Road Trippin'

Summer is here!  Actually this is the first year where summer matters to us in a loooong time.  No one's been in school for a good 7 years until Emery started preschool last year so "summer" has just been several (several) hot months in the middle of a couple of cooler months.  So, it's been really fun to look forward to summer- swimming, traveling, sleeping, sweating- I love it all!

I was a little worried about having such a big break from school, but so far it's been fun!  We took advantage of Emery's first week off of school and headed up to Tyler to see Gigi and OK.

This is Nay Nay and he is everyone's favorite! (Gigi even has a rule that she gets a hug before Nay Nay does!)  After Gigi hugs both my kiddos got to work playing with him.  Emery Madison is so stinkin' creative.  Here she is "milking" Nay Nay.  She had him hooked up to the "sucker" with his seat belt on and occasionally gave him cereal treats.  Really- it was as weird as it sounds.  I love her creative play though.

Day 2 we hit up the Discovery Science Place.  It's a  fabulous museum that with a science room and a small town room.  They could just play for hours and hours.  Fair warning though- the rest of this post is pretty much pictures of my two babies! :)

 Mama was pretty nostalgic about this guy being there.  Last time we went he was 2 months old and this time he RAN in and didn't stop for 2 hours.

 They have a big dinosaur exhibit and Emery was not so sure about it. 

Then we headed to the small town room.  It's got a grocery store, courthouse, hospital, oh- and dinosaurs!!! So many cool things, this place really is great!

After we were all played out (we being Gigi and I- the kids could have stayed all day!) we headed to Emery's second favorite place in the world "a restaurant!" for some hamburgers.  She gets SO excited when we go out to eat it's really pretty sad- apparently the girl needs to get out more.  Anyone else have this problem?  She wants to eat out all the time, but then totally acts like a crazy lady when we are there.  Anyway, I digress.

She really wanted me to take her picture like this- she's getting quite demanding with her poses for pictures these days. 

We ALL took naps and headed to the Karing Kitchen that evening.  It was so fun taking the kiddos to meet everyone down there.  Last time I saw most of these folks I was pregnant with Emery so it was fun to see some familiar faces (but then again- it's Tyler- there are familiar faces everywhere, right Dad?!?!). :)

 Beckett and Lawrence and their plaid shoes.  Emery and Beckett were so excited to see Lawrence.  Emery spotted him across the parking lot and screamed "LAWRENCE!!!!" and ran and gave him a big hug.

Beckett wasn't so sure about everyone wanting to meet him, so we snuggled alot, but I'll take that! 

After we came home we did some more snuggling, TV watching, and resting up for some more Tyler fun. More on that to come soon- it's 2 trash truck Tuesday around here and everyone's up and ready for it (and it's only 7:00, yay!).

I'm just sayin...

I've had this picture of Matt as a little boy for quite a while now and it's always been on my fridge (his Mom let me keep it because 1- he's adorable and 2- his expression kills me.  I can only imagine what a stinker this guy was as a child).  It hit me the other day that Emery is finally close to the same age he was when it was taken and I had her school picture from the beginning of the year to compare them.  It's always been obvious she looks just like him, but looking at their pictures side by side was pretty incredible.  The cheeks, the eyes, the nose.  Too cute not to share.

(They are both around age 3 in these pics, and I can TOTALLY see her making that expression!)

Zube Park

Oh my goodness, I still feel like I need to do some serious catch up here!  I guess it would help if I wrote more than once a week, but it's summer in our house and we've already been super busy.  So, that's my excuse.  We've been swimming and road tripping and sick (ing?) and I've had some serious Real Housewives catching up to do.  So, here we go with something I just had to write about.

As you may have noticed, we have a train enthusiast in our house.  Like, a majorly obsessed train loving boy- and fortunately Katy is filled with train museums and parks and what not.  So, a few weeks ago when we went to the Katy Depot the lady who was working there told us about Zube (like zoo-bee) Park.  She said "Oh, have you taken him to ride the trains at Zube Park?" and then we knew we HAD to do it!  The trains run on the 3rd Saturday of every month and last month we went the weekend of May 18th and I was so excited to take them and show them the trains and ride them (I had been anticipating this for a good month!).

If you haven't been to Zube Park it's worth the trip.  It took us about half an hour to get there from our house and we tried to get there early (for so many reasons, but one was because I figured the trains would get pretty popular).  The engines are separate from the actual park and that caught us off guard (you have to drive to the 2nd entrance to the park), but once you see them you can find them pretty easily.  It's run by a group called the Houston Area Live Steamers and they are apparently train enthusiasts who do this as a hobby.  They are actual engines, just miniature sized and they are maintained by this group and the group also runs the running of the trains.  :) They give out tickets, collect the tickets, tell you where to go (and they are hilarious folks with lots of personality!).

 So- go see it just to see them!

See, we got there pretty early and there was already a pretty good line going.  It moves fairly quickly since they have several trains running, but it's still corralling little kids while you wait in line.  Are you wondering how I got this picture since we were all riding the trains together?  Well...

This is what Emery wanted to do the whole time.  Not be anywhere near the trains.  Like, flat out, no way, kicky sreamy fits about not riding the train.

So, Beckett and Matt rode the train once.

And apparently Beckett his in Matt's arms the whole ride.  You can see it coming in his face can't ya.  Matt really enjoyed it though, so at least one of us liked it.  :)  They rode the train and then we spent 2 hours at the park- just like we could've done ALOT closer to our house, but that's ok.

