Lucy is 8!

I can't believe my little girl is 8!  Lucy's birthday was earlier this month. She was actually born the day Barack Obama won the election in 2008.  It was lame for me because I had just given birth and the only thing on TV was election coverage and then of course I live in conservative Katy so everyone at the hospital was completely depressed about the outcome.  I was disappointed too- I really wanted Mitt Romney to win.  But snuggling with my sweet Lucy cheered me up a bit.
Anyway, for her birthday I told her she could have a very small party while the boys were at a scout campout so she invited a few girls over and they swam, ate donuts on a string, played pin the tail on the rabbit and ate bean burritos and cupcakes.  Girls are so easy.  I kept waiting for it to devolve to wrestle-mania but it never happened.  Lucy's BFF's at church are quite a bit older than she is.  It's so funny but she is very drawn to older girls so we had a wide range of ages at the party.

I have been looking for a couple of months for a baptism dress for Lucy.  Every search seemed to yield either a super nerdy and painfully expensive option or something that like a mini wedding dress- often even a bit sexy.  Seriously!?  Then I started finding pictures of communion dresses that I loved but all of the links were in Spanish and I never found a single one for sale.  So I finally decided to find a way to sew my own.  I am no seamstress.  I hate following patterns and whenever I sew something new my seam ripper gets a lot of use.  This dress was no exception.  I spent 2 hours at Jo Anns picking out fabric and embellishments (that part I LOVED).  I spent $37.  Then it took 2 full evenings of sewing to get it right.  But I was so happy with the finished product.  Lucy and I took a trip to the temple and snapped a bunch of pics. So fun.  I brought along a Book of Mormon and about 10 minutes into the photo shoot when Lucy became completely bored with smiling, she suddenly became very interested in reading.  I got a few good shots of her that are very Pride and Prejudice like.  :)  Yes!

So we were assigned the date of Nov 19 for her baptism.  I read on a blog somewhere that it is easy to assume a baptism is short and easy and to underplan.  It's worth it to carefully plan all the details.  So I did that this time and was so glad I did.  It helped that I didn't have babies or toddlers at my feet.  :)  We wanted it to be simple and just were hoping that people would feel the spirit there and that Lucy would feel loved.

My brother Jim and his family made the trip from San Antonio, which meant the world to us.  Also my awesome sweet Uncle Bill, Aunt Robin and cousin Jeff came down from Jersey Village.  When I got up to speak and looked over at them I just about choked up.  Curtis and I have been orphans our whole marriage so it is always so special to have some family members come and support us.  Lucy, Isaac and Daniel and the Allen and Hansen younger kids all sang "A Child's Prayer" together.  It was beautiful and just so sweet and really helped to bring the spirit right before Lucy was baptized.  Jonah performed the baptism and he did a great job.  Our awesome home teachers, Shane Jasperson and Greg Sorensen were the witnesses.  We love those guys!  While Lucy changed, Curtis played a couple of short videos.  I'll link them below because they are so well done.  "My Joy is Full" is probably my favorite church video ever.

Lucy was given the gift of the Holy Ghost by Curtis, Jim, Bill and Dale Smith in our bishopric.  It was just sweet.  Then her teacher, Mel Fillerup and our Primary president, Katie Park both gave simple testimonies.  Lucy requested that these two speak- she loves them both and they have done such a wonderful job of teaching and loving her!

We sang "When I am Baptized" and "I'm Trying to be like Jesus" with my dear friend, Jana Rice leading and Mary Tait on piano.  I realized at I looked around at the room that the Katy 2nd Ward has truly become our family and we just love them so much!  We ate muffins and fruit and donut holes afterward and took a few family pictures.  It was a perfect day! :)

The Coat

My Joy Is Full

Baptism of Jesus

Austin Swimming Holes and Water Biking

Texas in the summer can be so miserable.  (I just really wish they would consider year round school but that's another post.)  It's too hot to even be at the pool and so many indoor activities are over crowded and over priced.  My girlfriends and I decided to head to Austin for a couple of days to visit some swimming holes there.  We had a terrific time and the kids did too.  We all stayed at a Hotel together with rooms close by so the kids could play board games together in the evenings.  The hotel staff was so accommodating to our large group (16) and even fed us all pizza one night. 

The places we visited were:

McKinney Falls State Park- This was gorgeous and the water was cool.  It was a little scary to jump off the rocks but other people there showed us where it was safe to jump and then we went at it.  All of our kids are older and are good swimmers and we all stayed close together.  It was a lot of fun!

Water Biking under the Congress bridge to watch the bats emerge was a great time.  We had a perfect view of the bridge and rode around while the sun was setting.  We saw plenty of bats but not the huge cloud that you will see in August or September.  Lucy and I rode together and it was amazing how quiet it seemed in the water, even though there were people on the shores and bridge.  Something about being on the water was just really peaceful. 

Barton Springs Hiking and Swimming- I loved this area and it was actually free.  The hike was probably half a mile and since it was in Austin and shaded it was actually quite pleasant.  The Springs were cold and we enjoyed climbing around the rocks and practicing our backflips and other tricks.  We spent hours there and when we eaten through our stash of Nutella and Ritz we headed over to Round Rock Donuts to have the World's biggest donut!  I have to say it wasn't actually very good and I was super tired by that point but fun to say we went.  :) 

The last day we stopped by Barton Springs dam and just hung out for a bit.  It was actually not my favorite part.  It didn't seem especially clean.  Too many people and dogs and too little water.  :(
I like Austin but I don't think I'd want to live there.  Definitely a great place to visit though!

