Emily's "Mommy to Bee" Shower

Last weekend I had the absolute privilege of reuniting with some great friends from high school to throw a "Mommy to Bee" shower for Emily. Most of us only see each other a few times a year, but we are blessed to pick up right where we left off and truly love each other's company and conversation! Plus, these women are some of the most creative and crafty people I know, and we all really embraced the bumblebee theme! We were delighted to celebrate with Emily as she waits for Baby Raymor (gender to be revealed at the birth)!

We enjoyed delicious lemonade and cake





Guests offered "Wishes for the Baby" for Emily to take home



We also guessed if the baby will be a boy or girl. Girl won!!



Everyone brought baby pictures and we tried to identify them. Emily's mom had a great advantage since 3 of the guests were her daughters and she has known many of us since we were little girls!



The beautiful guest of honor!



The girls! We've all known each other since 6th grade (longer for some), and we must have smiled for hundreds of pictures together!



Melissa's precious daughter Marianne joined us for the shower. She is the only girl (so far!) in our group's kids, and was so well behaved! All of the mamas of boys were amazed.



Time for gifts! Emily really received some special things. Her sister Carolyn made her this quilt.


(looks like a girl theme to me!)

Every baby needs an Aggie onesie!



This book received rave reviews from everybody! We have never read the "Pookie" books, but I think we need to start!



At the end of the shower, we said a bittersweet "see you later" (not goodbye!) with pictures and cards to Emily and Melissa. Emily and her family are moving to Baltimore and Melissa and her family are moving to Charleston, all in about 2 weeks. We are excited for their new job opportunities, but sad that we won't see them as often anymore! Best wishes, sweet friends!

Future Plans

As most 4 year olds do, Cade asks TONS of questions and uses his unique logic to figure things out. We got my car washed a few days ago, and this is a summary of our conversation about the scent that they put in the car:

Cade: Mama, you should have gotten cherry because I like cherry.
Mama: Well, I don't like cherry. When you have your own car, you can get cherry.
Cade: I don't want my own car!!
Mama and Daddy: (kind of worried that we will taxi this kid around forever, yet kind of relieved based on his driving skills at LegoLand) Why don't you want your own car?
Cade: Because I'm not a person!
Mama and Daddy: What?
Cade: I'm not a person, I'm a kid! And kids don't know how to drive!
Daddy: Oh. When you grow up, you'll learn how to drive.
Cade: Well, then I will drive an orange truck and nothing else.

There you have it. Stay tuned for 11 years and see if this comes true.

Moving on up...

When your kid can do this...



you know it is time to get a bigger bed!

We ordered a twin size bed when we got back from Dallas, and set it up after we got home from New Braunfels. The new bed inspired a little bit of rearranging and a new decorating scheme - DINOSAURS! I'm still working on all of the details, but we have the most important thing - a new dinosaur blanket for Cade's bed. He was so excited about it!



My main mission when searching for new bedding was to find something that had T Rexes and the color orange. This is the perfect combination! Cade's two obsessions, combined into one square on a quilt. Did I mention how happy he is?



It is nice that we can now lay in Cade's bed and read with him. Last week at the library, Cade chose a dinosaur encyclopedia for his (and our!) reading pleasure. I hope he is always this passionate about learning new things!

Weekend in New Braunfels

We have loved taking trips almost every weekend to visit family this summer! Last weekend was our last one, and we visited Oma and Opa in New Braunfels. Here are all of our adventures there!

On the way down, we met my parents at Cabela's in Buda. I have never been there before, and I can now say that it is quite amazing! It is like a field trip to the zoo, only air conditioned and with no-longer-real animals. Everyone had a great time! Cade loved this bear.



We all did a little shooting, and I am proud to say that I had the highest score! My brother insists that the guns are not accurate, but I am standing firm as the victor.



The next day we visited Grandpa, who Cade refers to as his Aggie Grandpa.



SInce it was miraculously below 90 degrees, we also walked across the Mill Street bridge and down to the river. It was really peaceful, which is a rarity in this tourist town!



