birthdays galore!

Alright, get ready for a doozy of a post. We got 3 (3!) birthdays, a Carly Rae Jepsen concert, father/daughter date and a Repticon event comin' at ya. All from ONE weekend! (EH, why break it up into smaller posts? ;))

First, Carly Rae! I've been so in love with her E*MO*TION album that I convinced Richard to go with me to her shoe at House of Blues. It was sooo fun! She's a great live singer - it was like one big sing-a-long! We even met up with friends John and Travis and got ourselves a VIP table (because general admission is for suckers... and youngins not like myself). It was simply marvy!

Me & John :D

While we were out, Meghan took the kids out to Mooya and sent us a few snaps (including a very blurry one of R3 - that kid moves around alot!).

(Not pictured - our Uber driver getting hit by a drunk driver and nearly run the hell over on our way back home afterwards! We had to help him file a police report! It was nutzo!)

For Valentine's Day this year, Richard decided to get all the kittens a "daddy date" of varying degrees. Sadie was up first, and they went for pedicures! Apparently they were quite the spectacle at the salon - but I wouldn't expect anything less. ;P

When Sadie came back, I took her to our first of our THREE birthday soirees - Miss Kennedy Bayer's first birthday party! (I asked the other littles to come with me and they were thoroughly not interested... screens > babies... but not for Sadie!)

The party was donut-themed, and Janine had it DOWN. Donuts everywhere! (Including adorable "Mom," "Pop" and "One" shirts.. in which all the Os were donuts... so cute!)

Me & Janine <3

Sadie with her party favors... (Which says, "Thanks a HOLE bunch!")

After Kennedy's party, we rounded up the whole crew (sans Meghan who went to Repticon Saturday morning... more on that in a second) to Miss Vera's Sweet 16th birthday bar-b-que!

(interchangable boys in pics, haha)

Culinary chaos.

There were no candles to be found, so we stuck one lighter in the cake and held a few others around while singing Happy Birthday. Making due with what we got!

Not pictured - Vera and her friends hurling cake & icing at each other post-birthday song. ;P

The whole night was filled with ping pong (notice the boys with a paddle in one hand, drink in the other...), Just Dance video games, hula-hooping... no wonder I passed out on the couch at 10 o'clock. ;P

Fur-baby lovins... :D

We even got to Skype with Ashlee from Europe!

We just love this girl.

The next day, I went to have a birthday lunch with Tristan + friends! He actually had a party on Saturday as well, but... that obviously wasn't going to happen. Thank goodness he was flexible with me. ;P

We went to Goodfriend, which is an adorable spot with delicious food.

You can even bring your doggies on the patio! So Norman had to join us, of course. He was impossible to photograph (what a brat ;)). 

After lunch, we hopped across the street to a little cafe for some tea and coffee... and Shaleah trying on baseball hats under her helmet (important to know if it fits, duh!).

Meghan at Repticon in Houston. We were sad to miss her amoungst our partying, but at least she had a swell time!

 Would you believe that I got sick two days after this mayhem? I think it was my body's way of going "WOAH THERE." But that's a story neither glamorous or interesting, so let's just appreciate how blessed we are to be so busy with people we love in one single weekend. :)

valentine's day weekend!

We had a very fun and busy Valentine's Day weekend with family this year. (Par for the course!)

Friday started off with yummy dinner and the most beautiful red tulips from my husband. :)

And on Saturday we went to Waxahachie to hang out with mom and Tonya! Mumsie had been wanting to do a pub/antique crawl in the downtown area for ages, and we finally got it on the calendar (unfortunately, Stephen had to work... of course! ;P). We moved alot quicker than I expected, because mom had a "3 minute rule" in the antique shops - "I just wanted to see if it was a bunch of crap... and it was!"  

At our first stop, The College Street Pub - best fried green beans ever!

We even ran into Roxanne! :D

Although Stephen had to work, R, Tonya and I met up with him after we got back from Waxahachie to have a good ole Chipotle dinner back at the hill. We got home late and got up early to hang out with Tonya and Stephen again for some girl-time and boy-time! Tonya and I went shopping for President's Day sales, and Stephen and Richard hung out at home and cleaned car headlights (FUN TIME?! ;P). After we all met back up, we went to a FABULOUS Ethiopian restaurant, Desta. Meghan and Nick went on a date by themselves to Mumtaz, because we converted her!

