A visit from a friend!

Yay! I finally got a friend to come visit me. We were so glad that Tara and little Luke were able to work out a trip down here this past weekend. Good thing her mom had a convention down here which gave her a great excuse. I've known Tara since the 5th grade...which was a few years ago. We went to bed so late every night cause we did so much reminiscing and catching up. It was a lot of fun. Her son Luke is two months older than Hunter, so the kids had a great time playing together. Luke's favorite thing was to throw everything he could find down our stairs! Good thing he's so cute so we couldn't get mad at him! We took several short trips to Splashtown (thanks Carrie...), played outside, watched movies, and of course ate some good food. I had to take her to my favorite restaurant and obsession, Chuys (this was my third time there in 2 weeks). Below are some picts from the trip. Thanks for coming Tara! We loved having you here even if you did constantly critique my son's mullet! Hunter enjoying his chips dipped in his own bowl of ranch.Here's Hailey with a bottle of what once was a Corona...but now is just salt and pepper, don't worry.I just had to post this picture because this is what Luke does every time you pull out a camera...it takes a good amount of convincing to get his smile out.Here's the three little ones watching Baby Einstein-which is my kids favorite right now.
Here they are after a fun trip to Splashtown...I was so sad that I didn't take the camera inside, there were some great photo ops.
Three cuties in a car.

Down Memory Lane

Okay, I'm going to try this too. I got this from my sister's blog and thought it looked interesting, so all of my faithful blog visitors better be cooperative. Here are the directions:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. If you don't want to play on your blog, or if you don't have a blog, I'll leave my memory of you in my comments.

C'mon now, anything funny, strange, cool, embarrassing, or awful you remember about me?? This could be interesting...

Wait, we need a picture of your gross drink...

So the other day my friend Kate took me to the Asian food market. We've been talking about going since forever. She decided that since it was my birthday she would get a sitter for all of our kids and we would finally just go. It was fun to reminisce about all the stuff I remember from Taiwan, but boy did that store smell bad. It's too bad their fruit wasn't fresher, I would have loved to get some guava or waxed apples-haven't had those in over five years. We got some baozi (steamed bun thingy's) for lunch-this was the first time I've ever had one with meat in it (since I was still a vegetarian on my mission). It was pretty good. Then when we left the store I saw one of the frozen drink places like we always went to in Taiwan, so I just had to go in. I think Kate thought I was nuts cause I got my favorite one that I always used to get. Literally translated it's a green bean frozen drink (though not like American green beans, it's made from mung beans) and I had to get it with jenju-the black tapioca ball things. So then we took a picture in front of the store and Kate was like, oh wait, we need to get another one where you can see your gross drink. So we did.
Thanks for the fun outing Kate! I really enjoyed it!

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.