendations, etc. It also tells you what the average price per plate is, and a lot of times lets you view a menu.

So we got on urbanspoon and looked to see what was good. It brought up a restaurant called "Mesa". 100% of the people "liked it". It said the average was $10 bucks a plate. Reasonable.

Matt loves mexican, so of course he didn't turn down my offer of trying there.

We put the address in our GPS and it took us there. The final turn led us to a street that was definitely Hispanic. All the signs were in Spanish, they had the "quincinera" shop right there...I was like "YES!" this is going to be authentic.

Matt pulled right up in front of the place, and a kid came out and took our keys from us. Valet? we were thinking... Valet was very out of the ordinary for the street we were on. But, what the hey. We were there, and we were hungry. Matt passed off the keys to the dude, and we went inside. We ordered the food and it was fantastic. It wasn't $10 a plate like urbanspoon advertised- oh well. Matt's humble reply always is, "it's okay, we're on vacation."

 So we paid for our food and went back out of the restaurant. Matt handed the kid our ticket to get our car, and the guy grabs our keys and goes to "pull up our car". The DUMB thing was is that it was literally two parking spaces down. The guy backed our car out, passed one parking spot, and then pulled the car into the empty slot. He definitely made an easy few bucks.

Across the street from our hotel was a place called Pioneer Plaza. A lot of sculptures like the one below of cowboys on horses, and TONS of sculptures of longhorns. Pretty cool.

Continuing the theme of "good eats" we ate at a place called Twisted Root Burger. Good Burger, but probably not in my top burgers I have had. Still enjoyable, nonetheless. I loved the atmosphere of the restaurant...the signs, the toilet planters...

After lunch we went to Dallas World Aquarium. Cool place.

 Rolling our stroller up to the entrance, a guy was playing a saxophone. Very Beautifully, I might add. He looked at Selah, and then pointed at her, and said, "this one is for her." And started playing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." How precious. He played it very jazzy like. Selah liked it.

A place recommended by Guy Fieri, was Pepe and Mito's. All I have to say is, "THANKS GUY! We owe ya one, buddy."  this was awesome food. Can't say enough about it. Matt ordered nachos and said, "these nachos are great." If you can please the nacho man, you know you've done good.

 photography by Corinne.

And another stop from Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive ins, and Dives was called Cane Rosso. A pizza place.
Again, great food. This was my favorite meal of the trip.
Guys head and signature was above the door on the wall. 

 This dessert pizza was amazing. Crust, with mascarpone cheese spread, apples, carmel, and cinnamon. Fantastic. I WILL be repeating this at home.

 check out that red oven behind me. Their claim is that it gets so hot the pizza can cook in just a few minutes.
Wouldn't mind having one of those.

And a stop on the way home at Corinne's Catfish. We didn't eat here, but it was a good picture location, i think. Especially when the Corinne in the picture is just so dad gum pretty.

We had a really good time. Not pictured is jumping on the bed in the hotel, swimming in the hotel pool, and a few other fun activities including going to the Dallas Farmers Market. The girls were very well behaved, besides the common complaint of "I'm tired of walking." I told Matt we weren't ready for Disney World yet. He agreed. ;)

All in all, good trip.

Over the weekend

Every year, Matt's work provides discount tickets for the fun park here in town. We left Selah at grandma's and took the girls to ride the rides. Audie was only tall enough for two rides and a big slide. Below is the bee ride that she was able to ride by herself.

Audie's favorite was the carousel.

The big slide below was my favorite. It was really fast!



I like Corinne's smile in the picture below.

Over the weekend

Phew! What a weekend. Friday night was my sisters baby shower, Saturday was family pictures for the Christmas card, and a carnival at Matt's work, and Sunday was church and my nephews 2nd birthday party!! Hardly any room to relax, but everything we did was a lot of fun and the girls got their fill of junk food. Here are a few pictures of the carnival we went to.

The girls got to be put inside a bubble! This guy has been around awhile. I remember being put inside a bubble by him when I was in elementary school.

The carnival was perfect! There were many rides for the girls to go on, and all the rides let the girls "slip" past the 36" rule. (you had to be at least 36" to ride). So little Audie got to go on them too, she had a blast.

A clown named "Troubles" was there to make balloon animals. After nearly a 30 minute wait in line, we came out with a reindeer and a killer hat.

Free Hotdogs, chips, cookies and pop for dinner, a bag of popcorn for a snack, and it made this evening wonderful! I think it is awesome that we have events like this to go to for free instead of dropping a hundred bucks at a theme park.