Daddy and Cason's Day

Cason has been so interested in astronauts and outer space all summer long. He even prayed one night, "Dear God, Please let me be an astronaut and go to Astronaut school and learn all the right buttons to push on the space ship. In Jesus name, Amen." Is that sweet or what? So he's continued to talk about these things all summer so James decided we should take him to the Kennedy Space Center in Houston. Carter and I stayed here because there was no one to watch Carter and he wouldn't have made the day in Houston. They wanted to make sure they were there when it opened so they planned to leave home at 6:30am. The night before the big day James told Cason what they were doing the next day and he was so excited...so he was no problem to go to bed and the next morning even though it was early and still dark James went to wake up Cason and he popped right out of bed and said "Let's go to NASA, Daddy!." So they headed off with a bag of snacks and games and movies for the car. They spent ALL day and drove in to the drive about 10pm that night. Cason was even able to capture James on the camera and did a great job.

Devil's Den

Skipping rocks

Look at those eyes
Cason
Welcome to Arkansas
Every other summer James' mom's family has a big reunion out of state at a state park. The last time James went was the summer we got engaged, 1997. Since then we either had jobs that would not allow us to take off or we had a new baby or it was just way too far for us to go with the boys. This year it was in Arkansas. We thought that was very doable and were very excited about going. It would not be too long of a trip, about 7 hours total. And we knew we could stop on the way and spend the night and take enough stuff in the car to keep the boys busy. We left on Sunday night July 5th and traveled to McKinney to spend the night at James' aunt. This knocked 2 1/2 hours off our trip for Monday. Monday we got up and headed out made stops along the way to eat and such but all in all it was a great day of travel and the boys did awesome. We stayed in a cabin with James parents, as well as his sisters. It was a great little 3 bedroom cabin with 2 bathrooms. It was located in Devil's Den State Park and I highly recommend a visit. It was beautiful. The weather was perfect. There are numerous hiking trails, beautiful scenery, and they have a pool which worked great for the boys. It was really fun to see the boys in this atmosphere. They've never really been anywhere like that. They got to go "hiking" and learn(try) to skip rocks. Everyone had a fabulous time. I can't say enough good things about the week. We were there for 3 nights before we headed back home. I have almost 400 pictures. So obviously you'll only see a few.

July 4th

We are so blessed to have a great group of friends from church and honestly we can't get enough of each other. So of course we don't let any reason for a gathering slip by. That includes July 4th. This year one of those friends has added a pool so we were all able to go over there and hang out all day eating, swimming, eating, visiting, and just enjoying each others families. Afterwards we went home and rested so that we could go back to town to watch some fireworks. As usual Cason thought they were much too loud and was ready for them to be over. Both boys crashed on the way home. We had such a great day! (I would load more pictures but Blogger is being slow today)

More tommorrow....

I'm sure you are on the edge of your chairs because our family is so exciting:) I still need to post our July 4th celebration, our trip to Devil's Den State Park in Arkansas, and Cason's trip to Kennedy Space Center in Houston. Then I will be all caught up and ready for the 1st day of preschool this year. We are pretty much done with anything until then. Hope you all have a great evening.

A little bit of Carter

Cason did some things this summer that Carter did not so I need to give Carter a little attention. During swim lessons Carter got his hair cut. It was very needed. He had never been anywhere to do that. The only other haircut he had was at our house when Aunt B did it. So I took him to this cute little place made for kids. They even have seat belts in their chairs. They allow them to snack while they are getting their hair cut and then they give them a prize at the end. He did okay but the pictures are really funny.
The other picture is one night when Daddy and Carter were home alone. James decided to go to the bedroom to finish a book he was reading and left Carter in the living room...Carter came in to the room to see James with a sad face and an empty kleenex box. When James came into the living room that is what he found. Really too cute to get onto him.

Swim Lessons

Cason with his friends and Mrs. Kayla
Going off the side.
Cason trying his best.

We put Cason in swim lessons this summer. There is a great lady at our church that has done swim lessons for years and she was awesome! I'm so glad we didn't go through the city. I'm afraid that anyone else would have given up on Cason. He really liked the idea of swim lessons and loved being in the pool but he DID NOT like going under, etc. Just like his mamma! So the first day was awesome and after that every morning was a big fit. We had swim lessons for eight days. I went the first day but since us 3 moms and enrolled our kids together we took turns taking the kids which turned out to be great because he did better without me there but still was afraid. James tried in the middle of lessons to take him and get him a toy for "doing so good" with the stipulation that if he threw a fit the next morning "mommy has to put it up in our closet". So the next morning came, Cason threw a fit about going, I reminded him of the toy deal, and his response: "Just go ahead and put it in the closet mommy, because I'm not going." But in the end, we won, he finished lessons, and the next week on vacation he was going down the slide and jumping off the side like a champ. THANKS MRS. KAYLA!!!

