First Hair Cut

Finally, at three and (almost) a half, Korley got her first hair cut on Thursday.

Truthfully, she got her first and second hair cut on Thursday.

I made the mistake of telling her that she would be getting her hair cut after school on Thursday. Apparently, she wanted to get a jump start on it and decided to cut some of her hair at school.

She was SO PROUD of herself, but once she realized that I was NOT SO PROUD, she quickly changed her story and said it wasn't her that cut it, but instead was Philip (the poor, innocent scapegoat of the 3-year-old class).

Fortuntately, she didn't do a ton of damage and only cut her front hair about chin-length, so our hair dresser was able to blend it in fairly well.

Here are a few pics from her first hair cut. I actually didn't get any of the finished product, but it really looks about the same as before with a little framing around her face.

Pics that should have been deleted

The kids are back in school, and summer (break) has come to an end.

Today, I was looking back through some pictures from this summer and realized there were a few that probably should have never been uploaded on my computer.

Exhibit A--this one is from Landry's 1st grade awards ceremony. Landry looks like she needs to make a run for the bathroom, and Jeff looks like he's plastering Korley to the wall.


Exhibit B--besides the terrible lighting and uninterested expression from Korley, this photo should have been deleted for other reasons. The girl sitting behind Korley? Just say no to crack.

Exhibit C--Jake and Korley proudly showing off their disgustingly dirty feet.

Exhibit D-- I have NO idea what's going on here.

Exhibit E--all dressed up and no Red Hat Society function to go to.

Exhibit F--this requires a little bit of explanation. When we were at the Ft Worth Stockyards a few months ago, Landry REALLY wanted to go into the museum and watch the video of the history of the stockyards. Instead of the people telling us that the room was full, they sold us tickets anyway and let us cram into a 12X12 room to watch the video with FORTY (and, yes, I counted them) other people.

Exhibit G--Jeff's lemon lime sno-cone tongue. He's going to kill me.

Exhibit H--This would have been a great picture of Jeff and our friends; there are a handful of pictures in the history of the world where Ryan Files is actually smiling, but this random picture crasher had to poke her head in the frame just at the time I was snapping the picture.

Exhibit I--She's got a fashion sense all of her own!

Exhibit J--FYI, tropical places tend to fog up your camera lens.

Exhibit K--a little windy.....

Exhibit L--I'm messing around with my camera settings. Jeff's getting a little annoyed.

Exhibit M--same as exhibit L.......

First Day of Second Grade

It's so cliche. I've said it multiple times; other moms have said it millions of times. But, I can't believe my baby is growing so fast and starting 2nd grade today!

I'm beginning to think I'm never going to stop being astonished at how fast time is flying and that in the blink of an eye, my kids are growing bigger and older.

As I said, Landry started 2nd grade this morning. Although, she's been sleeping until 8:30-9:00ish this summer, we didn't have any trouble getting her out of bed at 7:00 AM. I know before the week is over, we'll be dragging her out of bed half asleep, but today she was excited to get up and get to school.

We all got ready and went as a family to the donut shop--Landry's breakfast choice for today. Then, we all dropped her off at school. Since this is the first year she hasn't started the year at a new school, she was excited to get to see her first grade friends!

I hope that Landry has a wonderful and blessed 2nd grade year!

A little reminiscing.....

First day of 1st grade--


First day of Kinder--

Ready For Some Football!

Tonight was the Red Raider Autograph Night and Jeff and I took the girls up to the stadium to meet some players and coaches.

Sad story....when we first got onto the field Jeff took the girls over to meet and take pictures with Raider Red. I was standing on a fairly deserted corner of the field talking to one of my friends. Suddenly, Mike Leach took a seat at the table I was standing next to in preparation for signing autographs. I immediately left my friend and got behind the first guy that got an autograph--so I was second. Fortunately, I happened to be holding the football that we brought with us for autographs.

Unfortunately, Jeff wasn't there.

He was so bummed that I was talking to Leach while he was hangin' with Raider Red. :)

He really had wanted to get a picture with Leach, but the line got SO long and we weren't going to wait in it, so we came up with this solution.......


There you have it. There's Jeff with Leach.

Landry went around and got some autographs for our football.

Landry and Coach Ruffin McNeill. He's the assistant head coach and such a nice man.


