On the move...

We had a wonderful little vacation with my sister and her girls in Houston. I will post more on that later. (Laura - that means you need to send me some pics!)

But the big news around here is Kyle is now a crawler! He still moves at a slow speed, but I am sure he will get faster with practice. Also, after many tears, and a lot of drool, Kyle's first tooth finally broke through! This first tooth was not much fun and I do not look forward to the others! Our little guy is growing up fast!

Fun with the NM Girls

We have our cousins in from New Mexico this week and the boys are having a blast! On Friday, we went to the indoor waterpark in Canyon. The kids all had a great time and Jacob told me Friday night that it was the best day ever. Saturday we went to a new business in town called Tickled Paint and each cousin got to paint their own ice cream bowl. Kyle slept through the excitement, but I made a bowl for him. His bowl has his hand prints on the outside (like he has his arms around the bowl holding it) and it says "Mine!!" on the inside. The girls made a cheerleader bowl and soccer bowl. Jacob made a sports bowl and Riley made a bowl with a train wrapped around the outside. This was a lot of fun and the kids were very creative! The bowls will be fired and then they can take them home. We will have the girls this week and then we will all leave together for our family reunion on Wednesday. What a fun time!

Friends, Food and Fireworks

We had a great 4th! Some friends came in from Dallas and it was wonderful getting to see and visit with them. They have a 6 year old boy, a 4 year old girl and a new baby. This was the first time we got to meet little Abbie and she is a cutie! The kids swam and played on Thursday. On Friday, we went to the parade in town and the kids had a blast filling their sacks full of candy. The street fair after the parade had a rock climbing wall. Jacob made it to the top easily several times and Riley made it almost to the top. Last night, we grilled and watched fire works. The most fun last night was watching the kids play with light necklaces. (The kind you bend in half and then they glow for several hours.) While waiting for the fireworks to begin, Jacob, Riley and our little visitors played in the dark with the necklaces. They played frisbee and twirled them around looking at the colors. After fireworks, we topped off the day with homemade ice cream. Big surprise. Kyle loved the ice cream! We had a great 4th and hated to see our friends leave this morning.

Kyle was trying to figure out how to get her pacifier.



Jacob on water patrol.


Soaking up some sun!


Riley with crazy hair!


Good friends having some fun.


The Three Amigos


Waiting for the candy... I mean parade.


Jacob on the wall.


Riley on his way up.


Kyle could not take all the excitement!


It is so hard to get three boys to look and smile at a camera at the same time!

Lots of Milestones!

Kyle finally slept through the night last night!! I put him down at 9 and he slept to 6:30. Way to go, big boy! Also, our little guy wants to crawl very badly; he is getting up on all fours and trying to move before he usually drops to his belly and does the army crawl. Kyle usually will move for the remote, daddy's phone or the game cube controller. Kyle's other new move is going from lying on his back or belly to sitting. It is funny to go and get him out of bed and he is sitting up watching you walk in.

Check back later for 4th of July pictures!

Kyle Pictures

I am lucky to have a good friend that is a talented photographer. Faith came over last week and took a few pictures of Kyle. You can check out a few of them on
Faith's blog. Thanks Faith for doing a fantastic job.

In case you did not notice, Faith also took the picture in the header of my blog.

One Month Down, Two to Go

We have packed a lot of fun into June.

Jacob played on the all star team for Muleshoe Little League. We had many practices and two tournaments, Littlefield and Lamesa. For those of you not familiar with West Texas, Lamesa is a 2 hour drive one way and we played there 3 days in a row. So, we had a short summer vacation in Lamesa, Texas. (I could think of better places to vacation, but the kids enjoyed staying in a hotel and swimming in the hotel pool.) Jacob also had the opportunity to go to his first church camp in Merkel. He went with a good friend and had a wonderful time. He is already talking about next year at camp! I ran into a friend in the grocery store this past week and she asked if we had been on a vacation this summer and I said no. Jacob overheard and corrected me. We have been to Roscoe and Lamesa. So, I guess we have been on 2 vacations this summer.

Riley went to Mason with Mimi and Pawpaw for a week. He attended Tennis Camp while he was there and got to swim everyday in Mimi's pool. Riley came home with a nice tan line and he cannot wait to go back to Mimi and Pawpaw's house again.

Kyle is still the happy baby and loves playing with his brothers. He is finally adjusting to eating vegetables and I started fruits this week. Kyle is sleeping much better these days.

I finally got the pool fixed and Jacob and Riley have been taking full advantage of it the last week. Riley is officially a swimmer this summer and he is all over the pool. Today, Kyle got to swim for the first time. He loved the water and kicked his little legs the entire time.

Tornado Sirens, But No Tornado

It was a doozie! Jacob was at baseball practice and Kelly was at Manuel's house when I noticed the bad looking cell on the weather updates was headed right for Muleshoe. There was baseball sized hail and circular motion. I made a few phone calls and Jacob came home, practice was canceled. Kelly spent a few extra minutes and put the 8230 in the pumpkin shed and then headed home. By now the cell headed for Muleshoe took a turn and headed for Sudan. I think that Frank's place got hit head on again, but we dodged that bullet in town.

There was another cell, but they were not even talking about it on the updates. All the focus was on the first cell that had just missed us. It was getting very dark outside and the tornado sirens started going off as the second cell approached. Kelly and I decided at the last minute to make room for his pickup in the garage... which meant we had to throw stuff everywhere to make it work. The neighbors were running for basements and we spent our time cleaning up the garage. The siren quite about that time and the hail started. It was baseball sized and it was loud. Jacob was scared, but we never worried... too much. Manuel called to tell us that they had broken windows in their home and all the vehicles at his house had broken windshields.

Finally, cell #2 passed and we assessed the damage. The guest house has 2 sky lights and they were fine. Looks like everything at home is ok. Now, here is the point in the story I would like to tell you that we sunk our worries into a big bowl of ice cream. Remember the pick up in the garage? We could not get our freezer door open because the pickup was parked in front of it and there was not an inch to spare! I guess that means that I get two bowls today!!

As far as I know, I bet we lost all of our crops. Kelly is out assessing the damage now and I will update later.

UPDATE: I talked to Kelly a little while ago and it is not a total loss. The pumpkins and corn will be alright. (A little beat up, but they will be ok) Some of the cotton is probably totaled and there is some that is questionable. I guess we will have to wait and see.

I saw Linda and her car was awful. (She lives in Lazbuddie) The windshield was about to fall out because it had so many big hits and there were huge dents all over. It is amazing how much damage those hail storms can cause!!