Back Again

I think we're back now...
I hope life will slow down a bit now.
The last 5.. count 'em FIVE Saturday's have been filled with company, birthdays, or other activities! I'm ready for a normal, nothing-to-do Saturday!

Corinne's Birthday was last Saturday. I took her out last Friday night to do her six year old pictures. But it was windy and cold! We only got about 15 shots in before we threw in the towel to try for another day. Here is one of those to tide you over.

After dinner out on Corinne's birthday, we came back to the house for cupcakes and to open presents.

 I think she had a good birthday. :) She is, however, looking forward to birthday number 8...for "when she can sit in the front seat and paint her own nails."

This summer was a bust for my vegetable and herb garden. The lack of rain was no good.! One plant though , flourished and bloomed! This is called a Passion Flower...The tag said it was named by Spanish missionaries after the crucifixion of Christ. And, even cooler-- it produces little tiny edible fruits! The vine is probably about 8 feet high--all growth from just this summer. I hope it continues to do well in the years to come!

Audie's 4th Birthday

We celebrated Audie's Birthday yesterday. All day was great. Audie enjoyed the phone calls she got, and the cards in the mail.
Due to overwhelmingly busy schedules, we did her pictures last Saturday--(instead of on her birthday like I'd like to). Either way, what a little cutie head she is. Love this girl.

We started the day off with breakfast, then school.  We did what she wanted to do for most of the day. Her choice of dinner was Red Robin...she wanted balloons! Matt and I told her we would buy her balloons if she wanted to go somewhere else for dinner, but she stuck with the place that she knew had the balloons.

We came back home for some cake- we had Grandma Joyce and Grumpa Bob over to eat and open presents with us.

She got some Little Critter books, a Strawberry Shortcake coloring book, and  cheerleader outfit.
She had daddy throw her up so she could do her cheers in the air.

The best part of the day for me was something Audra and Corinne said on the way back from Red Robin:
Audra: "I had a really good birthday today."
Corinne: "I hope you did, sister."

How sweet! I love my girls.

minus one

Corinne lost her first tooth earlier this week.
The night I pulled it, I didn't really think it was ready to come out. From my memory back when I was a tot, I remember blood being involved when it was ready to come out. There was no blood present.
And usually, Corinne is pretty squeemish when it comes to blood and hurting type of things. I didn't think she was going to be in to me pulling her tooth and maybe causing her pain.

Well, we jiggled and wiggled and it didn't seem to get any looser.
Finally, I tied some floss around that little baby and gave it a yank.
Out it came, with blood. It was ready!!

  I was so proud of her! She didn't even flinch or act woozy like she typically does around that kind of thing! Maybe she didn't know to be squeemish with pulling a tooth.

  and then she called her friends to tell them she had lost a tooth.

What a lovely girl.

first day of school

Where did the summer go? Today was our first day of school! 

They were pretty excited about it. Matt packed both of them a lunch which made their day. He wrote them each a little note which melted my heart. More details later on how the day went, and for now, the "first day of school" pictures.

Audie Says...

Rewind to several months back, at the dinner table.
Matt told the girls if you hold your nose when you eat your vegetables, you can't taste them.

 So, yesterday afternoon, I made the girls fruit smoothies for a snack.

About halfway through the smoothie, Audie says, "Hey mom, plug your nose and take a drink of the smoothie."
So I did.

"Can you taste it when you plug your nose?"
to which I replied, "I sorta can."

Then, with squinted eyes, like a detective, she said, "So.....dad lied"

Audie found it amusing to blow enough bubbles to overflow over the side of her cup of milk.
Typically, I don't let that mess-making behavior slide, but she giggled over it and enjoyed herself enough that I wanted to grab the camera for the memory.

Audie says...

A house around the corner has a dog that barks ferociously when we pass by it walking or riding our bikes.

I'm not sure if Matt told Audie once the dog might eat her, or if she came to her own conclusion that the fence between her and the dog kept her from an attack, however...

Last night when on a bike ride passing by the fence, Audie said, (to the dog)

"No lunch today!!!!" and laughed her infamous laugh.

Sent from my iPhone

a few from the 4th

We had a fun Fourth of July-

The day part of it was spent running errands and doing household things...
our garage door broke, so Matt replaced it, while I ran to the grocery store and did a bit of laundry.
We went to some friends' house for dinner and fireworks.
Food was so good, and fireworks even better!!

Interesting dynamics of the evening-- Corinne didn't want to take part in any fireworks. She was perfectly fine and content to sit back and watch. She's not a big risk taker, so she was much better watching from the sidelines.

 Audie, howeveer, was all in. She wanted to be where the action was. I think finally around 10pm she took a seat to watch, but still was chatty about everything.

Selah Surprised me the most. She sat on peoples laps all evening and watched the fireworks. Never cried or jumped at any of the loud noises.
I totally intended to get a family picture. We were all dressed in matching red white and blue.
Maybe next year...

A few of the smiles after Audie was finished getting her hair done.

Scott and Annette's wedding

This past weekend we went to KC for Matt's younger brother, Scott's wedding. Corinne and Audie were flower girls in the ceremony, and I have to say, besides the beautiful bride, they were the prettiest girls around!
The rehearsal dinner on Friday night was at Stroud's restaurant, which had a really cool outdoor private room, and a neat little white church. The church was so pretty and cute, sitting right beside a pretty lake.

 Annette and me. So happy to have a new "sister"!

The morning of the wedding we got a last minute call from grandma offering to have the girls' hair done at her salon. The girls were pretty excited about it! I was planning on doing their hair, but I am glad we went this route. The girls had fun sitting in the salon chair.
I think Audie wasn't real sure about it right away. She held a very serious look on her face until the lady was done. After it was over we got some smiles.

And some snapshots from the wedding day--

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.