Landry and Coach Bennie Wylie--head strength coach


The girls and the Masked Rider. Landry was excited about meeting her because she LOVES the Masked Rider. Korley was excited because she thought it was Superman.

I included this picture to prove that 1) Korley can sometimes be impossible to get a picture of and 2) those people in the background? that's the line to get Leach's autograph. It stretched all the way to the opposite end zone.

And, just to prove that I was there! Not a bad picture except for the Sharpie I have clipped to my shirt!

Waterpark & Back To School

It's hard to believe that this summer is coming to an end.

To say that it has flown by would be an understatement.

We started this summer with a trip to Austin in early June, and that seems like it was only a couple of weeks ago.

So, we've been trying to cram in as much fun as possible these last few days before school starts.

Today, Jeff and I took Landry and her friend, Hunter, to the Lubbock "waterpark". I had never been to the Lubbock waterpark before, and although it was small, the girls seemed to have a lot of fun.--However, the big excitement was when a R-A-T came swimming from the deep end all the way to the shallow end of the wave pool.

Oh, man--it was so completely gross! I heard this group of kids scream and then come running back to the pool deck as if JAWS were chasing them. Then, I saw what they were running from. It was a rat the size of a kitten. Ick, blech, barf! Fortunately, after that one incident we didn't see the rat again, and the girls went on to play and had a blast.




This evening was "Back to School" night at Landry's school.

We met Landry's teacher, Mrs. R, and got to visit her new classroom.




However, Landry was more excited about seeing friends--of course!

Here she is with her best friends Bailey and Brooke (they're twins!).

And, of course, Korley was there having a blast as usual. :)

Wax On, Wax Off

Guess who started Tae Kwon Do?

I told Landry that she could choose two sports to do this fall--she chose to do gymnastics again and karate.

Tonight was her first Tae Kwon Do lesson. I was a little worried because 1) her karate uniform is so stinkin' huge. I swear it would be big on Shaquille O'Neal. And 2) because really her only exposure to karate has been Kung Fu Panda.

But, she seemed to really enjoy it. She was excited to show me her punch/kick combo thing (I don't think that's the technical name) and some sideways kick thing (again, not technical). She even learned to do a "perfect push-up". Skills, baby.

She will be going to tae kwon do two days a week for 45 minute lessons. I'm hoping she enjoys it and doesn't get burned out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, in "what's new is old and what's old is new" news........

I had some time to kill while she was at karate, so I went to CVS (side note, I LOVE drugstores).

Anyway, I took my memory card in with me and got copies made of some pictures, including the above picture of Landry that I had just taken about 30 minutes prior.

After I picked Landry up, I showed her the picture and she was ASTONISHED!

She said, "HOOOOOW did you get this?"

I said, "I got it printed when I was at CVS and you were in karate."

She said, "That's amazing!! You mean, you don't even have to print them on your computer anymore? You can just go to the drugstore and buy them?.....Whoa."

Yep, it's amazing, people.

Just another day of preschool.....

Setting--driving in the car with Korley after school today.

Me: What did you do at school today?

Korley: I taked a nap.

Me: Awesome!! What else did you do?

Korley: I did a lot of crap.

Me: HMMMMM????

Korley: I did crap. I colored a picture. I cut out pictures. I glued pictures.

Me: OHHH...crafts?

Korley: Uh huh, crap.

Vacation....Part II...the Cruise!

So, the day after we spent the night in Lake Jackson, Jeff and I went on to Galveston to board the ship.

The cruise was good. Our vacation goal was spend a few days reading some books while we layed out on the sun decks. Mission accomplished!

Our cruise destinations were Progreso and Cozumel, Mexico.

I can't tell you much about Progreso because we spent most of the time there doing this:


There weren't any Progreso excursions that we were interested in, so we took advantage of the ship being deserted and stayed on-board.

We did get off the ship for a little while and went to the end of the pier to the few shops they had nearby. This is literally all we saw of Progreso.


Cozumel was the next stop. We actually didn't do much more in Cozumel than we did in Progreso. Again, we went to the pier shops, but they had many many more of them. And, we went to Fat Tuesdays for an obnoxiously huge margarita.

