Houston Trip

We got to spend the week around the 4th of July in Houston with Cary's mom's side of the family. We had such a great time getting to see everyone and make such fun memories while we were there! It had been much too long! Beware, picture overload below! :)

Friday, we went to NASA where I planned to take tons of pictures...only to realize that I'd left the card for my camera at home... I know...bad photographer/mommy! We did grab a disposable, but obviously I don't have those yet. We also took the funniest picture in front of a green screen that looks like we are all floating in a spaceship. Seriously funny!! We all had a great time there, and it was the perfect reprieve from the crazy tropical storm outside! Then we went to Joe's Crab Shack in Kemah for dinner. YUM!!

Saturday, we laid pretty low as we were all worn out from the week we'd had up until then:


It was nice to have a day to kind of try to recuperate. Then we met up with our good friends Natalie & Joey and Lindsey & BJ at Carrabba's for dinner. It was so much fun to see these four again!! Every time we get together, I feel like no time has passed at all (aside from the fact that we all add additional children between visits!!) and the nights are always full of laughter. :)

On Sunday, we attended church as a family with Cary's parents, siblings and their families. We were a crowd!! :) It was a great time, and the church had a bbq after service with jump houses and balloons for the kids.


Carter was SO funny in the jump houses! I guess he was feeling a bit brave that day! :)










Our niece, Caralyne:


And her big sister Kynadee:








Carson said these were baseball hats because he thought you were supposed to hit the balloons hanging in front of your face. :)






That night, since it was the 4th of July, everyone went down to the dock (minus me and Carter...because he was ready for bed EARLY and I was tired too) to watch fireworks.

On Monday, we decided to rent a pontoon boat and spend the day on Lake Conroe. It was a gorgeous day out; one of the only ones the tropical storm wasn't active, and we had SO MUCH FUN!!!! It was really an awesome day! :) Oh, for all of my mom friends, we've traded in our traditional water wings or floaties for the boys for puddle jumpers... you can get them at Wal-Mart or Target, and they are the BEST floaties/swimming devices I've found yet. All of our boys were loving the water, and we didn't have to worry about them getting flipped over or over tired from trying to keep their heads out of water. Seriously awesome things. :) Oh, and Carter is wearing a pink one because we borrowed his from their cousins. :) He didn't mind one bit! ha!!

Carter LOVED riding in the boat, and even fell asleep a few times with the lull of the waves and motor.


Caden helped Cary drive a bit:


Carson loved riding at the very front in one of the two captains chairs:








Mom...will you get that thing out of my FACE?? LOL!! Isn't he too young to look at me like this??




Tubing with Auntie Emily:








DeeDee & Carter




Then, to round out the fun week, Auntie Stephanie watched Carter so we could spend Tuesday evening with DeAnne and Tommy having dinner at the Spaghetti Factory and then at the Houston Astro's game with Carson and Caden. We had THE BEST seats, about 20 rows up, right between home and first base, and their stadium is air conditioned! :) And they won! Which I'm told doesn't happen all that much! It was a great night!



The view from our seats. See...told you they were awesome!






Somehow, I didn't get any pics of the boys with Papa Tom, Auntie Stephanie or Uncle Mason and Aunt Danielle, though I think Emily might have gotten a few with some of them... I'll have to check. Anyway, we had a great trip!

June 2010

In June, we got to have our 20 week ultrasound... it was really at 21 weeks, and we got to find out that our sweet baby #4 is a boy! We are super excited about our brood, and can't wait to welcome Caleb Emory into the world come October.

Carson graduated from preschool. It was a cute little ceremony, and the kids recited the pledge of allegiance and the pledge to the Bible. They sang a few songs and gave out diplomas. Then they celebrated with a picnic and ice cream sundaes. Carson had so much fun!









My parents came out to celebrate with Carson:


Carson and his preschool teacher, Miss Rebecca:


We also had a small house fire towards the end of June. It was a little crazy. Caden went upstairs to watch a show around 9 one morning. Evidently, he found a set of matches in Cary's night stand that were from our honeymoon, because he lit one. As far as we can tell, when the match got hot, he must have dropped it and it caught a small suit case that I had started packing for youth camp which was coming up. Once that burned up, the carpet caught, and thankfully, nothing else was nearby and the carpet was flame retardant, so the carpet smoldered for a few hours. We have lots of smoke damage in the upstairs portion of our house from the smoldering, but most of it will be reparable, and I am super thankful for good insurance!! We smelled fire for much of the morning, but couldn't find it in the house, and we didn't go look upstairs until right about the time we found it since no one had really been up there since early morning. Our alarms never went off since the door of our room held most of the smoke inside. At one point Cary even went and asked the neighbors about it and said the smell was worse outside, so we figured it must be a street or two over. Cary ended up finding the fire when he went upstairs to change clothes for a meeting he had. By that point, our bedroom door was beginning to turn black from the fire, and the burning portion of the carpet in our room was about a foot from our bed and about a foot from our curtains, so he really found it in the nick of time! It could have been so much worse. The firemen had to come and everything, and it was an insanely stressful day. We will be staying in a hotel for a month or so while the repair work is done, but it's worked out okay aside from things being a little out of whack. Caden was pretty traumatized from it all, so we took him with us for the first few days of camp. He's still having a hard time now and again, and keeps telling us things like how he wants to go home, but his room isn't pretty anymore (since they are cleaning everything in the house right now), and he also keeps pointing out sadly that they have to throw our bed away. We just keep reassuring him that we will get new things for stuff that's messed up, and we'll be home before he knows it. It has been somewhat convenient that we already had an insanely busy schedule this month that was going to have us gone or busy at least for much of the month, we're just having to change it up a bit. We had youth camp just a few days after the fire, and Cary's Mom and step-dad Tommy flew in to keep the boys for the week. Then 4 days later, we headed to Houston to celebrate the 4th of July with them. I'll have another post about that, including pictures shortly, but so far our stay away from our house hasn't been too bad. Hopefully, it will continue to be just as okay while the repairs are finished!

May 2010

I'm so far behind in blogging that I decided it would be best to blog about the highlights to catch up. Maybe that will put me back on track so I can feel like blogging is easy again! :) We'll see...

We've had incredibly busy months lately. I mean, we are always busy, but the last few months have really been ridiculous! I thought that we were busy when I was pregnant with Carter, but this pregnancy, our schedule has about twice as many huge events as his did. It sure is making things go quickly though!!

In May, Carson got to play on his very first soccer team and he also turned 5 years old!! Crazy to think that he starts kindergarten in a few short months. He is so, so excited. He asks me on a regular basis how much time he has left before he gets to go, and it's also a regular request to visit (drive by) his new school. It makes it much easier for me that he is so excited. I think it will really help it to be an awesome experience rather than one that makes me sad.

Our plan for his birthday party was to have a big birthday bash following one of his last soccer games, which happened to be on his birthday. Unfortunately, we got rained out for the party, but he did score a goal and had 2 assists during his game, so he was thrilled!! We moved the party indoors, and it was lots of fun as well! Here are some pictures from Carson's fifth birthday:


Carson and his sweetheart, Alexa:


DeeDee (Cary's mom) bought Carson his first bike, and he was SO excited, especially about his super sweet helmet.




And of course, since it finally began to warm up, we've been spending lots of time outside in the kiddie pool.






I also got to fly out to take engagement pictures for my brother and future sister-in-law during May. I cannot wait to shoot their wedding in November. Aside from the fact that it will be gorgeous, I'm super honored that they like my work enough to want me to do it! :)