Texas!

You get 2 posts today!! We just got back from Texas last night. The kids and I were there for about 2 weeks and David flew in for a long weekend and to drive home with us. It was a wonderful trip, and instead of trying to remember everything we did, I'm just going to use my pictures to tell the story...

My mom flew into San Diego on a Wednesday so she could drive to Texas with the kids and I on Friday. We went and ate brunch at The Mission at Mission Beach. It was soooo good! I reccomend it to anyone. After we ate we went down to the beach and the kids ended up getting soaked, what kid can resist??

Grammy took the girls to get manicures and pedicures!

Pots read Sammy The Seal to the kids. As soon as he started reading I knew something wasn't right...he was totally making up his own version. It was pretty funny, but I think it was wayyy over the kids heads...they still laughed!

We went out to Nana and Papas house to BBQ and hang out and the kids got to slip n' slide! Soo fun!

We got a nice rain while we were at Nana and Papas and this is what we saw on our way home...

My mom and I took the kids to the Children's Museum. They love that place. They put on a small puppet show for us

and Abby was loving shopping!

We went over to Daniel and Ellen's one night for dinner and let the kids play with the water table, next thing we knew...

Grammy bought the girls new dress up clothes. Little princess'...or gangsters?? Haha!

Climbing trees!

And of course, no trip to Midland in the summer would be complete without going to a Rockhounds game. Ben with Juice the Moose!

We went to Dallas/Fort Worth for a weekend. This was my view out the car window on the way there, SO beautiful!

Kinda a dream come true! We stayed at the Westin at the Galleria in Dallas. They have an American Girl store there. I had a doll when I was a girl and of course thought Abby would love it. Grammy, Annie, Ellen, Abby and I went to the store and the girls got their first dolls. It was soo much fun! Definitely going back!

Abby and I with her new doll Brianna!

They had a small LEGO exhibit at the mall so I took the kids to check it out and this is one of Ben's creations...

My first ever Rangers baseball game! Soo fun!

He just had to have one of those fingers

Precious girls! They are such good friends! Really makes me wish we lived closer!

Me and my girl after the game. It was really hot...that's why I'm glistening...

Got to meet up with my cousin Nicole and her mom and little boy Tucker and her little Julia in her belly! So good to see her!

And no trip to Grammy and Pots would be complete without a big ol' bubble bath!

We had such a wonderful trip! Lot's of fun! Can't wait to see everyone again!

I'm baackkk! Sorry for the absence! I've had this particular post saved as a draft for awhile now, just never got around to actually editing and posting. David and I went to San Diego for a weekend with no kids to help celebrate a friends wedding. It was beautiful! The actual ceremony was at Point Loma overlooking the ocean (amazing!) and the reception (which I failed to get any pictures of) was at Balboa Park, very fun and cool. It was a nice weekend, but wayyyy too much driving for these country folk. So here are the few pictures we actually took and then a couple more....

This was where the ceremony was, it was cloudy the day of the wedding, but the day before at the rehearsal it was sunny and beautiful. Honestly kinda glad it was cloudy during the ceremony because when the sun was out the day before, it was just hot!

Me and my handsome man before the wedding...

Us with the groom (Daniel) after the wedding. And just as a side note, I was extremely disapointed with my hair that day. It was nice and full and curly before the wedding and after the wedding my curls had fallen and it was nice and flat (my bad because I forgot my hairspray and when I tried to get a small bottle of it before the wedding, dumb me accidentally got mousse, fail!)

On our way home on Sunday we took a detour with Justin (David's cousin) and his girl Bri. We went to Temecula and had lunch at Rosas! Yumm!!! And then we went and did a little hiking (which I didn't get any pics of).

This one is just kinda random. I made these quinoa patties, they turned out really good! HERE is the recipe for those (that I found on Pinterest!)

Ben and Abby got a couple sheets of stickers from their Grandma and this is how they used them...silly kids

And this is how we spent our family night...we went shooting. Ben got to shoot this little rifle and loved it (just like me!) It's really fun to shoot!

So, Ben had an amazing 7th birthday! He was sooo surprised! He knew we were going to go to Legoland at some point, but he didn't know that's where we were going on Saturday, he just thought we were going to San Diego to hang out. Here are the pictures that I did take, they didn't load in order and I don't feel like going back and fixing it...

This was actually as we were leaving the park, when we got there, there were just too many people around to get a decent picture of the kids in front of the entrance.

Ben at Dino Island. The kids are soo funny, they kept asking if they could go and touch everything made of legos...I thought all Legos felt the same. Also, Ben and I rode a roller coaster in Dino Island, it was soo fun! It wasn't super crazy or anything, but Ben was soo fun! He wanted to put his little arms in the air and then we would start to lean to the side and I couldn't help but grab onto him to make sure he wouldn't fall out, haha! We laughed the whole time, loved it!

