Girlfriends

My friend Melanie and I had a chance to break away for lunch while our hubbies watched the kids.  It was so much fun to indulge in hours of girl talk over Italian style Panini's and gelato.   She is one of my best friends here in Texas and I am going to miss her like crazy when we move.  She is always there to listen to all  my crazy plans and helps\ me solve any problem big or small.  She shares my obsession with Vampire Diaries, appreciates my cheesy sense of humor, and indulges my need to be the center of attention.  She is smart and funny and is an awesome Mom.  She is my life-line; always willing to watch my kids at the drop of a hat.  I am so lucky to have her and so many other great friends in my life.  All my Texas girlfriends make me laugh, help be be a good Mom, and inspire me to be a better me. I love them all and am glad we will be forever friends.      

Eleven Years of Heaven

Burke and I have been married for eleven wonderful years.  I am a lucky gal to have such a devoted, selfless, loving, helpful, handy, smart and funny husband.  To celebrate our anniversary we took a little weekend getaway to the Texas Hill Country.  The wildflowers were in full bloom and it was beautiful.  We took in a few local sights (thanks to the crazy famer who decided to build replica’s of Stonehenge and the Easter Island Heads in his field.  It was a real hoot) ate at some fabulous restaurants, wandered through art galleries, picked up a few trinkets for the girls and toured the National Museum of the Pacific War.  I love spending time alone with Burke holding hands, stealing kisses, sharing a laugh and forgetting for a moment that we have a long history with three kids to prove it.  I love you sweetheart and look forward to the years to come.

Easter

We invited our Texas  Family over for an Easter Egg hunt and dinner on Saturday.  We had over two dozen kids and they all played really well together which allowed the adults to enjoy each others company.  It makes being  away from our family a little bit easier when we can share the holidays with such special friends.

  

I have a fond memory of visiting my Grandma Craven around Easter time.  She had an Easter Egg Tree and we got to make Egg People.  She helped us blow out the eggs with a needle.  Then she brought out her basket of yarn and trimming and we created our very own egg person.  I have been waiting for the girls to get old enough to pass this fun tradition along and this year they were finally ready.  Family Fun Magazine gave us some inspiration and tips on making our different egg characters.  The girls did a great job and were very proud of their egg people. 

I made Mrs. Egg and Harry Poacher

Zana made Princess Shelly and Chef Eggardi

JJ created Pirate Egg-leg and Robin Egg

 

We have 1:30 church on Sundays so we had plenty of time to enjoy our Easter Morning.  Due to a series of unfortunate accidents over the winter the girl’s scooters were wrecked.  Instead of new dresses they all got new bikes and scooters from the Easter Bunny.  It was very exciting.  We had a delicious breakfast of crepes and the girls all participated in re-telling the Easter Story around the table.  I sang Consider the Lillies in Sacrament meeting.  It was a wonderful day. 

JJ’s reaction when she read the card from Grandma and Papa saying they were coming to visit next week!!!!

Funshine Pre-School

Biddy and I have had a lot of fun this year with her pre-school group.

I taught seven weeks and enjoyed spending that time with Biddy and her cute friends.  We did lots of fun activities for Easter and even took a field trip to the infamous HEB. 

A Family General Conference

I grew up watching conference camped out on the living room floor with the whole family.  When we were little  Mom taught us the names of all the Apostles and we enjoyed playing conference games.  As we got older we learned to listen for certain topics and then started taking notes. My parents helped us learn to look forward to conference weekend and love listening to the messages.  I gained a testimony of living prophets by watching conference as a family.  It is my desire to do the same for my family but conference weekend has always been a challenge and a bit of a disappointment since we moved away from UT.  Our choices have been watching conference at church or on a small computer screen.  Neither of which provide the same type of family friendly environment I grew up with.   So this year I made it a priority to figure out how to stream BYU TV on our big screen. Thanks to Roku technology we had a conference weekend that reminded me of my days growing up.  JJ did an amazing  job recognizing the twelve apostles and all the girls had fun playing their conference games.  I feel like we are on the right track to help our girls develop their own love of General Conference.  

We had extra fun making conference cupcakes between sessions.