First day of Playschool

Today Alice started what we call “playschool.”  It’s not quite preschool, but is a 3 hour class at a local kid’s gym twice a week where they read and sing and color and, of course, play in the gym.  She’s been looking forward to this for weeks, but I was still expecting some drama this morning.  I was so shocked (and relieved) when she waltzed right into her classroom and waved good-bye to me.  This is her teacher is Miss Marley “with pigtail buns.”

Naturally I got back in the car and cried.  Then I had to go grocery shopping all by myself.  Alice had so much fun and is excited to go back on Thursday. 

Mmmmm

On Sunday Lydia and Mike made meat pies!  Just like the ones we loved in Australia! 

 These were steak, mushroom, and onion.  Man, oh man, they were gooood!  Good on ya, Lydia and Mike!

First Day of School

This is a huge year for Lydia!  Starting high school and seminary.  (I am NOT old enough to have a high schooler!)

Lydia gets a ride with her super good looking seminary teacher everyday (so she can’t be late)!  Mike loves teaching seminary.  This year our stake is doing seminary 4 days a week, M-Th.  The classes are an hour and start at 5:35, so it’s an early day, but they get to sleep in on Fridays!

Isaac off to middle school, 6th grade.

Evelyn is in 4th and Bridget is in 1st.  Alice is still home with me, but she’ll get to start “play school” which is a few hours a week at a children’s gym.

Bridget is 6

Bridget turned 6!  

For 6 we let the kids have a party (which is really a glorified play date with cake).  Bridget invited two of her friends from church and I invited the rest of their siblings so all my kids had friends too.  It worked out perfectly!  (It was great because the three boys holed up in Isaac’s room and left the girls alone.)

The big girls helped cut out paper crowns while the little girls played upstairs.  They had a little too much fun with the paper remnants.

Fancy crown.

Pretty girls!

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I went all out and bought a piñata.  Bridget picked out a cake piñata because she chose a piñata cake for her birthday cake!  She’s so cute!  Unfortunately, the design wasn’t great for a piñata.  The first whack from a 3 yr old ripped the bottom tier away and we were done.  Oh well.  



Gourmet lunch of hot dogs, carrots, and watermelon.
I tried to be clever and make piñata cupcakes, but I put far too few sprinkles in them.  It didn’t have quite the exciting effect I was going for, but the kids were still surprised to see sprinkles inside.  

However, the piñata cake that evening was a hit!  Bridget wanted one ever since she saw it in a bakery display case.  She chose a strawberry cake with lemon lime frosting.

Everyone gathered around for the spill out.

Nerds, flower sprinkles, and Skittles.  What. A. Party.

Bridget wanted a new doll and real bubblegum (which was actually harder to find than I expected.  I remember seeing 5 or 6 flavors of BubbleYum at the grocery store check out when I was a kid.  Today there’s MAYBE one amidst all the chewing gum.)  And we gave her a new lunchbox because she’s been wanting one and it’s so much easier to pick one out and give it.  AND because if we were to let her choose one in the store Alice would throw a fit demanding one.  (3 yr olds are so fun.)

We love our sweet, loving Bridget!  Happy Birthday, beautiful girl!

Grandma and Grandpa Visit

Mike’s parents finished their mission in Guatemala and were eager to come visit.  We were so excited to have them for a whole week!  

We took them to a castle!   

 Mike Newman opened a bakery 30 years ago in Bellville, TX and decided he wanted to build his own castle.  So he did!  He lives in it and opens it up for tours.  He is quite the character, knighting all the kids who wanted to be knights.  Isaac became king after he defeated the castle by launching a trebuchet.  It was quite the spiel.  Evelyn loved the Irish wolf hound.  

Lydia ringing a bell.

King Isaac with King Newman.


You have to be a special kind of person to allow people into your home everyday.  I could never do that.  The tour ended with lunch catered from the bakery including cake and cookies!  Yum!

The Houston Temple was closed for maintenance, but we still stopped to see it.  The fountain almost hides the black tarp on the front doors.