Did you say we're at a baseball game

The scoreboard from the pool.
Daddy and the boys at the pool.

I've mentioned before that we live close to a AAA baseball team. For whatever reason, they have a swimming pool. It's kind of funny to me because you can't even see the ball game from the pool. You CAN see the scoreboard. Anyway, James dad works for a flooring company and one of the suppliers had rented the pool for the ballgame which included dinner. It was such a fun time. Our whole family was able to go with James' parents and have dinner nearby a playscape :) and then swim in the pool.

Our Turn to Have Fun!

Us on our anniversary after eating for 2 1/2 hours!
Our friends, the Brunelles.
Dinner at Simply Fondue.
The Cattle Drive.

We had been wanting to go somewhere with friends and what better excuse than our 11th anniversary. We decided to stay somewhat close. We went with our good friends the Brunelles to Fort Worth for the weekend. We left our kids at grandparents houses and headed out early Friday morning in time to be at Six Flags when it opened. Our friend, J.P., had never been so it was fun to get to do that. By 4:30 we were extremely hot and had done everything so we headed downtown to our hotel to clean up. We checked into our hotel, rested, and got ready to go to dinner. Downtown has a free trolley that goes all over downtown...it's so cute. It's called Molly the Trolley and comes every 15 minutes. And we were thankful for the Trolley since it started raining. We found an awesome Mexican food restaurant downtown and had a great meal, then walked across the street to Coldstone Creamery(as if we needed to eat anything else). We did some walking around while we ate our ice cream and then headed back to the hotel. Saturday morning we leisurely got up and walked downtown again to the best Barnes and Nobles I've ever been in and stayed there for a couple hours before heading to the Stockyards to find some lunch and entertainment. Are you noticing a trend yet? We walked a lot & ate a lot! And all the eating was really really good. In fact, my mouth is watering thinking about it. So we found some lunch at a Steak Place in the stockyards...best burgers ever(besides James' of course). Then we walked around some shops, museums, Billy Bobs, and then we thought we probably needed another eating place for a snack while we waited for the Cattle Run down the streets. The snack was good and the cattle run was interesting. Kind of weird to stand on the side of the street while Longhorn walk in front of you. Afterwards, we were again very warm from walking all day and being outside so we caught the trolley back to downtown to our hotel so we could clean up and you guessed it.....go EAT! What a great schedule we had. No children, no schedule, and lots of good eating! So we got back to the hotel and made reservations for one of the downtown restaurants, SIMPLY FONDUE! I can't say enough good things about this place. What a great experience. A 2 1/2 hour dining experience. The food was perfect. Every bite was good. I look forward to going again. So afterward we walked around downtown which was full of brides and grooms on horse drawn carriages, twinkle lights along the businesses, and bachelorette parties. We got back to the hotel and played cards for a little while before calling it a night. On Sunday we came home all refreshed to our precious little boys.

Our Little Friends

The little kids playing w/out the big kids.
The big kids swimming to the edge.
Silly faces outside of the library.
Cason and Carter at a great park in town.
Carter and a friend in the treehouse at the park.

We spend a lot of time with 2 couples who have kids almost the exact same age as ours. They are so fun to watch together. They all get along so well and have so much fun together. They've pretty much grown up together. It is such a blessing to have great friends like this. We are able to swap kids and go on errands, etc. We've also been known to split up the big kids from the little kids and take them somewhere fun. Here are some pictures of them together this summer.
Last summer us 3 moms went crazy so this summer we made ourselves a schedule and had one or two "fun" things planned every week to keep the kids busy and wet since it was just too hot to be in our own backyards. Our city library has a great summer program for little ones so we spent time at the library, free splash parks, each others houses, movies, indoor playground at Burger King and anything else we could think of. It was a blast! I could make a whole book of all our summer pictures...I might just do that!

Always behind..

Here I am again catching up on 3 months of fun. We've had such a great summer. It has been lots of fun to have James home more. The kids have had lots of fun playing with Daddy and we've tried to do lots of good summer stuff to give them lots of memories and of course to make scrapbook pages:) I'm going to post all of it as time allows...starting now. Enjoy.