We can say we've done it and we don't like it, ha ha!  We love finding little adventures like this to do around Houston- there's so many fun things going on that are especially geared toward little ones.  I'd say give Zube park a try- maybe your kids are braver than mine! :)

Muffins with Mom

The week before Mother's Day Emery's school hosted Muffins with Mom.  It was a really fun morning for both of us (I think, me at least!).  I dropped Beckett off with a friend and Emery and I enjoyed a nice walk to school, just the two of us.  It's pretty rare that I get one on one time with her, so when the opportunity presents itself I really treasure it.

Once we got to school we found our table and Emery had a couple of gifts for me- a painting and a placemat with some a drawing of me, her, and Beckett.  It was really sweet.  We ate some muffins together, talked with her school friends, and took some pictures of ourselves.  :)

After we ate all the classes performed a song for the Moms and it was SO cute!  There are some pretty little ones at her school and they are so entertaining to watch.  Emery did really well- she's become quite the performer and she was SO excited to see me in the audience (aawww...).

I love her school and I am so happy they put this on and we got to spend a few extra minutes together in the morning.  When it was time for me to leave she just cried and cried and cried (which doesn't happen!) and it just broke my heart.  Her teacher said she ended up having a fun day at school and got to be the calendar helper which pretty much made her day.

Thanks for the muffins and the presents, Emery!  Your the best and I love you!!! :)

A Day at the Ranch

A couple of weeks ago our friends invited us to their Grandma's house at "The Ranch".  It was only 30 minutes away from our house, but felt like we were deep in the country.  They have about 8 acres and several horses- miniature and quarter.  We spent the morning feeding the horses, having a picnic, exploring the land and playing with the biggest attraction- the 5 pound dog Bam Bam.  It was a blast!

Thanks, Rachel, for a super fun day!!!

Dance Family

Still trying to pay catch up a little bit here, so bear with me.  Alright?  OK, moving on.

At the end of last month (April 28th) Emery participated in her (and my) first dance recital!  I am totally new to this whole world of dance, but Emery has totally embraced it and fallen in love with it.  I really wasn't sure how it would go with her since it is so structured and she's, well, impulsive, but I'm super proud of how much she has learned and how she seems to genuinely enjoy it.  She loves to come home and teach all of us what she learned in class that day and that little girl can arabesque (totally had to spell check that word) her little heart out!

So, anyway, a few weeks before she got all dolled up on a Saturday afternoon to take pictures with the other girls in her class and individually.  We joined the mob of dance moms at the studio and survived pictures and celebrated with some Orange Leaf (we ALL deserved it!).

 Her recital was still a couple weeks away when she took the pictures and she asked me EVERY DAY if it was finally recital day.  She's so funny she would say "Mama, is today recital day?" and I'd tell her no and she'd say "So, it's after this day?" and we repeated this question and answer session every day until it was finally recital day for real!

Her class performed on Sunday afternoon (show 3 out of 4), which was all the preschool classes.  The studio did a great job putting on the show.  Each dance was a couple of minutes long- they would line up on the stage, perform, then exit the stage.  Quick, quick, quick which is perfect for a bunch of 2-4 year olds and their siblings. 

 Emery was the 3rd dance and so she got to stay and cheer for the other classes (which is what she wanted to do) and she sat through all the performances really well.  After her performance we all went to get her from backstage and gave her our flowers (from us and Beckett).

(I had to include this one again- it cracks me up!  No one was having picture taking as you can see.  The flowers had turned into swords and Beckett was dressed like a Hawaiian.  Love my people!)

I got a couple of better ones outside after the show was over.  I really am such a proud dance mom!  She did a good job performing.

We took her to Main Event for pizza and games to celebrate.  We've never been there before but it was SO fun!  I don't think you are ever too old to enjoy arcade games and pizza.

We are also now officially a Dance Family!!! :)

A Train Kind of Day

So now that I feel caught up on all of our Maui adventures I can move on back to our regular life.  I've had so much fun going back and looking at all our pictures of Maui it's hard to walk away.  But, our vacation eventually ended and we came back home to reality (that moved along just fine without us for 7 days!).

Our first Saturday home we decided to go see the train museum in Katy.  Beckett is currently fascinated by all things trains and cars.  He is totally content as long as he has a car or train in his hand and he is chugging them along (sound effects included).  Katy is actually named for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad that ran through here many many years ago, so there is alot of train history to go see.

I've been wanting to take them to the Katy Depot for a while now and so we finally did.  It's the original depot used by the railway that has been restored by the Katy Heritage Society.  They've done a great job and we even got our own personal tour of the building.  She showed us the ticketmaster's office, the waiting rooms, and luggage room.

 (He kept shouting "TRAIN!" "TRAIN!")

I thought it was fascinating and the kids just wanted to play with the coin machine and scream at the model trains.  After out tour of the depot we went to see the caboose.  It's closed and locked, but you can still climb the outside and sit on it.  They LOVED it!

After we left the Katy Depot we headed up to our favorite train place- the train park!  It's an amazing park- it's huge and they have made a giant play structure that looks like a train.  I don't think the kids have caught onto this yet, but they've never asked why we call it the train park.  Beckett is finally a good age for these places so they have a lot of fun when we go.  Each one takes off in a different direction (which is awesome) and they climb and run and swing.  It's great!

After lunch and naps we all somehow ended up in our bed.  I don't know if this has happened before, but it was really sweet.

 We all decided there was only one thing missing from our Saturday- haircuts!  So we got out the clippers and the scissors and everyone got a little trim.  It was more obvious on some of us...

I love our weekends together and the adventures that we have!