Outside fun

Wow, is summer over already? It's amazing what a difference it makes in my energy level to not be pregnant during the summer (Anna was born last August), because we did so much more this summer than last year! It's been a lot of fun! Evelyn played softball April-June, which she really enjoyed. We've been on many trips to various city parks and had a lot of fun when our Cox cousins were in town for most of a month. The first two weeks of August we spent in Utah visiting family, and then we had a whirlwind week getting everything ready for Evelyn and Edison to start school. So, without further ado, here are some pictures from our outdoor adventures this summer.


 

 

 

The kids had a lot of fun feeding this flock of ducks. The ducklings were especially fun and cute.

 

 

Utah sure has a lot of natural beauty.

 

 
All this coming and going is pretty exhausting...

  

 

Wheeee!

I just love this picture of David surrounded by kids.

We made paper boats and floated them on the lake. The kids thought it was pretty cool.

Harvesting potatoes from our garden

Sidewalk paint on our driveway. Evelyn did a splatter art picture and then made it look like it was made from accidentally spilling a cup of paint. Whoops!

The many faces of Edison

Looking over recent pictures, I've noticed that I take a lot of pictures of the boys: Grant is at an awfully cute age and Edison loves to ham it up and make silly faces when I bring out the camera. But here is a collection of pictures that have (some of) the many faces of Edison. He's such a funny kid. :)


Got to outrun Dad!

cross-eyed

cheese!

intimidating baseball player

 

I want to take a picture of myself!

Riding in style

Smile!

Yummy gingerbread house!

 

Recent pictures

Being the only lives-outside-of-Utah member of my side of the family, I often get requests to send more pictures of the kids. It's been awhile since I've posted any, so here you go!

Here's a happy girl! Anna is such a joy. She is generally quite content, happy, smiley, and talkative. She does these cute little squeals that we try to get her to do more often. She is loved by all. :)

One big thing this past week was that we assembled Grant's toddler bed! He is so proud of it, and he won't simply call it his bed. Whenever he refers to it, it is always "my big boy bed." I thought it was so sweet to see Edison reading books to Grant shortly after we put the bed together.

When family was out for Thanksgiving, Evelyn and her cousin Lauren switched stuffed animals for a month or so. They are planning on making scrapbooks that document some of the things the animals do on their trips before the girls switch them back. So here is Evelyn with Katie Koala.

Field trip!

This past week Edison went on a much anticipated field trip with his preschool class to a nearby pumpkin patch (not from the actual field where they grew, but it was lots of fun nonetheless). Grant, Anna and I were able to meet them up there and take lots of pictures. Here are a few of them.

The bus is here!

Edison loved picking up pumpkins and then getting his picture taken with them.

And of course, Grant had to do the same thing as Edison. It was a pretty overcast day, but Grant loves wearing a hat just about anytime we go out somewhere.

I've been trying to get myself in more pictures lately, so after the preschool classes left, I asked a volunteer to take some pictures of me, Grant and Anna.

Anna Rose

Hooray for pictures! Here are some fairly recent ones of our sweet little Anna. Anna is now 7 weeks old and is smiling! Little baby smiles are so cute. :) 

San Antonio!

This past weekend, David and I did something that we have talked about for a long time: we took a trip just the two of us! Thanks to David's parents and some friends who all helped watch the kids, David and I were able to have a 3 day, 2 night trip to San Antonio. It was so much fun! This is the first time we've done something like this since before Evelyn was born almost 6 1/2 years ago.

Here's a semi-quick rundown of what we did. On our drive down south we stopped in West, TX at a little gas station that is well-known for their deli/bakery, called The Czech Stop. They have some pretty amazing kolaches, and everything else looked pretty tempting as well. Then we stopped in Austin to visit the Texas State History Museum, which had been highly recommended by a friend. It was really cool, and I wish we had had longer to look at everything.


 

 

For dinner that night we stopped in the Gruene (it's German, but here in TX it's pronounced "Green") Historic District inside of New Braunfels at the Gristmill, which was also highly recommended. It is right on the Gruene River, so the restaurant has terraced seating outside that looks right over the river. It was so pretty! (not to mention the food was fantastic)

We stayed the night at a cute Inn in San Antonio, and on Friday we had the much-anticipated visit to the Alamo. I had never been before, and because David had read up on it a lot beforehand, the experience was quite different for him from visiting the Alamo as a teenager. It was fascinating and pretty cool to actually see the famed Alamo.

 

Then we walked around the Riverwalk, which is really neat and quite beautiful, and enjoyed lunch at a fun Bistro right on the river.

That night we drove up to the San Antonio temple (which was closed for cleaning, unfortunately, so we weren't able to go inside). But it is such a beautiful temple with a lot of wonderful stained glass pictures.

Here is a depiction of the Tree of Life. And while we couldn't get a really close look, I know that one of the trees on the temple has Bluebonnets (the TX state flower) underneath it.

Saturday morning we had fun walking around the San Antonio farmers market.

Then we made our way back northward and stopped in New Braunfels again. This time we went to a cute little museum that explains the German beginnings of the town. The highlight of the museum for us was talking with a little lady who worked there, getting some information that wasn't found in the museum. Then we kept driving until we pulled into Plano Saturday evening. It was a wonderful getaway, and we're hoping to make it a somewhat regular event!