Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Texas trip!

Since we have free flights this year, we wanted to take one last family trip before baby comes, and we decided to go to Texas since we had never been there and it sounded fun and different.  So we went to Craig and Devaun's from February 6th-10th. We got to Austin on a Saturday and went right to a really cool park for a delicious picnic lunch made by Craig and Devaun.  We walked around and looked at the natural springs that you can pay to swim in.  We thought people were CRAZY for swimming in that thing because it looked so cold, but when we walked down and felt the water ourselves, we realized how warm it actually was!  We then let the kids play on the huge, fun playground there.  Afterwards, we went and got ice cream at Amy's ice cream, which was so good.  After that, we went to the capitol and gave ourselves our own tour.  Next, we went by the University of Texas football stadium (Devaun's future place of higher education) to check that out for a few minutes.  Then we drove towards their home in Killeen and stopped in Round Rock to eat at a really good burger place called Hopdoddy Burger.

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church with them and then came home for naps and relaxing.  It was Super Bowl Sunday and Craig and Devaun had a ton of good food planned for us.  The girls loved making homemade pizza with them, and we had a million other good things to eat, too.  We played outside in their yard a little bit and enjoyed the sun for a bit!

Monday, Devaun had to work, but Craig took the rest of us to San Antonio to go take a boat tour of the Riverwalk and to see the Alamo.  Both were really interesting and fun.  The funniest thing happened though, when we were pulling into the parking garage.  Craig joked around about how it was on fire because of some dark smoke coming from the top.  Well, a minute later as we ate lunch in Craig's car in the parking garage, a fire truck pulls up outside right in front of us.  The next thing we know, bunches of people are gathering across the street from us and taking pictures with the phones.  Then employees all start leaving and we are just sitting there laughing and wondering what to do because we didn't hear any sirens or warnings.  Just then a golf cart filled with firemen drive right by us heading up to the top.  We got out of the car and realized the ground was wet and when we opened the door to the stairs in the parking garage, there was like a waterfall coming down from all the water the firemen were using.  So there really was a fire!  A policeman saw us get out of the car and told us we couldn't walk out to the street and that we had to go through the mall and out the other way.  As we were talking, the elevator doors randomly opened and it was packed with about 7 firefighters in it who just stared at us and didn't move, but let the doors close and kept going up.  So we went in the mall which had an alarm going off and it was filled with smoke, and as we were going down the escalator we had to stop for a second because a handful more of firemen were coming up past us.  Everything turned out okay, but all of these isolated events were pretty humorous to us.  We spent several hours between the Alamo and the Riverwalk, and they just started letting people out of the parking garage as we were done.  Good timing!  We drove home and stopped to eat Rudy's BBQ on the way back, which we all loved, but it was especially funny to see the amount of ribs our girls could throw down!

Tuesday, we hung out around Killeen and went to say hi to Craig at his office and check that out.  We couldn't stay long because he was busy finishing up a wisdom tooth pull, but it was fun to see where he is at everyday.  We met up with him at In-N-Out for lunch and then went back to Craig and Devaun's for naps.  After naps, we took the girls over to a park right by their house and stayed there for a while to play until Craig got home.  We ended the night by going to eat dinner at Dead Fish Grill, which was located on a beautiful lake with really pretty views.  Ryan and Craig ordered frog legs for an appetizer and Lucy got brave and tried it herself!

That pretty much concludes our trip because we flew out of Austin the next morning!  It was so fun to see a new place.  Texas was just how I pictured it!!

At Zilker Park, which was incredibly huge.  We couldn't even see the whole thing!
 Barton Springs, which is in Zilker Park.  This would be fun to swim in in the summer, but we heard it gets pretty crowded!
Amy's Ice Cream
 Downtown Austin.  We tried to rent some awesome swan paddle boats here, but the last one had just been rented out and it was way too windy to do them very well that day.
 The State Capitol.
At Hopdoddy's Burgers.  This place was crazy crowded!  We had to wait like an hour just to get inside the building.  It was worth it though- so good and pretty unique and trendy.  Awesome burgers, fries, and shakes.  Lucy took this picture of Ryan and Craig while waiting for our food.
 Craig and Devaun spoiled the girls with these gifts, and Lucy and Claire were over the moon about them.  Candy, notebooks, bubbles, lipgloss, etc.!
Lucy and Claire thought it was so fun to make pizza with them!
 On the Riverwalk boat tour.  This was pretty fun and relaxing too.  The weather was great for it too!
 This was the beautiful view from the restaurant we ate at the last night.  We got there right as it was getting dark, so we didn't get to see it for very long, but it was so pretty!

