Fourth of July

Our ward had a nice pancake breakfast at the park to celebrate the holiday-it was pretty cool. I thought it would be nice to get a family picture to show off how patriotic we all looked. Hunter looks very Hawaiian American, right? The second picture down is me with my oldest brother Matt. If you are wondering about all his accessories, he recently had neck surgery...again. He had it done last year and it didn't take, so they did it again (refused some vertebrae). The necklace thing is a bone grower-cool/creepy, huh? Then we've got a picture of Hailey playing and then my handsome little ball player.
We were excited to learn that we could see the big fireworks display that the waterpark puts on from our backyard-no fighting traffic! I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't dealing with my first migraine that night. It was really not fun, but I am feeling much better now, thank you.

Hello Blue Bell Country

So another thing Texas is famous for...Blue Bell ice cream. I think all Texans swear it is the best and it is only sold in 17 states. Yesterday I loaded up the kids and we made the drive (just about 1 hr 15 minutes) up to the Blue Bell Creamery to take the tour. Emily, one of my good friends from my mission whom I haven't seen in years was in Austin visiting her sister and I convinced them to meet me at the creamery since it's about halfway between Houston and Austin. I thought the tour was pretty cool. I enjoyed seeing how one of the best foods in the world is made. For the most part my children were pretty good too.Here's all the kids (none of my photos captured all of them well). The two boys belong to Emily's sister Jan, who coincidentally was my nurse when I was in the hospital on bedrest just before I had Hailey. The little girl belongs to Emily, and her name is Madison. Everyone knows the other two monkeys belong to me.

Here's Emily and I. I think this picture makes me look old. I'm just days away from 28 you know. In Chinese my last name was Guo (well, that's the American spelling of it anyway) which also happened to be her last name. We often dressed the same and told people we were twins. Wonder why no one ever fell for it.

I think Dr. Suess came to my house

And he left some little blue haired creatures. Seriously, don't they look like something out of a Dr. Suess book? This very attractive wig is actually something Ben bought when he was working the BYU football games. The fall that we got married he took up this temporary job as a hawker walking up and down the bleachers trying to get people to buy snacks. The first year the commission was really good and he used the money to help with wedding expenses. I seem to recall him also donating plasma around that time for the same reason. What a trooper.

Pressure, pressure

So these next few pictures are a few weeks old, but I was feeling so guilty for not having posted in like 9 days. Who would do such a thing? We haven't really been up to much. Just getting together with friends and playing in water. I think this year I've learned that's really all you want to do here in the summer. It's soooo hot.
I love the look on Hunter's face in the first picture, and the warpaint is great-he really enjoys making a mess with sidewalk chalk and water. Today Hailey told me they were making chalk mud. Precious.

That's my studly little boy.

My pretty little princess. She was proud that she had taken off her swimsuit and put on her clothes by herself (as evidenced by the crooked pockets). I was proud too.

One little picture

Okay, so I finally found my camera cord...but now there are so many cute pictures I couldn't possibly choose which ones to post. So for now I'm just going to post one of me and Benjamin since those don't appear on my blog too often. Not much to report from here. Ben's been keeping busy with work and in his spare time we like to keep him busy with Splashtown. We were so proud of Hailey the last time we went because not only does she go down the big slides by herself, but she also will (while wearing a life jacket) do an otherwise unassisted dog-paddle. What a big girl. Hunter on the other hand just likes to jump into the water when no-one is nearby to catch him-he thinks it's funny-and I'm just grateful that the life jacket keeps him up long enough for one of us to grab him. The little monkey.

We're still here.

So I've been putting off posting a new entry until I upload my latest set of pictures. Evidently it's not meant to be. I cannot find the cable for my camera anywhere. So I just wanted to let everyone know that we haven't died and I will try to post some more pictures soon (hopefully).

Has it been a year already?

Yeah, I know some of you are probably thinking it's been a year since I last posted...but no, that's not what my title is referring to. We have now been Texans for over a year. So howdy. Things are going well. I've been going a little nuts the last few days trying to figure out what color to paint my kitchen. I feel like it really shouldn't be that big of a deal but for some reason I'm really struggling. I bought a $30 can of paint today and now I'm not so sure I like the color (I think it's too green for my tastes...I'm kind of a blue girl...but I'm not sure I like blue paint, go figure). I have to figure it out soon, because I'm determined to get it painted before both sets of my parents show up this weekend (for baby Ellie's blessing at church-that's my brother Matt's new little one). Needless to say, I think I've been driving everyone a bit crazy.

Not the most attractive picture, but you gotta love the self-taken, no make-up look...pretty sure my head isn't actually that misshapen.

Well, the weather has been getting warm and we've been enjoying it on the weekends. We ended up getting season passes to Splashtown-a big waterpark that happens to be about 3 minutes away. The kids are really enjoying it. But so far we only go when daddy can come too-I'm not quite brave enough to take those two out in all that water on my own. But I am so nice that I let them play in the backyard with a tiny kiddie pool. It was great cause I just sat there in my chair and sprayed them with the hose (remind anyone of a scene from Billy Madison??-'who are you mister? why are you doing this to me?'). Here's a couple pics of my bathing beauties:

He's such a stud...isn't he?

Okay, not related to the rest of my post, but this just made me laugh. One day I came upstairs to find Hailey had turned on the TV and was sitting there watching PBS-in the mid-afternoon. Most of you know there really isn't anything interesting on then. So I look at the TV and it is this middle-aged woman sitting on a chair teaching other older women how to do exercies in a chair. Hailey was just sitting there soaking it all in and doing her arm lifts. A few minutes later I came back and asked her if she wanted to turn it off. Her reply, "Um, no, I'm watching Muscle Strengthening. Thanks mom."