Conference, Bluebells, Bluebonnets & EASTER!

I think we found a new tradition.  Well it was fun this year anyway.  For Saturdays General Conference sessions we decided to get in the car and drive to Brenham, Texas.  It's about an hour away and we were able to listen to conference on our XM radio.  We got to Brenham and the Bluebonnets were everywhere.  People seriously stop on the freeway and lug their kids out to the fields to get pictures.  I heard somewhere that there was a nice field behind the Home Depot so we checked that out.  It was so pretty and not too many other people.  We took some fun pics and then headed over to the Bluebell factory for ice cream.  Yum!  Then we listened to another hour of conference on the way home.  We were able to have a little downtime before the boys went to the priesthood session. 

I really love general conference and look forward to all the talks but it is a lot of listening in a short amount of time.  This little road trip mixed it up so that we were able to just stay home on Sunday and listen on our computer.  I loved Elder Eyring's talk on "Fasting."  I have been thinking about the untapped power in fasting and prayer and appreciated his words. I need to reread them all but Sister Wixom, Elder Nielsen, Elder Holland and President Uchtdorf all gave talks that really touched me.  In a world with such an overload of information, it was nice to listen to inspired words.  :)

I wish I had a picture to share but I didn't take any of our amazing Easter Feast!  An awesome family from church invited over 50 people to their home to have dinner.  The food was amazing, the company was so fun and interesting to talk to and we just loved celebrating such a special holiday with so many people we love.  We watched this video earlier in the day and loved it:
http://www.mormonchannel.org/watch/collection/easter-videos/because-he-lives

Annual Spring Break Camping Trip

We visited Pedernales Falls State Park a couple of weeks ago for spring break with several other families.  The weather was perfect in the day but a little chilly at night.  (75F and 40F)  We need to rethink out air mattresses for spring camping because they are just too darn cold!  Or we need better sleeping bags. 

We usually go to Huntsville State Park with these friends but tried something new.  Pedernales was very different.  The individual sites were very private.  The rocks and falls were beautiful and it was hilly.   Huntsville is better for a big group because it's quite open and you can call gather easily for games and fires.  But we had a lovely time and made some memories.  Oh wait, except for the last day when I totally melted down.  This will be addressed in another post. 

Brandi and I made cinnamon roll dough and froze it before the campout.  Then we let them rise overnight and cooked them over the fire in a dutch oven.  They worked pretty well but next time we will cook them out of the firepit and only using coals.  They got a little burned.  But they were good and it was fun to try something new.  I was really committed on this trip to having lots of interesting and fun camping foods.  Crescent Roll dough in a sandwich cooker with cinnamon was a big hit.  I also made a chocolate cake with whipping cream and it was simple and really good. 

The boys!  And check out the background!!

That's Isaac swinging on the rope swing in the freezing river water! Brrrr

The kids played Capture the Flag, Flag Football, Zombie Tag, Kiss Marry Kill and lots of cards and Bananagrams

Christmas in Colorado

For Christmas this year we did only one small gift and used the money we would normally spend to go to the mountains and play in the snow.  We went with our good friends (another family of 6) to the town of Alma, Colorado and rented a house on a few beautiful, snowy acres.  The snow was amazing and we all had a ball building forts and sledding. 

Unfortunately our sea level bodies did not appreciate the rapid assent to 11,000 feet and we all suffered serious altitude sickness for about 3 days of our trip-sob!  Daniel actually fainted in the lobby of our hotel in Colorado at 6000 feet (I guess he was super dehydrated from the long drive from Texas).  This is a pic of him with the super nice fireman who gave him oxygen. Look how green he is!


We also drove directly into a blizzard on our first day in Alma and had quite a time navigating our Texas vehicles around on the ice and snow. We did exactly what you are not supposed to do and exerted ourselves mightily digging our cars out of the snow.  Everyone suffered from altitude sickness and we ended up renting a couple of oxygen tanks, which pretty much saved our lives.  But overall it was a great adventure and the kids loved it and thanked us many times.

We made some great memories with our friends:

Building snow forts and sledding on the hill in front of the house


Digging out our trucks when they BOTH got stuck in the snow!


Cooking up a beautiful Christmas Dinner


Making Chocolate Mice (A Morse tradition)


Playing games, doing puzzles and coloring

If it hadn't been for the splitting headache and worry that my children were going to dehydrate (with us unable to drive through the blizzard to the hospital) it would have been absolutely perfect!  Our kids got along perfectly with our friends' kids and that made it SO nice.  It was also wonderful to have two priesthood holders there- they gave several blessings to sick kids and more than once we all offered heartfelt prayers together. 

I loved that our Christmas Day wasn't preoccupied with a bunch of plastic toys.  Each person opened their stocking and then one gift- we had all exchanged names and had a $20 limit.  Several gifts were handmade and those were the best!  We had so much good food and friends and that was really all we needed.  :)

Pink and Yellow

We had a pink and yellow baby shower for a friend recently.  I forgot to take pics during the shower to show all the yummy food but here are a few beforehand shots.  The Peonies are my Favorite!!