Family Valentine's Days are the best Valentine's Days. :)

perot museum with the littles

The first weekend of February we went to the Perot museum with our sweet littles. We originally planned to go to the DMA (because it's free!) but we realized we'd never actually been to the Perot as a family - so why not change it up! The kids were so funny - lots of "oohhs!" and "my turn, my turn!" but we wonder how much they actually learned... because there's very little reading going on with those kids at museums. (And I don't blame them! I swear, they need those guided audio tours more heavily advertised. I love those!) Here are a few pictures and a little video I put together - nothing fancy! Just the vibe for the visit. ;)

Emily and I taking a selfie in the hot-spot section, haha.

A picture of Sadie dancing (see video!).

Emily, before she knocked over her epic tower. (again, see video ;P)

I started getting a head-ache and decided to sit down for a little bit (there's alot to be mentally stimulated by!), and Sadie asked for my phone since I wasn't in motion... and took 47 pictures of geodes. ;P I was like "?!" when I got my phone back (because she'll never care to look at them again, let's be real!) but I made this little collage for her anyway because I'm trying to be decent. ;P That girl!

A REAL-LIVE PHOTO OF RICHARD III. This never happens!

Afterwards we went to In-and-Out for some lunchie yums, and it was just so sweet! We have such a darling time with our little dumplins... despite the "I'm bored!" cry 2 whole minutes after lunch. But we at least got them away from computer screens for a few hours. ;)

busy, busy weekend!

(Patting myself on the back for not getting 2 months behind on blog posts! ;D) Last weekend and SO BUSY. On Friday, we took all the kittens to Main Event in Frisco Emily's school band peeps - I had to head that way right after work, and thank goodness for the Main Event bar! ;) Saturday was errand after errand after errand, all while Richard helped Juju buy a brand new car - no big deal - and THEN we had Darrah and the boys over for burgers and Star Wars. Phew! Then on Sunday, I took the girls (sans Meggie, who had to work unfortunately!) to sweet Yesenia's baby shower BEFORE the usual Sunday shuffle to get them back to their mom's. But everything went off without a hitch, I kinda felt like dropping the mike come Sunday evening! (Which was the beginning of another full week... but I won't bore with any of those details. Let's just say I had mixers Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday AND Friday... *falls over*)

So, here's some photos from our busy weekend. :D

This is Sadie, after coming in Third Place in laser tag at Main Event. The conversation before this selfie went something like this: "Mommy, I came in 3rd place! And it was my first time playing it! Can we take a picture? And put #thirdplace?" (Always asking about hashtags, these days. ;P)

My weekend errand uniform these days consist of "button down, skinnies and lipstick" and I'm very unapologetic for it. This particular combo got me a "You look like Agent Carter!" comment while at the dry-cleaners, and I was SO INTO IT (after Googling who Agent Carter was, because I'm a dinosaur... at least with Marvel-related information).

We took Miss Sadie-bug to get a hair trim, and stopped by Corner Bakery for lunchies afterwards!

Mommy after her new car purchase. She and Richard make a SUPER team. :D

Sweet D brought over not 1, not 2, but THREE desserts for us to nom on after our yummy burger dinner (and... before? I regret nothing!). Two of which were of the fruit pizza variety, which I'm fairly confident is Juju's new favorite thing. ;)

The boys and girls were all in Star Wars gear in support of our Star Wars: Episode 4 selection for movie night - THEY ARE SO CUTE.

Emily, doing what she does (and R3 and Sadie were doing the same, just in their room - they're almost non-exsistent some weekends, guests or no!).

Me and my sweet Yesenia at her baby shower! 

And our girls (I feel like this is a very telling photograph of all their personalities. ;P)

There was even a Baby Azalia cocktail! I was so smitten!

The baby shower was at On Premise, in Deep Ellum, and Emily (our little artist) fell IN LOVE in Deep Ellum. "There's art every where! Everyone looks so weird, but it's, like, normal! Beards everywhere!" We officially decided to take her for a more thorough walk-through on her birthday date this year. ;)

Phew! Annnnd on Monday, R and I went to Mumtaz for their AMAZING buffet to reward ourselves for all our work. Shwing!

leaf blowin' dumplins

I just found these on my phone! Over the Christmas break, the littles apparently got the urge to tidy up the leaves in our backyard (which was a welcome change of pace from them causing trouble... they weren't the most well-behaved during this school break!). Thanks to Sadie's iPad and Emily's iPod, Richard and I got a few videos of their (silly) endeavors while we were at work. All in all, they did a pretty good job! ;) (R3 manning the leaf blower just cracks me up! And Sadie's still working on her narrating skills... she's always trying so hard! ;P)

mema's birthday!

