The Birthday Begins

With Cruz's 6th birthday just a week away, the celebrating fun has already started! 

Cruz was given the opportunity to pick anything he wanted for his birthday meal with Grammy and Grampy. Our sweet, simple eater chose Panera. He just loves their Mac and Cheese. It's been one of the foods we've been able to count on him enjoying since he was small.

His birthday theme was easy for him to choose this year. Both he and Rowan are really into Pokemon cards.

Cruz will get to enjoy his birthday decor all week long!

Grampy put together a scavenger hunt for Cruz to find his birthday gift- which was too big to wrap.

Rowan was close by incase Cruz needed help reading his card

He was so excited about his new bike complete with a bell, handbrakes and built in water bottle. His helmet was also a gift and it lights up. This is Cruz's first bike bought just for him. He's always used hand me downs from Rowan.

Here he is trying it out.

Cruz also got to Facetime with Grandma, Uncle Randy and Aunt Nicole while he was opening his birthday gift from Grandma. He got a really fun Amazon gift card and these blow up things which the kids had a blast with. We made them take them inside on the carpet after we saw how crazy they were getting. This video makes me laugh though.

Easter 2016

We had the blessing of celebrating one of my favorite holidays with two of my favorite people. Thank you for being a part of our Easter Celebration, Grammy & Grampy. Thank you Mom for making the delicious ham dinner that Cruz actually ate! We were blessed to have you with us. 

Ready for Resurrection Rolls and bacon!

Grammy & Grampy Visit

We had so much fun visiting with Grammy and Grampy last week. We got to do so many fun things and celebrate a bunch of various occasions too!

One of the reasons for Grammy and Grampy's visit was to join the boys for Grandparent's Day at their school. Rowan and Cruz got to bring G & G to school for the whole morning. The day started out with a program put on by the K-5 kids. Each class did a little performance for the grandparents. Rowan's class sang some songs and recited the 23rd Psalm which has been their memory work over the last few weeks. Cruz's class sang a song and recited the Lord's Prayer, which they have been working on for about a month. The kids then got to show G & G around their classroom and their new school. 

We spent the rest of our visit having all kinds of fun! We played many games of kickball out on the driveway. Mom and I went shopping and got pedicures, Grammy and Grampy played several games of Monopoly, lots of Wii and hid so many rounds of Easter eggs for the boys that we lost count. There was also a lot of Sorry playing and backscratching for Cruz! Rog and I even got to sneak away for a fun date night. We got to celebrate Easter and Cruz's 6th birthday as well (more on those in another post).

Love her focused face

I would never have described my kids as sweaters until we moved here. Yikes, the humidity makes them sweat like crazy.

Roger and I headed to Anna Maria Island for our date night on Saturday. Its such a gorgeous little island! It had a quaint, tropical feel. We loved it. We ate dinner literally on the beach at a place called the Sandbar. Our table was in the sand. Then we walked across the island and found a little ice cream shop. We rounded out our date walking out on the Santa Maria peer. Thanks for babysitting, Mom and Dad! 

We had such an amazing visit and it was so hard for me to drop them off at the airport this morning. We miss you tons Mom and Dad! Can't wait for you to come back. 

"Halfy" 3.5 Coco!

Our little princess turned three and a half last week. It's hard to grasp the fact that she's closer to age four now than she is to three. She is such a fun combination of all things girly and tough as can be. 

At 3.5, Cora loves all things to do with princesses. Anna, Elsa, Ariel and Sophia are her current favorites but she really likes them all. She loves to wear twirly dresses and sparkly shoes. Her curls are still as crazy beautiful as ever and are absolutely perfect for personality. Cora has become more obedient these past six months, however , still almost always has her own opinion on things. She loves going to Cubbies and is doing great at memorizing her verses each week. She also has memorized quite a few of her brothers' verses including the New Testament books from listening to their CD in the car on repeat. Coco loves gymnastics and is very focused on learning and perfecting her skills. She has a lot of energy and is a strong and powerful little girl- gymnastics seems to be a good fit for her. We couldn't love you more, Coco! We are so thankful for three and half fun filled years with you. 

Coco loved having everyone (including Grammy and Grampy) sing "Halfy Birthday" to her.

Spring Break Fun

Spring Break flew by for us this past week. We were on the go and spending time with some very special visitors. Grandpa and Deona came down for the week! We loved spending so much time with them. Linda even came up for a little while too. 

We started out Spring Break with lunch with Grandpa, Deona and Daddy and then the kids and I hit the movies. Zootopia was a hit with all. Cora was excited to wear her "Judy" dress, inspired by the main character in the movie.

We found a neat farm nearby to pick fresh fruit! We picked over four pounds of strawberries and blueberries. And someone (me), forgot to remind Cora to only pick the red, ripe strawberries so we ended up with a few duds. 

Both boys had plenty of cheerleaders at their baseball games last week! 

We had some time to swim, relax and even build a Cookie Train that the kids didn't get to build at Christmas. They so looked forward to building that train at Christmas but time got away from us so Deona made sure to bring it for the kids to do.

Grandpa pulled them around the pool on the tube.

Easter Baskets!!

Grandpa and Deona brought along their jet skis this trip and the kids were dying to try them out. As expected, Rowan loved it (and was super brave during an intense ride through the Gulf). Cruz and Cora preferred slower speeds and getting pulled in the tubes. We all had a blast and are excited that Grandpa is leaving the jet skis here and has kindly allowed us the opportunity to use them on our own if we'd like. 

Saturday is poured so we spent a good chunk of the morning hiding out under the tent having a "crunchy picnic" as Cruz called it. We ate lots of crunchy foods.

Much to the kids excitement, the rain stopped and they were able to get a quick ride in.

Sunday was beautiful and we were back in the water after a tasty brunch.

Rowan, Rog and I before our adventure!

Sunday night we had our last dinner and Cruz got to celebrate the beginning of his birthday. 

Thank you for such a fun week, Grandpa, Deona and Linda! We miss you already.