I'm back!!

Wow- I have been a super bad blogger lately!! I don't know where the time has gone! I check blogs every day, but I haven't updated mine in 2 weeks! I guess we have been really busy, which is good!

Here are a few highlights from the last few weeks:

Addyson finished swim lessons- she loved every minute!

Group picture of swim lessons- notice the teacher holding onto Addyson because she kept trying to inch off to the side to jump into the deep end......sneaky little thing!

Father's Day!! This is me and my daddy and LeeAnn. We celebrated with my dad on Saturday night and cooked out steaks and had a great time! I love my dad! We were drinking wine-a-rita's and they were tasty!

Ryan made my dad a cooler (and he made his dad one also) for Father's Day. They turned out really nice and both my dad and Keith (Ryan's dad) really liked them! I didn't get any pics of Father's Day festivities with Keith, but we celebrated on Sunday with shrimp fajitas and had a really good time over there as well! Ryan watched golf all day and relaxed after we went to church that day. He also got a new power tool set.

Addyson and Hallie playing at my parent's house!

Now it's Hallie's turn to hold Addy...

Addyson in the car- she wouldn't smile for anything.....

Until I bribed her with something..... (can't even remember what it was!) By the way, she has fixed her own hair in the picture if you can't tell!

Last week I taught Vacation Bible School at our church. They really needed some more volunteers so I took on a 4 year old class. We had 840 kids come to VBS- It was a really neat week!

This last Monday I went to Hawaiian Falls with my sister and Hallie and one of LeeAnn's friends Leah and her little girl. Addyson loved every minute of it! We'll have to go back soon!

We have a big 4th of July party planned for this weekend at our house. We live outside of the city limits so there will be lots of fireworks right in our front yard- should be a good time!

Great weekend!

We had a great weekend! Friday night Ryan and I went out for one of our friend's birthday's to 8.0's in downtown Fort Worth. My friend Jana had reserved tables and provided food and we were supposed to be outside. Due to the pending big storm, they moved us inside. It didn't end up raining so after we ate we went outside and had front row seats to a great band. The weather was PERFECT and we had a great time!

Saturday was project day. Ryan, Keith (Ryan's dad) and Dustin (Ryan's brother) came over to help construct Addyson's new playset for outside. Addyson had swim lessons in the morning and then I kept her occupied the rest of the day with things so she didn't see what they were doing. They worked all day in the heat (and it was super hot!) and finally got it finished. She was so excited when she saw it!! We actually decided to position this set as from the "pacie fairy"! Ryan and I were both worried that it wasn't going to work and we decided that if she put up too much of a fight that we might wait until 3 to take away pacie! Ha- we are so bad, but we reason it out as - "What is it hurting that she has a pacie at night??" Well, so far so good on the pacie! After she saw her playset we talked to her and said that the pacie fairy brought this and in return she had to take all of her pacies and give them to little babies like Clayton. She agreed and went to bed last night without it!! Right now she is napping and didn't have it either! Yea! 2 for 2! We'll see if it lasts. However, I do really just need to throw all of the pacies away so she never finds one!

We had all of Ryan's family over on Saturday night to play on the new set, eat pizza and visit. It was a great night! Here are some pics:

Building the play set

It's done!!

Loved this pic of Brittany and P-Rae

Dustin had gotten this rocket set at Hobby Lobby. You buy little motors and the rocket shoots up 600 feet in the air. All of the kids loved it! The rocket comes back down with a little parachute and then the kids would run to find it. Addyson is wearing a swim suit top around her neck..... (just in case you were wondering!)

Eating pizza at the picnic table on new playset!

Brittany and Grams on the porch swing

Of course by the end of the night, all of the kids were playing on the "old" playset that Addyson has. Whatever!! You buy a big new set and they still play on the old one! It's kind of like when kids like the box better than what is inside! Nana was super-trooper last night and chased the kids around all night- they LOVE playing with Nana and we are all so lucky to have her! Addyson woke up still talking about how nana was going to throw her in the hole! (Tucker dug a hole in the backyard and nana was carrying all the kids around and pretending to throw them in the hole. They thought it was hilarious!)

Today is me and Ryan's 6 year anniversary!! We are not really doing anything too exciting- we went to church and had leftover pizza for lunch! This was one of the only weekends we had where Ryan could spend a whole day putting together the playset, so we'll probably go out next weekend for our anniversary. Tonight we have Boot Camp again! Woo Hoo! Pretty exciting anniversary! I must say the last 6 years have been wonderful and exciting and I am so glad to have spent them with my best friend! It is hard to believe that we have been together for about 11 1/2 years and married for 6, only "breaking up" for a day and a half! Here's to many more! I love you Ryan!

Bunco!

Last night I hosted our neighborhood bunco group. There are about 12 ladies in the neighborhood who get together once a month to play bunco. Whoever's house it is at is responsible for providing snacks and drinks and getting prizes for the 4 winners. Everyone brings $5 to go towards the next month's prizes. It's always a fun night! Well, until last night when the torrential storms came through. I had spent all day cleaning house, getting ready, about 5 trips to the grocery store, etc. So, needless to say, I had invested some time in my bunco responsibilities.