We just can't get enough of Mema. Meghan tries to make it easy on her and therefore goes to her house alot, so we get reeeally excited when she comes over to our house. Especially on her birthday! Richard made steak AND crab (!) with mashies, peas and green-beans, ending on Meghan's custom Black Forest cake - YUM. All this while Mema and I drank our red wine together and went through old family pictures. Pretty stellar way to spend a Saturday afternoon. :)

a three-day/mlk jr. weekend

Oh, Three-Day Weekend! How much I appreciate you! After a couple of weeks of recovering from the 2015 Holidaze, I've never been so happy for a third consecutive day of rest in my life. We had the littles this particular weekend and did our best to take it easy. Going to the park, trips for frozen yogurt and ice cream, watching a ton of movies (Flashdance! Mad Max! ... The Minions Movie!) - and we even got to see Bob! It was just wonderful.

I took the littles to the park on Sunday and after a good 20 minutes I realized they were kinda over this particular location. (We've been going there for a year, they've kinda done everything you can do there!) Sadie was off playing with her new insta-friends, so Emily and Richard and I went for a little walk. Richard III was so bored, we found an empty trash-can and he got in for me to roll him around in it. ;P It blew 4 whole minutes! When we were walking back to get Sadie, R3 just said, "Nope! I'm tired of walking." and patiently waited for us to get back into the car and pick him back up (before I snapped a picture, of course).

We drove around the neighborhood a little bit and wound up at Monster Yogurt (while Meghan wasn't there! The horror!). There's a playground there, and I'm just trying so hard to get them away from screens for at least a couple of hours - whatever I gotta do!

Simple, quiet high-fives. ;)

This beautiful, moody teenager. 

On Monday I took the littles to a different park to give it a whirl, and thank goodness they were impressed! Begging-me-not-to-leave impressed! Even though Richard had to work on Monday during the day and Meghan had to work at night, we managed to end the day on a high note with seeing BOB. Dinner out with burgers & fries and MORE frozen desserts from Braum's!

I can't ever thank you enough, Three Day Weekend! I can't wait to see you again in February!!

2015 clean-up :)

I'd be lying if I said the end of 2015 wasn't hard. People quitting at work, the general stress of the holidays, Grandpa Jim... it was alot. I was buggin' pretty badly.

I love recapping the year on the blog, answering cute little questionnaires and the like in December... I like being a perfect internet person! But I had to forgive myself this time around because I was just so preoccupied on being exhausted and trying to care for myself and my family. Not really fun stuff to blog about!!

I was able to catch-up on alot of blogging the past few weeks (just old stuff from October, November and December) and I am finally sitting down with the rest of it. After watching a great many HILARIOUS family videos over the holidays, I had the fire/guilt/obsession in me more than ever to build this site as a place for the kiddos to look at in years to come. I've been doing it since 2012, it's kinda my legacy - don't want to have a wimpy legacy!

So, without further ado - the remainder of 2015... with a few bits of 2016 already mixed in!

Lunch with my favorite Sandra!

This is the epitome of the season, from Christmas Eve to Christmas to a few days later. My family and I kept saying "Merry Weird Christmas!"

And then huge storms, tornados - the lights went out at dinner! Merry Weird Christmas!

Baby Judy. :)

Baby Meghan!

Tonya and I trying on sentimental shirts, and R gave me pencil shoes for Christmas!

Sadie, who became a texting fiend after getting an iPad for Christmas. (We were going to Sprouts - no shoes for her at that store ;P).


And Scooterin' Sadie!

New Years Eve attire. #glamourous

And New Years Day potato launchin'! Not picture - fireworks and sweets the night before (thanks to Richard and Stephen - our biggest kids ;P)

Balcony seats to see Cirque De La Symphonie for Richard's Christmas present from Mumsie. :)

And a tour of Firestone & Robertson Distillery in Fort Worth as a part of his presents from moi!