Rose Festival 2013

It's finally fall around here and for this East Texas girl it means one thing- The Rose Festival (or as it's better known in our house: The Princess Parade)!  For some reason my boys weren't super excited about spending a weekend watching all things Princess, so it was up to Emery and I to carry on with out them.  We left Friday morning and enjoyed a fun girls' weekend together!

We took some selfies:

Listened to this song as we drove in to Tyler:

And got excited when it was time to "count the turns" to Gigi and OK's house!

We talked Camryn Joy and Sarah into having a slumber party at Gigi and OK's with us and the girls were SO excited (ok, we were all pretty excited)!  They woke up Saturday morning and immediately (like, Emery was up at 6 and this is her at 6:05) started playing dress up and helping Gigi bake for the parade.

And then it was time to head to the parade!  We packed our chairs, blankets, muffins and, of course, tiaras and waited on the princesses.  The girls had so much fun just being together and watching all the bands.  Those 2 are so cute!

After the parade we made a quick stop back at Gigi and Ok's for a little food and then it was time to head back to the princesses!  We have always gone to the Queen's Tea and now it is so much fun to watch our girls enjoy it too.  And the girls in the Rose Festival go above and beyond to make our girls feel special.  They hug them, talk to them, take pictures with them.  It's really great.  (Ready for Princess picture overlaod?  OK- let's go!)

 Aren't those girls too cute?!?!

We also took some time to celebrate Easton's second birthday.  We had dinner all together and went back to Gramma K's house for some cake and presents.  We watched the Aggies loose (sigh)

 

 But found our strength to carry on and enjoy some time together and celebrate Wild Man.

It was such a FUN weekend and I can't wait to go back and do it again next year!!!

More birthday Fun!

I know, I know- it's kind of ridiculous that I'm still writing about Beckett's birthday (it's been a while), but we got to enjoy one more fun activity before we called it a wrap on Beckett's 2nd birthday.

On his actual birthday we did what Beckett loves best- ate "Happy Cake"!  Our friends came over after school and we all enjoyed some presents and some Thomas Happy Cake- it was so fun and he loved hearing them sing the birthday song to him.

This one is his first picture of the day.  He woke up to a Thomas wonderland in our house and, of course, a special birthday chair!

Ok- so here's where we eat happy cake.  Willie the Whale came home from school with Emery, so he got to enjoy all our birthday festivities too!

When Matt came home from work we opened the rest of our family presents and made some quesa-deeellas (another Beckett favorite)!

The next day Beckett, Emery, Gigi and I loaded up and headed to the Rosenburg Railroad Museum!  We've never been before and I hoped it would be something that Beckett would like (trains= another Beckett passion), so it kind of felt like a gamble as we drove the 30 minutes it took to get there.

The first thing we did was watch a movie about trains (or so the tour guide said).  It ended up being pretty dark and about train safety.  Great.  Things are not looking up for this excursion!

The museum is built right by a working railroad in Rosenburg and it's a busy one- a train came by at least every 10 minutes while we were there. They also have 3 different outside exhibits to see, which is where we headed next.

Our first stop was the caboose.  I had no idea the conductor sits in the caboose and the engineer sits in the engine car (see, it's starting to get fun and educational!).  We learned alot about the caboose and played climb up and down the ladder.

Then we moved on to the tower.  This building used to be a working control tower, but (obviously) it no longer is.  They have former control panels and switches in there (it was huge and amazing!), a typewriter, phone, and communication system the trains used to run on.  It was really incredible to watch how all the parts work together to make the train run!

See how high up and close to the trains we were?

We moved on to a passenger car, and then the model train room!  Apparently one man worked on this model train for 25 years and it showed!  It was a huge room surrounded by several working model trains complete with intricate details of villages.  It was hard to get a good picture of the all the details that went into this train.  They have a platform in the middle of the room for the kids to stand and look out from.

I could have watched it all day, but my children were kind of over it.  So, what did we do?  Went to play with the toys.They also have 2 rooms of toys for the kids to have birthday parties in.  They have pretty much every toy train you can imagine (surprising, right?), and a kitchen area with tables.

We stayed in here and had to play trains (because we NEVER play trains at home!) and the kids had the best time!  It ended up being a really, really fun trip for us and I highly recommend it for anyone who loves trains (big and small!).