Blue amongst the bonnets

The Bluebonnets are out and looking good. We took advantage of the great weather, and got some photos amongst them.

Today is my little sisters birthday

Of course this photo was taken a long time ago, but she's still my little sister, despite the fact that she's married and has two children. Happy Birthday Emma, hope you have a great day. Love you and miss you.

Your big sister.

Happy Birthday Paul

My Brother in law Paul is celebrating his birthday on the 3rd of April. Have a great day Paul, hope you celebrate it doing something you like!

Look what we found!

Darren was cleaning out the pool filter basket, and this was what was inside...YES a SNAKE!! and still very much alive!

And despite our little "find" the kids still went swimming....as you do when it's 87F, humid and your a kid. As for me, l'm waiting for the water temperature to warm up some more.

Totally Coco-licious

Now say it with me..Awwww, just makes you want to snuggle her up and soak in all that puppy goodness.

Easter Photos for 2008

I know it's a little late in posting, but hey better late than never. So Easter this year came a little too early, l was totally unprepared for it. However despite this, we had a really great day. Church followed by lunch at Chili's and then home for the Easter Egg hunt.

I will start by saying that even after nearly 5 years of living in the States, I'm no fan of the plastic Easter eggs. Back in Australia the only egg hunting we did was for good old Cadbury chocolate eggs. For some reason they do not hunt for chocolate eggs here (in fact it's hard to find hollow chocolate Easter eggs) instead they have colourful plastic Easter eggs in which one fills them up with candy (just in case you didn't get your share of candy at Halloween, and Valentine's day) or you could put some tiny toy or money in them. Then you hide them and let the kids run wild for about 5 to 10 minutes finding the eggs.

This year however we and our good friends Matt and Laura decided that we had enough of this and wanted to present the kids with a challenge. So we came up with the Easter Egg Treasure Hunt. The kids would be given a rhyming clue as to the possible location of their first find. There they would find 5 eggs (since we had 5 kids) inside the eggs they would find a prize (either money, candy or gum) and the next clue for the next location. We had 20 clues and locations for them which ranged from our backyard, the Fenton's backyard and the whole of Jamie Court. We had them running all over the place, and it took them about 45 minutes. All the time they worked together in solving the riddles and managed to accumulate some candy and money along with a big individual prize at the end. The overall outcome was a big thumbs up, they totally enjoyed themselves, ran like crazy, worked well together and were already asking if they could do it all again next year.

Of course the parents were exhausted, it was hard keeping up with them trying to take photos, but so worth it all. After the Egg hunt we made the most of the nice weather and sat on our patio coming up with ideas for next year, while the kids played with their prizes.

Running off to the first clue

sharing the eggs they found

Maddy reading one of the clues

Liam and Shane reading a clue

On to the next clue

having found the Prizes

With their prizes, the boys got Leggo Star Wars, and the girls got a Webkin each.

We did it, we went Camping!

I grew up going camping, my family would go up to Bright for two weeks over the summer and I remember loving it, l have such fond memories of those summer camping trips. We would all help pitch the tent and set up the beds. The days would consist of cooking on the grill, swimming, walking into town, sightseeing ,campfires, going to the amusement park and just hanging around camp. When l look back, l just remember loving it, and my sisters and I were sad every year when those 2 weeks came to an end. Of course l fail to remember all the packing, cleaning and washing that was involved since my parents took care of it all. Now that l am a parent, l see it all to clearly, and so it was with some hesitation that l agreed to take a camping trip with our friends Matt and Laura and their family to Lake Whitney during Spring break. We decided that we could well manage 2 days. We kept telling ourselves it was for the kids.

I will admit l had fun and the kids absolutely loved it. We all helped set up the tent and beds. We had great sunny days, although the nights and mornings were still a little too cold. We ate around the campfire, and made smores while playing memory games and charades. We went fishing, played Frisbee, sat around and talked and were even visited by a band of Raccoons one night.

Of course the packing up of the tent and all the stuff we managed to take on a short 2 day trip was no fun at all, not to mention all the laundry that awaited me when l got home.I will say that packing up camp was hard but once home, everyone helped unpack the car.

Would l do it again?, Yes for sure, the kids had fun and I'm all for making childhood memories for them.

So while I'm thinking about it, I want to thank you mum and dad for taking us camping all those years. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to experience the outdoors, and giving us some great memories of our childhood. Also a big thanks for all the hard work that it took to plan, carry out and clean up afterwards.