At about 6:00 Jennifer came over to help me get everything ready and she said- "There are some really dark clouds out there- I think we are about to get some really bad storms!" I said- "Really? I haven't had 2 seconds all day to watch TV and I haven't been paying any attention to outside. I am sure it will be fine!" So, we were frantically getting everything ready for the party - I still had tons to do. Jennifer made some delicious cheesy jalapeno squares (ha ha- this is actually a joke because due to power failure they didn't exactly turn out as planned and we ended up throwing them away)! I made a fruit pizza, poppy seed sandwiches, homemade guac and hot sauce (okay, Ryan made those!) and a homemade cheese ball (okay, Ryan made that as well). So, then comes the rain and power outage (just flickered on and off 5 times or so). I started getting worried that I was going to have ALL of this food and no one was going to come!! Luckily, the storm passed through and 9 people ended up coming (which is all I was expecting).

However, due to the power issues, my top oven is now doing really weird things. I will not be a happy camper if we have to replace the 2 year old SS double oven!

Anyways, everything turned out good and I got 4 buncos- which for those of you who don't know anything about bunco, that is a lot! I definitely couldn't have pulled it off without sweet Jennifer's help! Thanks- I owe ya one!!

Best Friends

Addyson did better at swim lessons today! She was better at sitting and waiting her turn and she didn't scream as loudly that she wanted to swim by herself! Here she is before we left the house:

Addyson was also being super sweet tonight. When we got home from working out I threw her in the shower with me to kill 2 birds with one stone. She loves to play with shaving cream on the shower door and draw shapes and such. It keeps her entertained! I put her up on the bench to wash her hair and such and we were listening to the Sara Evans CD (Remember the mother's day present??). This is one of my all time fav CD's to sing along to. Great songs on there to sing in the shower!! Anyways, we were dancing, being silly, laughing and she grabbed my cheeks and said - "Mom, I love you. You are my best friend in the whole world". It was so sweet and just melted my heart. Getting teary eyed just writing it! I truly hope that we can always stay best friends and that she always thinks I am fun to be around. After we got out of the shower she likes to go and cuddle with daddy and watch Mickey Mouse ClubHouse. Here's that pic:

Swim Lessons!

I'll give a quick recap of our weekend: Friday night we went to Fuzzy Taco with some friends from church. It was yummy!! Ryan and I have been participating in "The Biggest Loser" at church and have been working out 5 days a week at boot camp. It's hard work!! We went out to eat Friday night as our cheat night! Boot camp is for 3 weeks and there are 4 teams (about 160 people total participating). It's been fun!

Saturday Ryan took Addyson fishing down at our neighborhood pond. They caught about 20 small fish-so they had fun! I mowed the back yard while they did that! Saturday night I went to Tara Moore's wedding and Ryan went to a crawfish boil. Addyson stayed at Nana's house. I didn't have my camera at the wedding, but I did get a pic of me and Tara on my mom's camera. I'll see if I can get that from her. It was a really nice wedding and I am very happy for Tara. Her and her hubby, Kyle Miller, are very cute together and I'm super jealous that they are on their honeymoon right now!! Kyle is a firefighter and Tara is in nursing school- they will live in Garland.

Sunday Ryan and I went to breakfast and then picked up Addy Tate from Nana's house. We bought some flowers and planted those and then just hung out the rest of the day. Here we are starting another week!

Addyson started swim lessons today. All of the other kids in the class are at least 4 and my "little" Addyson is 2 1/2! When I say "little" I don't really mean it because she is at least the same size if not bigger than all the 4 year olds in the class. Not sure how she is such a giant! She also thinks that she is an Olympic swimmer because she kept wanting to just jump in the water and swim by herself. She has NO fear. She was yelling at the top of her lungs- "I want to swim by myself" and "I don't need swim lessons" all during the class and 3 times she went into the pool without the teacher because she thinks she is big and can do it all by herself. Ahhh! I had to go and tell her 20 times to not get in the pool until it was her turn (the kids sit on the side of the pool until it's their turn). When it was her turn, she was loving it! She was begging the teacher to let her go under water and finally they let her. It wasn't in the "plan" for today but I think they just wanted her to stop asking!! :) She was all smiles when she came up!

First one in the pool!!

One of her little escapes into the pool...

Wee!

Porch Swing

While we were down in Port A last week I fell in love with sitting on the balcony at the condo and just swinging on the porch swing. So this week I decided that we needed a swing at our house! I convinced Ryan that we could grow old together on the back porch swing! Ha Ha- just kidding! Anyways, here it is! We are enjoying it!

We bought it from a guy that makes them at his house. I have driven by a few times on my way to Stephenville and I remembered it and went over there on Saturday and picked one up!