Cowboy City

The boys and I went to a birthday party at Cowboy City yesterday. I can't believe that I lived in Fall Creek for over six years and never even knew about this place! We had an incredible time! As soon as we got there, Henry hopped on a huge horse to take a quick ride. Will decided to stay on the sidelines and keep his cowboy hat on instead. Next were some rodeo races and a balloon-popping game. Henry wasn't too sure about it, but Will got out there and sat on his balloon to pop it! Then it was time to eat. The boys sat next to their favorite girls, Chloe and Bella.

And then we all got to go on a hayride! The boys loved feeding the horses

that swarmed the trailer, looking for hay.

A contemplative Henry, wondering what to do next.

We left the party, a little hot and sweaty with a diaper bag full of hay and our tummies full of chicken nuggets and cake, and spent the afternoon with my parents. I bathed the boys there after an early supper and headed back home. After about 15 minutes in the car, I looked back to see this:

My two little cowboys were tuckered out after another busy day!

A Busy Week

I thought this was going to be a nice quiet week, but boy, was I wrong! We have been on the go all week and now our weekend looks just as busy!

Gene has been out of town this week, but my adorable niece Mary has been visiting Nana and Pop, so we spent Wednesday morning exploring the zoo together (and eating, of course!).

All three kids loved the carousel

and popping up out of the groundhog tunnel! These three cousins had so much fun together!The boys also got some new sunglasses this week. They were so excited that they both put them on inside to watch a Thomas video! We've spent a ton of time with my parents this week too. The boys helped Gramma decorate some twigs with Easter ornaments.

The boys are very proud of the final product!

We also explored some of the trails in Kingwood. The boys were especially entranced by the echoing tunnels that go under Kingwood Drive and the leafcutter ants along the paths. The boys discovered this very cool digging toy (you move the levers to dig and lift the shovel!) at a new-to-us park. We even met Mr. Brown, who volunteers with the trail system to fix things and keep it clean. He gave us a ride in his golf cart in return for promising to pick up trash when we see it, and the boys thought it was the best thing ever. Will said, "I never thought I would do this in my life." We've had some really long days this week, but it's been mostly fun with only a few meltdowns along the way. And after a good night's sleep, we'll be ready to start all over again with our crazy schedule tomorrow morning!

A Very Patient Patient

When I was a kid, my sister and dressed our cat in doll clothes. At our house, Weezie gets to be the patient at the clinic while two busy "veterinarians" examine her.

They checked her earsand took her temperature. They checked her blood pressure, listened to her heart, and the poor kitty even got a shot. All done? (Weezie looks scary here but she was actually just yawning.)

Weezie may be a crazy, nibbly cat who manages to get stuck in our neighbors' backyards, but she is really good with the little boys and they love her to bits.

Spring Fling

If you like basketball or golf, this is the time to be in Houston! Between the Final Four and the Shell Houston Open, there was plenty of sporting excitement last weekend. However, if you are like our family, golf and basketball just mean extra crowds and more traffic on the roads! We spent Saturday afternoon with our good friends Katy and Jaime, who literally live within walking distance of all the Final Four activity.

But instead of watching a bunch of grown men run around after a ball, we watched two little boys run around and play hide and seek. It was very entertaining, especially when Katy covered their eyes with kale so they couldn't peek. We really went over to see the bluebonnets in Katy and Jaime's front yard. Will has been studying Texas flowers at school and was thrilled to see a huge patch of bluebonnets. He wanted to see some Indian paintbrush too, but had to make do with some beautiful Indian blankets. We wanted to take some photos in the bluebonnets, but my camera started acting up and this is all I got! We didn't mean to stay very long, but our short visit ended up lasting over three hours! We ate their homegrown sugar snap peas and all the other food in sight. We picked kale from their garden to bring home but then forgot it in the kitchen.

We banged on the piano and made "music." Jaime tried to teach them how to play quietly. We laughed a lot.

In the shadow of Reliant Stadium and the hordes of basketball fans, we had a lovely, long, impromptu visit with two of our favorite friends. I honestly can't imagine a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

The Letter Q

We were really busy last week so we didn't spend too much time on the letter Q. We did make a quinoa salad with kidney beans, red onion, basil and a lemon dressing, and it was really yummy!

And we made our usual letter crafts. We turned the lowercase q into a quilt.

And the uppercase Q became a queen.We were so busy that we didn't even make it to the library to check out any Q books. R week is sure to be better for us!

The Symphony in Space

If you have kids who love music and have not taken them to a children's concert at the Houston Symphony, you MUST go! It is an absolutely amazing experience! My parents and I took to the boys to the final children's concert of the season, "Symphony in Space," yesterday morning at Jones Hall. We got there an hour before the concert started to enjoy all the pre-concert activities. The boys really enjoyed the instrument petting zoo and tried playing all sorts of instruments. They ate doughnuts and got to make a rocket craft. And then we settled in for the hour long concert. The best part was that we had second-row seats, so we were right up at the front and part of the action! I wish I could have taken a picture of the conductor, Robert Franz, who was dressed as a silver space alien, but they said absolutely no photos! The conductor really engaged his young audience in the program and asked all kinds of questions (Will even answered some, like the order of the planets!). The songs ranged from Holst's Jupiter (during which they showed NASA images of the planet) to The Flinstones Meet the Jetsons and the Star Wars theme. My favorite was when astronaut Chris Hadfield came out and sang a song that his brother wrote.

This was Henry's first-ever concert, and he did pretty well. He was absolutely entranced for the first 15 minutes, but then he got a little squirmy. Will, on the other hand, could have stayed at Jones Hall all day. He was absolutely taken with the entire experience and now wants to be a musician when he grows up! The first song they played was Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, which was aboard the first space shuttle! Will leaned over to me and whispered that he loved the concert and that these were his new favorite songs, and that they are even better than pirate songs! For the rest of the day, Will was entranced with music and playing his instruments.

Both boys are already asking when they can go back to the concert, so I'm looking forward to taking my little music-lovers to all four performances next season!

Celebrating

We closed on our old house yesterday afternoon! It was definitely bittersweet. We loved our old home. It was beautiful and we chose everything in it, and it was our first home for our little family, so it was hard to say goodbye. But it makes it a lot easier to know that the new owners love our old house. I don't think we could have sold our house to a nicer couple. They are a young couple who wanted to move to the burbs to start their family. They remind me of us seven years ago when we did the exact same thing. This is part of the email that the new owner sent me after the closing yesterday: "We are at our new home now and love it even more than before. We appreciate all the work you put into making this house a home and we look forward to all the new memories we will create here. It is a special place and we will take great care of it." We are so happy that a new family will fill our old house with love and laughter and much joy! To celebrate only having one mortgage and the end of a very long day (the closing was in Champions, which is about an hour from both the old and new houses, so no where close to anything!), Gene and I took advantage of having free babysitters (thank you so much, Mom and Dad!) and enjoyed an evening out. We started with prosecco at the Queen Vic. And then we had dinner at Haven. Gene has been wanting to take me there for ages and I finally got to go! Haven is my kind of restaurant. It features local, sustainable, organic foods. We started with shrimp corndogs with a Tabasco mash sauce (YUM!) and I enjoyed soft shell crab. And yes, I took pictures! At home we enjoyed more champagne and conversation with my parents and toasted once more to being the proud owners of only one house! Bittersweet? Yes, but in the end, more sweet than bitter.