Monday, March 28, 2016

February 2016 little things

Sick girl, yet again.
I got these girls a little wooden valentine craft to color from Hobby Lobby.  True to their nature, Lucy hurried and quickly drew with just about one color over the whole thing and proclaimed it done.  Claire meticulously colored each heart with specific colors.  To each their own!  They both had fun!
She was supposed to decorate a bag for her preschool Valentine party, which we remembered to do approximately 5 minutes before leaving for school.  Whoops!  Luckily, I had all of the materials, we just had to do it.  She was pleased as punch with her bag.  Of course I got one for Claire too, knowing that she wasn't going to be satisfied without doing one if Lucy was too.
 Nae Nae sent a fuzzy warm blank for Baby Brother in the mail.  As soon as the girls opened the package, they threw the blanket over my belly to cover up baby brother and snuggled it.  They love him already.  And Claire may or may not want to steal every new blank we get for herself.  Girl loves her blankies!
 We used a Coldstone gift card to grab some delicious ice cream one night.  Everyone loved being able to pick out some fun topping for their cake batter ice cream (my kids are following in my suit with the whole cake batter thing going on). 
 These silly girls were playing around with these "hats" before dinner and kept them on while eating like it was no big deal.  They realized how goofy they were once Ryan and I actually pointed it out and took their pictures. 
Lucy, Claire, and Hudson had one last, big hurrah before he had to move.  Lauren and Hudson spent the day at our house to just play and hang out and also while their house was being inspected.  We sure miss them now that they are in Georgia!
 We typically just have girl dress up clothes, so when Hudson showed up with his policeman outfit, Claire jumped on wearing it and loved it!  I thought she looked pretty cute!
 Lucy and her selfies.  She is so cute about how proud she is when she gets herself in a picture. :)
We doubled with our neighbors, Bobbi and Jon Hain, to go do an escape room.  It was SO much fun! We had 45 minutes to find the clues and solve the puzzles.  There can be up to 12 people in a group, so we were with 7 other random people who turned out to be so fun to work with.  We escaped with just over a minute to spare, which is actually quite an accomplishment considering only about 30% of groups actually make it out.  We would totally do it again!
 After the escape room, we went to eat at Harvest pizza downtown/German Village area.  It was delicious!
 Another enjoyable Sunday afternoon walk during a random warm-weather day in the middle of February!  The girls rode their jeep around the neighborhood and we stopped to throw rocks in the pond.  Claire was petrified to get even remotely close to the water, and you can tell by the way her feet wrap tightly around Ryan while she's keeping a really close eye on the water.  
Lucy and Claire love to "hide" in their towels after bath.  And sometimes they like to just be goofy in them.  I love their clean faces and cute curled up toes peeking out.
 We finally switched Lucy to a real booster seat and she LOVES it!  She kept asking if we could drive somewhere so she could sit in her booster seat.  She likes being up higher (although I'm not quite sure that she actually is) and having a little more freedom to move around in her seat.  
These girls were playing "airport" one day and Lucy was carrying her baby through the airport and sitting with her lap child on the airplane.  Haha!
 Every year our Elder's Quorum puts on a pinewood derby contest for the whole ward.  This was our third year going and Ryan helped both girls make a car just a few hours before the event.  As you can see from the pictures, they LOVED it!  We realize though that next year we will have to put a little more effort into making it fast, because Lucy finally realized hers was slower than most of them and she kept asking why (even though she was fine with it). 

A visit from Team Calder

My good friend and former BYU roommate, Marcelle, moved just 6 hours away with her family to St. Loius for residency and they came to visit us.  I knew Scott pretty well too since we were all in the same ward when they dated and got engaged.  It was so fun to catch up and reminisce and also to meet their three super cute, sweet kids.  We did fun things like go to COSI thanks to some free passes I found, and we also tried out Thurman's burgers for the first time!  We are so glad they made the trek here and we are excited to be able to explore St. Loius sometime in the near future with them too!

Snow finally came!

I was totally fine with the thought of not having snow at all this winter season, but the girls thought otherwise.  When it finally dusted a little snow, they were pulling out the snow clothes and begging to go out.  As you can see from the pictures, there was hardly any snow and it was all melted by the next day, but they sure had fun playing in it until they got too cold and came inside for hot chocolate!
 They didn't let the lack of snow stop them from attempting snow angels!
SO distressed because of a little cold snow that got in her gloves.
 There's just not much cuter than a couple of little kids all bundled up in cute winter snow gear!