Sarah Kathryn's 4th birthday party!

 Sarah Kathryn had SO MUCH FUN at her birthday party! She LOVED it!  One of her most favorite things to do is to get her nails painted so this was a no-brainer for her birthday party.  She was thrilled with all of the details.  It is so extincting to see her love all the same things as me.

The nail shop was so sweet.  They let me move their stuff around to accommodate my table and let me put my stuff everywhere!  Loved it!

Food Table

The festive favors were adorbs!  It was a princess nail polish and heart shaped toe separators.  

This is the make-up station.  Amy and Rebecca were the make-up artists.

They loved the bright colored make-up!  SK kept saying "real makeup??!!"  She is over the fake stuff.

She chose 5 colors with glitter on top.

Pops was the only adult to get his nails did.

Sweet Kate

Sam chose a really fun purple glitter

Adeline

Avery eating one of the tootsie roll/marshmallow nail polish while holding a real nail polish.  My dream.

Anna and Henry enjoying the fruit and yogurt parfaits

The cute kids!  Bennett wore his baseball uniform to the game for his 2pm game. The party was at 10am. He is dedicated.

That eye shadow!  She loves Uncle Daniel!

Look how excited she is to see her cake!!!

Goodness these girls are cute!

Favorites

Nana and Granddad made it to the party!  We went to Silver Star to eat after.

Sweet boys with the birthday girl

Family pic!  Love it.

Sweet Sadie

mini Parfait

Frances who Sarah Kathryn calls "Princess"

Bennett's Gateway Field Trip

Each year the 3rd-5th grade gateway kids get to go on a out of town field trip.  He was so excited, but didn't want to go without one of us.  So, Bennett and I arrived at Lee Hedges stadium at 5am to hit the road for what I call "the longest field trip ever!"  

We went to the Mid-America Museum in Hot Springs and then were going to head to the Crystal Springs Mine, but a bad storm kept us from heading up to the mine.  It rained the whole day on us!  We had to start our journey back early due to a storm headed our way.  We made it to dinner at Cracker Barrel in Texarkana at 4pm and then headed home to a huge hail storm.  The hardest hit area was right near Lee Hedge Stadium...where I had Neil's tahoe parked.  Yep.  It was damaged like CRAZY!    It was an exciting trip and I am glad I got to spend the whole day alone with Bennett!

Balance

Feeding the fish

Pearce, Brayden, and Bennett

Brayden and Bennett enjoying delicious nachos!

We tried to take a little walk, but it started raining on us.

This Tesla Coil was so cool!  Bennett really wanted me to take a bunch of video and pictures of this!

The 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders!

Share Fair

3rd grade is a beast.  You do SO MUCH in 3rd grade.  He had to do a Share Fair project which prepares them for the Social Studies Fair in 4th grade.  They got to choose any topic in Science or Social Studies and he chose Mardi Gras.  He typed his report and we made his board together.  I showed him how to copy/paste pictures from google for his board and he printed them and put them on the board.  I could not believe how easy it was to show him how to do that considering I used to teach high schoolers who couldn't copy/paste.

Anyway, he did a great job and made a 100!  Way to go, Bennett!

House Facelift

I've been wanting to get our house painted since before we bought this house.  Like DAY 1.  Well there's way more that has to be done than something like painting the OUTSIDE of the house.  Such as a new A/C, back splash in kitchen, new oven when ours went out, etc.  No one sees our house unless they are invited over, so it's not that big of a deal.  But, I see it everyday and wanted to pull up to something that I like. :)

So out with the yellow brick and hunter green shutters!! ICK!

And in with the creamy white and greige shutters!  He built shutters, wrapped our brick post, and painted the front door.  I am not sold on the front door and may change that.

In process

The shutters he built and he added different horizontal slats to see what I like best.  I was 2 all the way!

Almost done!  Just needs the door painted and the flower beds done. oh, and a new roof, but that ain't happening!

So proud of my pots and the way we planted them!

Lemonade Stand

Bennett has such a sweet heart!  He is so generous ad giving.  He knows how much Shreveport Little League is struggling from Neil being on the board.  So, he got the idea to have lemonade stand to raise money to make the fields better! We went to the store and bought some cups, a poster board, and lemonade for our stand.

He made the poster and even carried the table out to the end of the driveway by himself!  

Our first customer and our only repeat customer: Dennis the mailman

"Lemonade for Shreveport Little League" $1 per cup  It was all his idea to make the 1 a bat and the 00 baseballs.  I love it.  

Here he is giving Ryan, the treasurer, the $73 he made at his lemonade stand!  Ryan said "Why don't you just want to keep this money?" Bennett said "because I want to help!"  What a good kid!

Easter 2018 in Broken Bow

We planned a last minute quick trip to Broken Bow, OK with the Shirleys.  They are so easy to travel with and so much fun!  They are laid back and Anna loves to celebrate just as much as me.  When I say that we celebrated Easter every Pinterest way possible...I am not exaggerating!  We had so much fun for a few days in Broken Bow!

The kids got in the hot tub each morning for a long time.  

So much fun!

Warming up by the fire after a hot tub dunk

 We made Easter Egg shaped cookies and brought icings and sprinkles for decorating.

Watermelon cookie=legit!

We loved the game room at the cabin!  They had this old school Mrs. Pacman and Dig Dug game that I killed at!  The game room also had a basketball game that the boys loved.

 One good thing about the trip is there was no agenda.   We just did whatever we felt like doing and made no plans.  It was sort of a fly-by-the-seat of our pants trip.

We played a little bit of putt-putt.

Family pic!

Ice cream for everyone after all that hard work on the course.

We got back to the cabin and made the most adorable Peeps s'mores!  How cute are these?

The kids loved them!

The sugar on the outside of the peep sort of caramelized and it tasted like creme brulee!

Loving S'mores

We went to Beavers Bend state park for the train ride

After the train ride, we went to the lake to fish.  We were killing time before the public Egg Hunt.  

We walked up to the egg hunt and it was ummmmmm not what we were looking for so we grabbed snow cones and waded in the water!

We headed back to the cabin and dyed our eggs.  I feel like we had eggs for days!

While I got the egg dyeing done, Anna was setting up the Resurrection Cookies!  

The kids each got to help.  Each one got pecans to "beat" since Jesus was beaten.

They each tasted vinegar, oil, salt and symbolized something in the Easter Story.  The best part is the sweet part...how much He Loves us!

Easter morning!

Not sure what Bennett is doing, but they were excited about their baskets!

 Anna and I had so much fun making our Easter brunch!  Like I said, we went nuts!

Peep Parfaits!

Crescent roll egg ring

Peep Fruit kabobs

Our resurrection cookies that were in the
"tomb" (oven) all night!  

What a fun weekend celebrating Easter!