Blue bonnets

We went with some friends to take pictures in the bluebonnets and here is one of the final pictures. Gavin is still editing the other ones when he finds time, but I couldn't resist posting this one.

Salad recipe

I'm loving this southwestern chopped chicken salad. Here's a link to the recipe:

http://www.greensnchocolate.com/2012/05/southwestern-chopped-chicken-salad.html

It's light but full of flavor and crunch. I made it again without the chicken and it was just as delicious!

Easter Egg hunt

Emery, Bella, Drake (Bella's older brother), and I took a trip with our playgroup to the Mercer Arboretum for an Easter Egg hunt. I'm forgot about how many fun pictures I took. Here's a few of the best ones:

Emery was obsessed with this funny teething binky that day and wouldn't give it up. 

 I snapped this picture because this is honestly how most of the hunt went. She was having a rough day. :) Until the candy. That cheered her up.

Here's Emery with one of my favorite kids ever. He always runs up and hugs me whenever he sees me and is the sweetest boy you can imagine. He watched Emery for me while I went and hid some eggs and I looked over at them and he was holding her hand, leading her everywhere, it melted my heart. I asked my friend (his mom) if he was betrothed because I want Emery to marry him. :) She might have some competition though because all this week Bella has been saying she loves him and is going to marry him. Good thing I have a few years before I have to start worrying about that stuff for real. 

Happy Easter!

My favorite part of this picture? Gavin somehow caught Emery's little toes in the picture. She has the cutest, chubbiest feet in the world.

"I looked out the window..."

"...and what did I see?"

Unfortunately it wasn't popcorn popping on the apricot tree. It was this: 

 And there is NO WAY I'm even considering taking an armful of that stuff and making a treat. BLECH. 

So I woke up this morning and as I was closing our bedroom window I looked out and saw these HUGE and BRIGHT yellow masses of...something. I seriously thought someone or something had thrown up in my yard. These pictures are taken a few hours later and do not do justice to the grossness that is this stuff. 

Apparently it's slime mold...which is WORSE than someone puking in my yard because according to the 10 sites I read (thank you google) you can't get rid of it. You just have to let it dry up and go away and then it will come back again if it gets too wet. 

 See the spot on there that looks like it's OOZING? That's where I stepped on it this morning to see what it was.

Gavin and I were so disgusted this morning staring at it. I told him my job is so much harder than his because I have to clean this up. Just so everyone is clear: cleaning up SLIME MOLD is harder/more difficult/gross/awful than being a patent attorney. Ok..maybe not, but it's way less glamorous. :)

It's supposedly harmless...but I'm digging it up, triple-bagging it, and throwing it away anyways. Maybe I'll burn it, burn the ashes again, then flush it down the toilet just to be safe (possibly crazy?).

On a happy note, look at that cute little pepper!!!!

My little gospel scholar

Emery loves this old, ratty copy of the Book of Mormon that I use for morning scripture study and I find it deposited all over the house wherever she has been playing. The other day she took it out of the scripture drawer and took it outside for a little sunshine study session. 

I was feeling so proud of her until she decided she was finished and promptly dropped it in the black bowl full of water. Sigh. :)

Hoarder

I confess: I'm a box hoarder. I've been keeping the boxes from everything lately and this is why:

We have these little nooks in one of our upstairs bedrooms that are perfect for a little fort. I've been saving boxes to use as building blocks. We had some kids over the other day and I figured it was a perfect time to bust them out. I have quite a few more but these did the trick. There was even a secret room on the front thanks to the IKEA boxes we still have. It was a blast.

New teeth=sick baby

Emery is getting some new teeth--her one year molars I think. She was pretty good through her other teeth, but these ones are rough. She has had a fever for the last two days and has been so sad and tired. One day all she wanted was just to be held. Gavin was taking advantage of as much snuggle time as she would give.

Poor girl. She's totally zoned out. Happily, she is doing much better today. Her appetite hasn't quite returned to where it was before but she has improved lots. I think we're going to survive this round, hope the next ones are a little nicer to her. 

Undies for Everyone!

A few Saturdays ago Gavin and I dropped some drawers for the Tomball Independent School District's underprivileged youth. Translation: we participated in a one mile run that instead of paying money to register you paid with a pack of children's underwear to be donated to a local school district. My friend Stacia, who's daughter I babysit, was on the committee in charge so we took Bella with us to support her mom. And we had a great time! Plus we got a tshirt out of it. I'm a sucker for anything that gets me a shirt. 

Here we are, sporting our shirts. It was a grueling one mile, but somehow we made it through alive.

Here's Bella at the halfway mark, parched! She did great!

Emery got to travel in style. She did get out and walk for part of it, but she didn't want to stay on the trail  because she's an over-achiever like that. :)

I really liked the idea of donating underwear for this run. I guess the woman who started this organization was a social worker in the district and was tired of all the toy drives and finally spoke out, "these kids don't need toys, they need UNDERWEAR!" It was a fun Saturday morning activity and also felt like we were giving back to the community a little bit, even if it was only a few packs of underwear.

Stair slide, thank you IKEA

We recently bought a desk from IKEA which came in about 4 different boxes. One Saturday night Gavin had the genius idea to make a slide on the stairs for Emery from the leftover cardboard. Emery had so much fun and Gavin and I loved watching her. I'll unashamedly admit that I tried out the slide too, but alas, I've outgrown the days of cardboard slides and I'm just too big now. Sigh.