Pecan Bend

I

I have previously mentioned my trip to Texarkana to hang with Dani--this all came about b/c my thoughtful husband thought it would be fun. He planned to help a coworker in town while my mom watched the kids so I could go play. Sweet, huh? Dani picked me up at Starbucks and off we went...we started with the grand tour of TAMU-T, her new college. Then we met Alan at a popular cheeseburger place downtown for lunch. Lunch was delicious, stories were told, jokes were made, bellies were filled. A qualified success. After that we headed to the farm--it gets to be called a farm b/c there are over 80 pecan trees. Pecan Bend is actually a peninsula of land way out into the country and into the Red River. I've heard about this place for a year and got to put faces with names--like Ribeye and Norman, the Longhorn cattle pets of the neighbors. I was also really looking forward to meeting Humphrey Bullgart--a mini bull who runs the show out there, but that day the "show" took Humphrey elsewhere. I did get to meet Lucy, King, and Lady the dogs of the country home, and Maggie and Coco--the horses. After touring the house we fed the horses animal crackers and then let them out of their pasture to run around--super funny to watch baby Coco run...next time you kids see Alan, ask him what happens when the horses are running around excitedly. Later Alan took us down to the river (shall we gather?) to look around and Dani even let me sit in the front seat of the old Land Cruiser. These pictures really don't give the Bend justice, it's lovely out there....and I had a great day catching up with my friend--whose diaper I didn't have to change all day....

Mid week fun

Yea, my picture uploading issues have resolved themselves! I'll go back and add pics to the last blog in a bit. Last Tuesday, the Denlers, Robyn and Kingsley and Lia (that's Leigh and Baby Mia's celeb combo name) went to Betty Virginia for some mid week fun--seemed like a real treat on a school night. Year round school never seems long until June. Anyway, we waited until 7:30 to go thinking it would be cool enough to avoid a lot of sweating. That didn't happen. But the kids had fun running around, Josie especially loved talking into the phone things and the fireman's rope thing. Liv especially loved posing for pictures and helping baby Mia play.

The last picture is of Josie at the library--it's our Tuesday activity. We sing songs, practice the ABCs, read books and draw. Josie really just wants to draw but that's the last thing we do so she puts up with the rest of it...

Argh!--Revised...

So, I've been trying to post this for four days now, but I am having a problem uploading pictures--all seems to be going well and then I get a "bad request" error. This has never happened before and I'm not doing anything differently other than the pictures I wanna upload were taken with my new camera but I can't see why that would be the problem. And I've got big things going on, man.

There's Success Night at Liv' school--we got to see an overview of her work of the year. Her progression and reading and writing has been amazing. The other highlight of that evening was cleaning out her desk and finding 10 socks shoved in the back--a picture would really b effective here, for instance. Yes, an entire week's worth of socks have been held captive, thankfully they are clean and resting comfortably back at home. I also had some pics of the current state of the bathroom--which is mid float. I went to Burlington to look at baby stuff with Kris, and Josie went with us since she was a baby not too long ago and surely had valuable input. She enjoyed crawling in the storage bins under the strollers, while cute not very helpful. My cannas are finally blooming and I took pics of them early in the a.m. and Josie helped me out by playing cutely in her jammies on the big tree swing. I realize none of these events are too exciting, which is exactly why I felt the need for pictures to spice it up a bit....

Anyway, this week we are busy. Between trips to the library and Gymboree and school field trips and SYTYCD dinner parties and swim parties and my girl day in Texarkana and whatever the weekend brings, I hope I can figure out my uploading problems and have something more visually entertaining for the next blog....

The Great Camera Debacle...

is resolved!!! We got a new camera, I think it is my old camera's younger, smarter cousin. So, using it is very similar and it has almost double the megapixels, but still isn't so fancy that using it overwhelms me.....super happy and looking forward to getting my kids back in the habit of having every moment captured on film. The only event that I missed taking pics at was Liv's Bulldog Bash at school. There were a million bouncy things, cake walk, food, dodgeball, a cake walk, and a huge silent auction. Liv had a ton of fun and I won a soccer statue that Liv thinks is a trophy commemorating her soccer greatness. I also won an exclusive party for Liv to go on with the first grade teachers--two kids from each class and the teachers will go to the Duck Pond and play and eat pizza. I got one pic on my cell phone before it died and it is of Liv walking to the Bash....let your imaginations run wild with everything else that could have been photographed!

Ugh...now I can't even find that one....at least this will be the last blog w/o photos, right?

Suncatching

I've been stockpiling crafty things to do for the summertime, but Sunday afternoon Liv was being so sweet that I broke the sun catchers out early. She wanted to hang out with me and she does love crafting. While she watched the end of Enchanted I got everything set up. In the beginning, we were just gonna paint the fish, and add those to the end of year teacher gift for Liv's teacher, but we had so much fun with fish that we painted flowers and butterflies, too. We had 12 glitter paints to work with and it was a lot of fun. I pretend that these things are to entertain Liv, but I was also highly entertained--same goes for the potholder kit Liv got for Easter. After painting them all, we set them on our table outside to dry and played Frisbee while we waited for that to happen. Our sun catchers are now adorning our living room window. This makes me ready for summer! We have lots more crafts to do--many to do with painting and making things....my mom would call me a Minnie--Mom, what movie is that from??

I hope these days are the ones that Liv remembers....

Lowe's = Josie's Playground

We Denlers go to Lowe's so frequently that Josie knows the store like the back of her hand.  Which has been attached to her for over 2 years now, so she's pretty familiar with it.  She has fave areas, these include:  the lighting/fan aisle, the garden fountains in the nursery, the door section where she goes in and out of the doors for as long as she's allowed (picture her saying goodbye through one door and coming through another side and saying hello 2,000 times), and the bathtub section.  Here she is in a pedestal tub, using the sprayer thing like a phone.  She's a funny girl...

In other news, the bathroom is being taped and floated as I speak.  I dare not try snap pics of that b/c my husband is frustrated and saying bad words.  He's never done this before and is relying on internet tutorials to pick up the tricks of the trade......so, yea.

On a bright note, Kevin has finally come to grips with the fact that the camera I lost is not gonna get unlost.  He went camera shopping and found a suitable replacement, so hopefully this week we can pick that up and I can go back to picture taking with a camera as opposed to using Kevin's camera phone and emailing the pics to myself.

Liv and I did some crafting this afternoon, so stay tuned....pics included!