The next morning, we went back to another spot on the river to do a little fishing.



My mom had the very important job of bait (cricket and worm) delivery



Everybody caught a fish! I like fishing much more when there is more catching that waiting :)







Cade spent most of his time running back and forth between Chance and my dad checking out their fish.



Then we went to Landa Park to feed the ducks.



The "friendly" nutria that we met on our last visit returned! Some kids fed him a cheese puff.



No visit to a park is complete without going to the playground. Cade climbed this rock wall, and then our conversation went like this:
"Can I jump down from here?"



Me: "OK, you can do it one time. But please be careful". I'm not sure why I bother sayng be careful. How careful can you be when jumping from this height?





That afternoon we played in the little pool, which somehow is just as fun to Cade now as it was 2 years ago when Oma and Opa bought it. I had a great idea to recreate a cute family picture we took in the pool when Cade was 2. This is how Cade reacted:



After much splashing and persuading, I think we got a cute picture!



Another fun backyard activity is shooting the BB gun! They set up some targets...
(Cade is not a target, obviously... he just wanted to be in the picture, for once)



Fire away!



To finish off our very fun day, we had dessert at Great Oma's house. Just like at Nana's house, Cade enjoyed every drop of his ice cream.





It is amazing to see grandparents and great-grandparents letting the younger generation get away with just about anything. We played catch in Great Oma's living room!



I don't have any pictures of this, but on Sunday morning we met some wonderful friends from our church at University United Methodist in San Antonio. This is the new church home for our former pastor, Laurinda. It was so, so, so great to see her and hear her preach again. We sure miss her!

Thanks to all of our families for giving us lots of fun adventures this summer!

Happy Birthday, Xavier!

Xavier is FIVE! Wow! We were blessed to meet our fun-loving, creative, and energetic nephew the day after he was born, and it has been great watching him grow into being a fantastic cousin for Cade! We kicked off his birthday celebration with cupcakes and presents at Papaw and Melly's house. One of his gifts was a hand-painted canvas from Zoe. She is quite the budding artist!



The main birthday event was a trip to LegoLand. This is a really neat attraction at the Grapevine Mills Mall where kids learn about legos, build with legos, ride rides with lego people.... you get the idea! Cade is not really into building with legos yet, but he enjoys anything he can do with his cousins! This picture may not look like much, but it shows pretty much how our day at LegoLand went. Most of the rides and activities are for kids only, so Zoe was the stand-in "grown up" for Cade. He was pretty nervous about everything, but did great with Zoe and tried quite a few new things!



First time to drive! Only had a "few" wrecks!



One ride was for parents and kids. Chance did all of the pedaling, and Cade was just along for the ride!



Hi Xavier!



Finally - the room that the kids (and Bob) were waiting for - time to build!





A 4D lego movie was the perfect ending to the afternoon





While the bigger kids were on the indoor playground, Cade found a spot that was much more to his liking... he dismantled everything that had been built with these giant, soft legos and threw them all into a pile, which he called a castle. I have a feeling he'll gravitate towards things that involve more destruction than construction!

Lake Livingston

Another fun adventure from our Dallas trip was a boat ride on Lake Livingston! We all had a great time swimming, fishing, and relaxing. Thank you, Papaw, for renting the boat for us! And thank you, Bob, for being our boat captain!

We were joined by some 2nd cousins that were visiting their grandparents. Even though these kids only see each other about once a year, they had a great time together!



It was great to see Uncle Dan and Aunt Jill too!



Good steering, Xavier!



Cool dude



The older kids (and young-at-heart adults - Chance and me!) had lots of fun jumping off the boat





Cade did not love being in the water at all, but we do have evidence that he got in! He really prefers water that he can stand it, and it did not help that Zoe told him that fish poop in the water!



After the boat ride, we figured the kids would be exhausted. We were wrong! The 3 little monkeys jump again!



Chance wins the Uncle of the Year award!