Anniversary Fun

We started February celebrating Paul's parents' 40th wedding anniversary! For months, the "kids" (Paul, his brother, Mark, our sister-in-law, Rebecca, and me) have been planning to give Bob and Kay a very memorable gift. When Paul and his brother were kids, their family had a favorite fishing resort where they liked to vacation, so we thought it would be fun to all go back there with the grandkids!

We couldn't just tell them what we had planned, so we had Mark and Rebecca on Skype, wrapped several gifts as clues, then made them guess. The video at the end says it all! :-)

First, they opened a box of 4th of July crayons.

Then, Paul found a picture of their family's favorite road trip car.

"Yes, it's a block of wood, but what kind?" Answer: Cedar

Next, came the jig made by a man at the resort where they vacationed.

Finally, a gold bobber, which was part of a contest one year when the Cheney family was visiting the resort.

(I tried to embed the video here, but after several attempts I gave up and just made a new post. You'll have to watch the video there.)

The Great Outdoors

We had some beautiful weather this January, so we took advantage of it and played outside a lot!

 Check out Joshua crawling up the stairs of this playscape all by himself.

 He discovered recently that he loves slides!

 One Saturday, we went to a nearby nature preserve for a nature hike. Here's Paul explaining to Eli and Micah which snakes are dangerous in the woods.

 Eli, Paul, Micah

 We found some shelf fungus growing on a tree, so all the boys had to touch it. ;-)

 Then, we found these huge live oaks! Paul climbed up there immediately and the big boys wanted to join him.

 

 Mr. Blue Eyes wanted to climb up the tree, too!

 Then, I got a turn in the tree with the boys.

 I love this picture of the 5 of us! To get this picture, Paul wedged our camera into another tree and set the camera's timer. It only took a couple of tries to get a good picture of us.

Despite leaving the trail we thought we were following and walking a little more than we intended, all three boys did a great job on our nature hike. We are certainly going to have to visit this preserve again!

Children's Museum

I have several blog posts in my head with the pictures we've taken over the last several weeks--and the ones I'll post below that were taken before Buddy died. But, honestly, it has been hard for me to get on the blog and see the Dear Buddy post. We have been so blessed by our wonderful vet's office who gave us a clay imprint of Buddy's paw as well as three plastic disks that hold some of Buddy's hair--the red and white. We still miss Buddy, but we are moving on and are looking forward to loving another Greyhound one day. (We have had a Greyhound come here to play with the boys and we took a trip out to see some Greys one Saturday.)

Now, on to the pictures....Since everyone was sick over Christmas break, we scheduled a trip down to the museum early one Saturday. We got to explore and splash all morning with a picnic lunch at a nearby rose garden. It was really a good family morning.

We started the day with a visit through a city where the kids "work" and get paid for the jobs they complete. The boys liked doing the jobs and exploring the different careers they could have.

Maybe delivery drivers?

 Veterinarians?

 Or maybe HEB employees?

While they had fun pretending, the water was by far the favorite stop of the day. Joshua saw this feature and kept saying "baa! baa!" (i.e. bath)

 They built

 and experimented.

We were all soaked by the end of our time playing--next time I'll bring some dry clothes for them! We had a fun time and look forward to going back soon!