We kind of felt guilty not doing any excursions, but it turned out to be a good thing. It ended up raining while we were in Cozumel, which was great for us, because it cooled down the temperature considerably. But, the people that went on actual excursions were kind of bummed.

This here is big time entertainment after one obnoxiously huge margarita.....


We found this little kiosk guy that made bracelets out of string with your name intertwined. I had him make one for both Landry and Korley. It was amazing how fast he could make them--it only took about 10 minutes for both.


The water at Cozumel is so blue and pretty......



At both ports, we were docked next to another Carnival ship--the Fantasy.

It had a really neat looking slide and splash park. We thought our kids would have LOVED to have been on that ship.

Here is our dinky little "main" pool. Although our ship had three pools, they were all really small. They seemed so small for all of the passengers on board.

For anyone considering a Carnival cruise out of Galveston, here's my two cents: :)

First let me say that Jeff and I had a great time. It was nice getting to get away by ourselves and we came back relaxed and refreshed.

I've been on two other cruises before, both on Royal Caribbean. In my opinion, RC is nicer. However, Carnival seemed to cater a lot to families--especially families with tweens and teens. There was a lot to do on the ship for that age group. Like I said before, the pools were shockingly small; however, there was a ton of deck space and lounge chairs. We never couldn't find a chair, which was nice.

The embarkation and debarkation process on Carnival is VERY slow. It's inefficient and could definitely be run more smoothly. We waited in a line for over 2 hours to get on the ship the day we departed. I don't remember that much about the process on the RC cruises, but the fact that I don't remember means that I know we didn't wait 2 hours!

Also, this cruise was full of "Schneiders" ( think One Day at a Time). There were plenty of folk that would wear their Dukes of Hazzard General Lee t-shirts to the formal dining room for dinner. This isn't necessarily a bad thing....definitely makes for interesting people watching. And, definitely entertaining karaoke nights. :)

So, to sum it up--if you're looking for a really luxurious cruise, keep looking. But, this was a great getaway and we had fun. I think our kids would have really enjoyed it, too.

Vacation....Part I...The Lake!

So, we're back from our vacation. Have been for a few days now, but I've been trying to play catch-up with work, house stuff, and I've had a cold or something (a cold? how annoying in the summer!) so I haven't had much time to blog.

Before the first weekend of August, Jeff and I dropped our kids off in Dallas for them to spend the week with both sets of grandparents.

We then drove on to Austin by ourselves where we high-fived each other all the way there.

Ok, not really. That's dangerous. Especially in I-35. But, it was nice for a change to not have to fetch dropped crayons, readjust Korley's blanket, referee arguments on whether we would listen to music or watch a movie, and so on....

Anyway, we went to Austin to meet up with my college girlfriends for our 10th annual Pontoon weekend. This is something that I look forward to every year. In the 10 years we have gotten together, Jeff and I have only missed one year--last year due to our move to Lubbock. So, I was definitely anxious to spend the weekend with my favorite college girls!

We got to the lake house and the girls spent some time chatting....

While the guys spent some time doing dude stuff on the dock....

The next day, we spent all day on the lake. Here I am with Erin, Ann, Stephanie, and Christie. (We missed you Angie, Jenny, and Andrea!)

After a day on the lake, we went to eat dinner at the fabulous Hula Hut on Lake Austin.

The weirdest thing ever happened. First of all, if you've ever been to the Hula Hut, you know it's HUGE; therefore, it's not easy to find someone in a crowd. However, Jeff was in the men's room when he ran into our friend Scott! Our friends Scott and Kristen were there!! They had no idea we were there and actually they were just in Austin on a whim (after meeting Kristen's parents in Temple to drop off their kids) and decided to go to Hula Hut out of the blue! It was so fun bumping into them!

Kristen and I.....

Jeff and Scott.....
The following day, we made our way from Austin to Lake Jackson to stay with Scott and Kristen (who also came back from Austin). They've lived there almost two years and we've never had the chance to go visit them. Since Jeff and I were leaving for our cruise from Galveston the following day, it was the perfect opportunity to get to go to Lake Jackson.

They took us to their favorite beach spot by their house, where we did this for a couple of hours. It was pure relaxation!

Thanks for hosting us, Scott and Kristen. We loved visiting your house!

Up next....Vacation, Part 2--The Cruise!