These guys were outside the park as your walking up (there was a mom and baby on the other side) but at first glance they totally looked like real people, very cool!

This was one of our first stops. You could go in and build a little lego car and then race them down some ramps. The kids both built their own, Abby's was too short so it just went a little ways and then turned sideways and stopped. Ben's actually went all the way down, he did good. David decided to try his hand at it and built a good one, it went all the way down and pretty quickly. It was fun!

She was pooped! She passed out as we were walking to the car at the end of the day (right after we took that picture at the entrance)

Abby getting her drivers licese...she definitely needs a lesson on turning...she totally didn't get it, but she still had fun and they still gave her her license.

Ben getting his drivers licese. He did really good! They had stop lights, stop signs, had to drive on the right side of the road etc. He took it very seriously and earned his drivers licese!

This was cute, there were different instruments in the water and you could step on these censors on the ground in front of them to make them play music.

This was Abby touching that dinosaur

Abby and Wendy from Bob the Builder

Ben and Bob

Abby at the car building place

I thought this was too funny. I'm not a big Star Wars fan, so I don't know all of the characters, but I think I know the main ones. Well, they had a mini Star Wars land and at the end they have a bunch of these characters along the walk way. I figured the kids would want a picture with one of the more popular characters (like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader or something) but no, they chose this guy, Boba Fett, who I have no idea who this is (sorry Star Wars fans). Just thought it was funny who they chose to take a picture with.

And this is my birthday boy building with the legos. He had sooo much fun and was very surprised! Happy birthday sweet boy!

So I am literally on my elliptical exercising while I write this, technology is kinda cool, frustrating at times, but cool.

We've been a tad busy to say the least. Last week was VBS and it was tiring but I just love it! I love the kids, decoration, smiles and especially all those light bulbs that go off in those little minds as they learn about their maker! Love it!! This past weekend I got a teeny tiny bit of my sewing done. I made 2 shams to go with my new quilt for my bed (picture below is the front side of shams in mustard chevron stripes, back side is the robins egg blue floral and the rest is the actual quilt). I have more fabric to make some more throw pillows and I'm gonna try my hand at making a bed skirt...but I gotta scrounge up some motivation for all that.

Yesterday was the 4th and we just hung around the house. I made my flag cake (that I failed to take a picture of!) and a taco salad to take to our friends BBQ. We swam and hung out with friends and then went to the firework show. Oh, and I painted Abby's nails all patriotic, I love having a girly girl!

Well, I'm sweating pretty hard now so I'm gonna concentrate on not falling off of this here elliptical. We've got lots more coming up so I'll talk at you soon!

I need to do laundry and clean house but I am sooooooo tired!!! I actually can't do laundry right now either (seriously!) A pipe broke under our house and they're fixing it right now. I really do need to do laundry, Ben has like 1 pair of clean pants and David needs socks, hopefully they will get it fixed today. Seems like we've been on a movie kick lately. We went as a family to see Brave on Sunday...not such a good idea. It was an okay movie, but man, it got intense! There are some big bears in it, fighting, growling bears, and on a huge screen. I had both kids faces buried in me a couple times and they were half crying...yah...a little much for kids. Also, our theatre is doing a summer movie thing where on Tuesdays they show oldish kids movies for $1. This week it was Kung Foo Panda 2. I guess I had never seen that one, Ben had, I dunno how, but it was actually pretty good (and didn't scare the kids!) So that was fun. Ben has been doing swim lessons with a friend of ours and is like a fish! I'm soo proud of him, he has picked it up really quickly. Our church started VBS last night also. I never really got assigned to any particular job, so last night I sold the remaining t-shirts they had (sold out of those) and then kinda roamed around until I made my way to the game/snack room and ended up staying there the whole night and will probably go back there the rest of the week. I have also succumbed (sp?) to Instagram and have to say I love it, makes the quality of my phone pics soo much better (I think). Abby was having bad dreams or something last night (the cause of me being sooo tired today) and at one point David put her in bed with me and I couldn't resist taking this picture of this little angel sleeping...

My latest food obsession! 1 serving of plain oatmeal, 1/2 - 1 banana, sliced strawberries, honey, slivered almonds and a little unsweetened vanilla almond milk. Yumm!! So good and filling. I calculated it to be around 300 - 350 calories (depending on if you use the whole banana, almonds and how much milk you use).

There's a wall at church decorated for VBS that has a bunch of hot air balloons all over it, and I didn't notice that the kids in the balloons were actual pictures of people from church. Someone asked me if I saw Abby in the hot air balloon and I was soo confused...until I saw this...

First night of VBS, they were soo excited!