Family is Bliss

I know we aren't suppose to be envious of others, however I have told De many times that I am jealous of the fact that she lives right next to her sister/best friend, her mom and dad live in New Braunfels and her in-laws moved here when Paisley was born. Almost her entire family live within 10 miles from her...how blessed!

Family time:

We were lucky enough to have Michael's mom, Christina, Noah, Caitlynn, and Shelly in town two weekends ago to celebrate a late b-day for the twins (they were not able to make it for their bday party b/c they were moving) and my mom, Jamie, Russell, and Reid were here this past weekend. Of course it wasn't long enough but we cherished every moment we had with all of them!! Anytime all of our family wants to move to New Braunfels we will help pack ;)

Cindy arrived on Friday just in time to allow us a date night. We went out to eat and actually went to a theater to watch a movie :) Saturday the rest of the crew came into town and we watched Cindy cook a another wonderful meal and put the babies in the activity pool.

Noah, Jax, and Kai

Noah is pretty cool ;)

 We had a great time that night playing Apples to Apples and Tabo. Cindy won the first game and Michael and Christina kicked our butts in Tabo. Please come back again soon!!



This past weekend my mom arrived on Friday right when the girls were waking up from their afternoon nap and right when De brought P over for us to watch while she finished up work for the day. We loved having all three babies here (my mom especially). We decided that it was pool time after snack so we got the girls ready and headed out.

unfortunately Jax discovered her dislike for ants AGAIN! within seconds of her crawling out of the activity pool (one of the million times she did) her arms were covered in little red ants. Since it had not rained in a LONG time the ants weren't making their homes mound up like normal so we had no idea there were ants anywhere near us. I grabbed her and threw her into the pool to wash off the ants...long story short, she was bitten around 80 times. She is not allergic, thank God, so after she recovered from the shock of being thrown in the water she was fine and never acted like the bites bothered her after that.
 This is one of those times where growing up with a grandmother who knew everything and took care of our every discomfort comes into play. The first thing I thought of was "rubbing alcohol". Nanny (my mom's mom) always put alcohol on our bites (and growing up in the country there were a lot of those) and I remember her loving touch like it was yesterday. Thank you Nanny for loving us to pieces and always making sure our pain was short lived. I miss you dearly and hope that you can see how much you are still apart of our lives. I only wish you were here so we could watch you love on our babies too. 

Later that night Jamie, Russell, and Reid arrived to begin our weekend full of babies, lots of gabbing, and cherished moments to be remembered. I also got a chance to love on my baby boy without my big girls around (they seem so big when he is around them).....love him to pieces!!
Saturday I woke up to Michael cooking pancakes and the voices of all my favorite people in my home <3
After breakfast Michael had some "manly" projects he wanted to work on with Russell's help and the lady's supervision so we got after it.

Two more flower beds around our trees in the back yard was one of his projects for the weekend. We still need to add our flowers, but it looks great and I thank you both Michael and Russell, oh and Jamie too for her supervision ;)

We decided to ALL go to Gruene for the afternoon to shop around stroller style and eat. After the little one's last nap of the day we loaded everything up and headed to the historical Gruene. Surprisingly enough it all went really smoothly and we were able to hit up a few shops and eat at Adobe Verde with all three babies in tow.

Jamie and Russell at Adobe

I have to add here that we are finally at the point where we can take the girls and kinda wing what they will eat for dinner....yippeee! As you can imagine it gets a little crazy trying to take them somewhere much less take them somewhere when they will need to eat. I have always made their food so we always loaded it up too. Since they are no longer eating mush we can just cut things up small and feed them whatever is around :)) big milestone for us!!!
We adults enjoyed some time together after the babies went down and actually got to watch it rain!! Its a miracle how God works, I was just telling Michael the other day that the rain water we catch is getting the lowest it has gotten all summer b/c we haven't had rain in so long. He must have heard me b/c he sent a good rain on Saturday night that filled up our trashcan!!
Sunday morning arrived too soon. We very quickly got ready for Church and arrived a little late, but arrived nonetheless. Our girls are a workout in church at this age, but they arent noisy at all so we are grateful for that. Reid sat precious as a peach the whole time and we survived!! Loved filling up the pew with my family!! Glory to God for a wonderful weekend ending in praising you!!

We decided on Sunday to do this with the girls and Reid:

 
This how they turned out:

They had to bake theirs at home so we think bc they waited too long to bake it it cracked more than ours.

You are suppose to do this every year and use them as stepping stones, but I'm not sure how durable they will be so I think we will just use ours are garden decorations.

You think these two are related?

Kai

Reid

Some more pictures from the weekend:

 

 In other news:

I have been reading a book De passed along to me called "Push".

This is a book of  Brooke's blogs during a very difficult time in her life. At the age of 34 her husband passed away leaving her to raise 10 month old twins on her own. Needless to say I cried the first 8 pages straight pretty much. She is a wonderful writer, writing exactly how she feels and she has really made me feel even more blessed than I already do. Its very hard to read at times because of the sadness behind her story, but it is really fitting things into perspective for me. Too often I worry about little things with the girls and the house. I don't often think that I could one day wake up without my partner in life. I often put fun things off, thinking we don't have money for that. I don't every consider that I may not have tomorrow with my family to do some of the things I want. I am loving this book, 1. because I can relate being a mom of twins and 2. The rawness of her feelings on display is something to be cherished and learned from.
It gets better....She lives here in New Braunfels and is friends with another mom of twins I met on Facebook. I have contacted our mutual friend about meeting Brooke and her angels and I think we are going to be able to have  little twindate!! I don't know about ya'll, but I have never gotten to meet and have a play date with the author of a book I read so I am super excited to get to meet her and hopefully become friends :)

I will leave you (what was suppose to be a short blog) with pics and a video of Jax laughing at me when I was trying to calm her down after a fall.

Kai is too excited at Lowes

my driving babies :)

One last thing, One of my favorite holidays is right around the corner and I am sooooo ready especially when I saw these that one of my co-workers (who has an etsy shop) makes...how cute are these??

http://www.etsy.com/shop/GreenJazzFace?section_id=10812693

  Love,

Parent's of Breaths of Heaven