Memorial Day

Every year since ACU, we have been getting together with several of our college friends for either Memorial or Labor Day. This year was no different, even though one family had to bail at the last minute. We missed you, Ocheskys! We've been bunking at Ty's grandmother's lake house in Marble Falls, which worked fine when we were all newly weds. We'd just cram in like sardines. Now, everyone has at least 2 kids, so the house feels even smaller when we are there, but we love being together anyhow!

For some reason, my pictures are really out of order and I can't seem to fix it, so just hang on for a crazy visual ride. Here is Levi hanging out on the golf course. He LOVES playing with any ball at the moment, so was right at home on the golf course. 

Chase is posing in his superhero pose! Colt on the golf course. He loved having all that room to run around and to use his new golf clubs. 

Levi is signing "water." He is really getting into signing. He'll sign water, ball, more, all done, food, baby, milk. He also says shoes- "sss-ooss" and cracker -"ca-cuh," as well as bird- "buh." He is at such a great age right because he understands most of what we say and will follow simple commands - put that in the trash, flush the potty, pick up the toy, etc. 

Coop, Chase, and Colt were enamored with the golf cart. In this picture we are at the lakeside park, but the boys chose to play in the golf cart. Too funny. The eventually did make it into the water and had a great time ganging up on some pesky little girl. :) 

Sara and Juliet. Beautiful!

Here's a random story from the weekend: We were all down at the lake laying out and getting ready to grill some hamburgers for dinner. At some point in the evening, I noticed my camera backpack was missing. I had purposefully put my lenses and other gear into a regular backpack in order to deter thieves from seeing "Nikon" written on my real camera bag and be tempted to take it. Funny thing is, I had intended to put my camera in the bag as well, but with some serious pregnancy brain going on, apparently left my camera back at the lakehouse. Bad news for taking some cute pictures of the boys in the lake; Good news since my bag was mysteriously missing. I looked around our campsite and walked through all of the other sites of the surrounding families looking for it, but couldn't come up with it. I searched all of our cars and the house. No camera bag. I began tallying up the value of the missing merchandise which came to over $700 :( It kinda put a damper on such an otherwise fun weekend. 

Fortunately the story doesn't end there.... We told the golf clubhouse about the missing backpack before we returned to Austin and left Ty's cell number as a contact number. On Wednesday morning he got a call that the backpack had been found down at the community dumpsters and everything was accounted for!!! We remember seeing a strange teenager girl lurking around our stuff, and we assume it is her that took the bag. We don't know if she found no value in some lenses, an old Galaxy shirt from college, and the latest parenting book I was reading, or if her parents found the bag as they were packing their car to return to Sodom and Gomorrah, but either way, the backpack was disposed of. Some saint found it and made sure it got returned to its rightful owner. Thanks SO much!! I hope my boys learn such integrity from your example!

Where does the time go!?!

Since I haven't blogged for almost 7 weeks, I guess I'll go back to Mother's Day. My mom, brother and sister came into town, so it was fun to be together as a large family. It was also my mom's 60th birthday! We went to a paint-your-own-pottery studio and painted her a picture frame so she can always remember the weekend. We had fun eating out - Macaroni Grill, yum, and made our favorite Dr. Pendergrass cupcakes. Plus, Alethea and I took my mom to a tea house for her birthday - I was surprised at how much those tiny tea sandwiches really filled me up! 

It was also our 8th wedding anniversary, so Granny Rae watched the boys so we could go out and celebrate! We watched Iron Man 2, which was a real treat since we rarely watch movies in the theater anymore. We also sampled the tasting menu at Zoot in Bee Cave. It's a restaurant that serves local, fresh food and was pretty good! 

Also, Colt wrapped up his first year of preschool with an end-of-year program. The two 2's classes came out and sang a song for the parents. Colt is in the middle in the green shirt, front row. It was funny because he was the clown of the group. He kept waving, then sticking out his tongue, jumping around and being so silly. Most of the other kids had that blank look on their faces, but he was really hamming it up. Too funny, especially since he's usually really shy in new situations.