No matter how long the Winter, Spring is sure to follow…

We have already started to have a fun filled Spring, we have been out riding our bikes and soaking up the nice weather while it lasts. It will be hot before we know it. Tess has her last PreK picture, next year we will be in Kindergarten and have our first official school picture. She actually let me braid her hair, people always tell me that she looks older than she really is. I am just not ready for any of it, not ready for her to be 5, not ready for kindergarten not ready for her to grow up. I guess this is why people have more kids.

We sadly lost one of our fur babies recently, Toby was not doing well. He was not eating and as it turns out it was his teeth. He had an infection that would require surgery and the doctor said that after they did the surgery and got him eating she wanted to run some additional tests because she thought that there was some additional underlying issues. We made the hard decision to let Toby go and not put him through the surgery and additional tests. He hadn’t been himself for a while and we had to think about his quality of life. It was a very hard day, and it was even harder to get Tess to understand that Toby wasn’t coming home. We all miss him and it gets better day by day.

Mona and Kevin came down for a couple of days during spring break and we finished up painting Tess’s room. Clayton and I had painted it purple but it was now time to paint the butterflies on her wall. My mom came over and the girls got started. I had two stencils and I think the butterfly wall turned out pretty cute. She loves it and she even made a hand butterfly herself.

The next day we went into town to Discovery Green because they were having an event for the kids, she played and was able to climb in various different construction vehicles. We saw some art cars also as they were promoting the art car parade. It was a great day to be outside and we all had a lot of fun.

This Spring we have already replanted our front flower bed, played sand outside, we went to a crawfish boil, an Astros game, and have been to a couple of birthday parties. We don’t really plan on stopping as every weekend in April is packed with activities. This year is already been busy and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down any time soon.

I am going to end this post with one picture that shows it is definitely spring time in Houston. 

Family Time

We took a quick trip up to Bedford in the middle of February and spent some time with the family. The girls visited the American Girl Store while the boys played guns. Tess has two American Girl dolls and loves both of them, one can fit in her back pack and she likes bringing Camille with her. After the American Girl Store we walked around the Galleria, watched the ice skaters and even made a build-a-bear. It was a full day.

One morning we were waiting for everyone to get ready so we could head out to run errands and Tess and I decided to Snapchat a couple pictures. Tess forgets about the app and then she sees it wants to take a million pictures. She really enjoyed the banana face one.

That night while the boys were out running an errand Tess scooted back in the chair and screamed out in pain, Mona and I looked at each other because we could not figure out what had happened. We put some ice on her arm and continued playing out game because we were not sure if she was in pain or if she wanted some sympathy. After about 10-15 minutes of her not moving the arm and she saying it was still in a lot of pain we realized something must have happened we got her shoes on and took her to an urgent care place, about an hour later we walked out good as new. She had nursemaid’s elbow. Basically the parts in her elbow came out of place and the doctor had to click everything back in. Her body relaxed the minute he put everything back in place. We are on the tail-end of this injury, so she should grow out of the risk soon. She was a trooper in the room and with the doctor.

We woke up early Sunday and headed home because we had bought tickets to Monster Jam. Tess had been watching Monster Jam videos for about a month getting prepared for the event and was pretty excited. She got pretty bored during the time trials, which I will admit is boring, but she loved the freestyle. In the end she said she liked it and would like to go back. We got tickets through the Buzz morning show so the tickets were cheap and great seats so if we have the opportunity to do that again I would totally take her again!   

Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365 page book, Write a good one...

We had a good but cold start to the New Year. Texas had one really cold weekend where the entire weekend was below freezing where we stayed inside all weekend and I passed on an activity that my mom did with us down to Tess. We made Ice Ornaments, before Tess went to bed we got everything ready and set the Water outside so that it would freeze overnight and make the Ice Ornaments. The first attempt didn’t go as smoothly as planned but by the second time we made some pretty cool ornaments and she was asking when we could make them again.

On one of the colder weekends we took Tess to the mall so she could run out some of her energy in their indoor play place. She loves running around and climbing on all the different obstacles, we have also taken her to the trampoline park so she can bounce out her energy.

Another indoor activity that comes around in the winter is the boat show, which for Tess turned into the RV show. She wanted to walk into every RV and picked out just the right one that we were going to move into. She picked out the perfect place for all her toys and she knew exactly where all her puppies were going to be sleeping. She was a little upset when we told her that we weren’t buying one and that we weren’t planning on moving. She was thinking we were going house shopping at the boat show.

Most of the time during January and early February we try as much as we can to find indoor activities that Tess will enjoy that will get us out of the house and burn some energy off. Even though Christmas is my favorite time of year it falls in my least favorite season, I hate the cold. What I hate more than the cold is having a toddler in the cold because when it’s cold you want to stay in bed and not get out from your warm bed, toddlers don’t understand this concept and need to be constantly moving.