Evelyn and Grandma made a Black Forest cake!
Pop got some great photos of the kids outside the church building.

We ate lots of Mexican food and played games and just had a great time together.  We’re so happy they came!

Dallas Cousins

We were excited to use Laura’s birthday as an excuse to go play with cousins!  I made the 3.5 hour drive to Dallas all by myself, which was a big deal.  When we got to the Robins Lydia stayed and watched all the kids while I got to take the birthday girl out to lunch.  So fun!  Then we all hit a huge playground at a local megachurch.  I’m so bad at remembering to take pictures, but here are the kids getting their feet wet outside the church on our way out.

When Uncle Patrick got home he took us to the school field to shoot a rocket (which, sadly, promptly broke).

Laura’s gorgeous coconut lime cake!

Fun at the playground.

Hooray for sister time!

Surfside Beach

Over the July 4th weekend we discovered Surfside Beach with the Calls.  It’s about an hour and a half drive.  We liked it so much we went twice more with them!  Here’s a collection of pictures from our 3 visits.  One of the best things about this beach is you can park right by the water.  Hallelujah!  (This was before it got busy. By the time we left it was packed like sardines.)

Calls would bring breakfast and we’d bring lunch.  We had a good system.

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(Not our blue waters like Australia, but we’ll take what we can get!)

 

We found these rafts were fabulous for keeping all the little ones together.

Sand Metropolis

This last trip on Saturday we found if you shake clods of floating seaweed over a bucket that you might find some cool critters!  The kids found some teeny shrimp, a little crab, and this!  A pipefish, which is related to a seahorse.  It was maybe 2 inches long.
So fun to have the Calls to adventure with!

Museums

Houston has some great museums.  We love the Museum of Natural Science and have been several times already.  There are so many beautiful things to look at, but not a lot to play with so really the little ones don’t love it as much as the rest of us.  But we still have fun.

There’s a fabulous exhibit called Biophilia that I absolutely love!  It is a collection of preserved bugs, reptiles, and birds in beautiful arrangements.  So gorgeous! 

Even octopi.

The little girls were rather taken by the turtles.
Neat story about the artist, Christopher Marley.  After wanting to relive the exhibit, I checked out his book from the library.  In his book he mentioned his two year mission in Chile at the age of 19 and I thought “no way!  What are the odds?”  Sure enough, after finding Pres. Nelson quotes on his FaceBook  
page I sent him a message saying how much we enjoyed his exhibit and how Mike says the best people serve their missions in Chile.  He even wrote back.  What fun!

There’s this great room in the museum called the Cabinet of Curiosities where you can touch everything in it.  From pottery to shells to an elephant foot to a narwhal horn (tusk). 

There’s even an empty cabinet to display your own treasure.

We went to the Downtown Aquarium.  Luckily we found a super deal on Groupon because it was a bit of a disappointment.  I guess we’ve been spoiled by great aquariums.  They did have an octopus!!  He was tucked away in his corner, but we found out if we hung out long enough he would come out and climb around like crazy for 2 minutes then hole up in his corner again.  You should have seen me run from the other side of the room when he emerged! 

There were white tigers.  Of course.

Also they had a stingray petting area!  That was awesome!  Alice didn’t want any part, though.  

Outside they had a handful of carnival rides (what a strange place).  Good thing we had that Groupon otherwise they would have cost an arm and a leg. The carousel had some neat marine animals.  We rode this several times.  (Do you like the bright Band-aid on Bridget’s forehead?  She had hit her head on the corner of our computer bench one night.  She now has a lovely little scar.)

 

A funny drop ride.  Mild enough for the little ones.  I was cracking up listening to Alice laugh and laugh.

Ferris wheel.

The last museum for the summer was the Children’s Museum.  We scored some free passes from a friend who had them and were expiring soon.  It was a crazy place, but really cool!  The kids had a lot of fun.  Taking care of animals at the vet.

Super Evelyn!

Mike and I built a dome.

The girls riding on a scooter in Vietnam.  But they weren’t sharing it with 4 other people nor did they have any fowl so it really wasn’t authentic. 

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